Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:01]
A
Gideon Hay is one of the world's preeminent cricket journalists, but his other great passion is historical true crime. Gideon's latest book in the genre is called who Was Wallace? It's an investigation into the life and circumstances of a man who was Australia's oldest prisoner. He joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about it. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, People of the Kulin and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
- [00:40]
B
My daughter came up with the idea. She said to me one day, dad, who was the world's oldest prisoner? I went, gee, I don't know. That's a great question. We had visions of, you know, someone being sent to an Arctic gulag or confined to death row in America or languishing in wormwood scrubs for 80 years. But no, in fact, it was a man called William Wallace who was born in August 1881 in a place called Cudgel Creek near young in country New South Wales. Farming family, Scots Presbyterians, typically big family of the time, moved on a settlement at Temora. Probably the only unusual thing about Bill in the first 20 to 30 years of his life is that he serves in the Boer War. He enlists when he's 19. He's part of the third New South Wales Mounted Rifles. He spends a year there. I don't think he sees very much action. So he's a soldier. In fact, at the time that he died, he was the last Australian survivor of the Boer War. Not that anyone knew this because he never talked about it. So he goes back to Temora. He share farms for a while. He gets burned out. There's a bushfire and he has to leave the district. He moves up to Dorrigo in northern New South Wales. He begins to build up a little farm, about 150 head of cattle, about 15 head of horses.
- [02:01]
A
He.
- [02:01]
B
He never marries, so he's actually able to concentrate on building up his sort of his farming expertise. And he becomes quite successful. In 1918, he goes to the Royal Easter show in Sydney and he begins to talk about people following him. He begins to suspect that there is a clairvoyant on his trail. There's a woman who. Who's following him. He never actually sees the woman, but he senses her presence. When he leaves the Easter show, he's unwell, he's got headaches, he's running a temperature, he's talking in agitated fashion. He goes to Stay with his family in Goulburn for a period. Then he returns to Dorrigo. He's involved in a dispute with a neighbour. He accuses the neighbor of sabotaging his, his farm. The neighbour accuses him of stealing a horse. It all gets a little bit confused, so he goes to the police. Bill goes to the police. But unexpectedly, having gone to register a complaint, he becomes the subject of the complaint. The police go, this man's a bit weird. I know. Let's put him before the magistrate and see what the magistrate thinks. And the magistrate says, actually, I'm going to certify you because you're clearly a bit strange. So he gets sent to the Kenmore Asylum in Sydney and he's confined there for a period of about a year.
- [03:31]
A
What's confinement in an asylum like in those days? Are we talking, is everyone having shock therapy or.
- [03:37]
B
No, it's. I mean we are talking the very primitive stage of the asylum system really. They are simply confined. There is some work available, it's work of a very menial kind, like washing and laundering and cleaning. But other than that it's a regime of soul destroying idleness. That's what one of the doctors calls it.
- [03:57]
A
They just lock you in.
- [03:58]
B
They just lock you in. They lock you in. They feed you, they lock you up. So he's there for about a year. He writes a fascinating letter to his neighbour, a guy called Justin McCarthy, where he thinks, he says, I've been locked up here for the sole purpose of being murdered, that there are people conspiring against me. I hear them talking about me, but I don't know what to do about it and I don't know what's at the bottom of it. He starts to talk about something called the influen, this weird amorphous force that wishes him ill. His delusions don't abate, so he's sent to Gladesville, another mental hospital. Interestingly, he's there, put to work. He's put to work in the asylum store. And he's an intelligent man, so he's quite capable of handling money and dishing out goods. And his condition begins to improve, so he starts to write different letters. He writes to what's called the Master in Lunacy. It's a great title, isn't it?
- [05:01]
A
That's a real title?
- [05:02]
B
It's a real title.
- [05:02]
A
I thought that was one he'd made up in his delusion, the Master of Lunacy.
- [05:06]
B
So the Master in Lunacy in New South Wales was a barrister who was appointed to run the estates of those who were certified, because being certified, you weren't allowed to own property, you certainly weren't allowed to own a farm. So what happens while Bill is in Gladesville is that his farm is sold and all his equipment is sold and all his livestock is sold. All the money is given to him, is placed in his bank account. But his life is completely transformed so that when he's at length released from Gladesville, he's quite a wealthy man. But he has nowhere to return to. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:47]
A
He can't go back to his life.
- [05:48]
B
He can't. So they let him out in 1920, and he disappears. He's very, very difficult to trace. So on this particular day, December 9, 1925, Bill is sitting at lunch, and two young men come in. A guy called Ernest Williams from the Bendigo area, and a guy called Gene mcrobertson. He's American, and he's got a loud American accent. So when Gene McRobertson starts to talk loudly in an American accent and lights a cigarette and offers one to his companion, William, Bill snaps, hey, you're not allowed to smoke around here. And you Americans are all kind of. You're unpleasant. You shouldn't be here.
- [06:31]
A
Bit of, go back to where you came from.
- [06:33]
B
Bit of, go back to where you came from. And Gene McRobertson returns his ire in kind, you know, says, you know, what's it to you, mate? You know, keep your nose out of things. But he puts the cigarette out and the conversation moves on, and things return to normal. But as Williams gets up with McRobertson, they mutter to Bill, we'll see you outside. Yeah. So Bill finishes his meal. He comes out, and by this stage, there's a group outside. It's mcrobertson and Williams and a few of their lusty mates. And McRobertson says, you know, what did you mean by referring to me as a Yankee bastard in there? And Bill begins to kind of. Bill doesn't want to fight. Bill doesn't want to fight.
- [07:21]
A
I'm looking at all of this through the lens of paranoid.
- [07:23]
B
Precisely. Precisely. And unfortunately, for the last 18 months, because Bill has been so paranoid, he's been carrying a gun.
- [07:31]
A
Yep.
- [07:32]
B
Because he's got money, and he's worried that people are going to try and extort him or steal from him, so he feels the need to defend himself. So as this group of toughs home in on him, they sort of chase him down the street. He's kind of trying to keep them at bay, but finally, he's Cornered out the front of a butcher shop. And he pulls a gun and shoots Williams. He shoots the young Australian. Everyone is horrified. A policeman is called. The butcher comes out the front of his shop and he says he's only seen the last stage of this altercation. He said, what have you done? You've shot a man in cold blood. And the one thing Bill says, which he will repeat is at intervals over the next little while, is, I had to do it. I had to do it. That's all he'll say. While he's on remand in Pentridge, he begins to talk to the prison doctor, who's a man called Clarence Godfrey, about who these men might have been. And they do seem to have been agents of these nefarious forces, the influence. The influence who wished him harm. And there is an inquest at which Bill does not testify. And various witnesses portray the crime as one of self defence. Yeah, and really Bill was cornered. Bill had no option but to do something.
- [09:04]
A
There'd been a threat and there was a gang of men waiting for him.
- [09:07]
B
Premeditated threat.
- [09:07]
A
Yeah. And he was chased.
- [09:09]
B
He was chased. So even though Bill is up on a charge of murder, the likelihood is it would have been knocked down to manslaughter. If he'd been convicted, I suspect he would have got off on a mercy plea. It was common in those days to sentence a man to hang and to commute this to life imprisonment. So Bill would have served a term in jail at worst and probably got out at some stage. But he ends up, of course, getting the worst of both worlds. He's never tried, he's never convicted and as a result, he has no status in the system. He's confined at what they call the governor's pleasure. So they sent him off to Jay Ward. And Jay Ward is infamous. J Ward is the archetype of the old, cold, bleak bluestone jail. It had served as Ararat's jail up until the 1880s. Then, after a royal commission called the ZOX Commission, it was decided that the criminally insane was within the group of the mentally ill should be segregated. So Jay Ward was turned over to what was called the mental Hygiene department. And it's got people who are just too weird for the system. Potentially violent, potentially depraved, unclassifiable. Bill is an incongruous presence in there because he's not obviously violent or his incidence of violence was not premeditated. But it's the closest that the system can find for a niche for him. So he becomes this weird still point in the moving world, because the mental health system does change over the next 50 years a lot.
- [10:48]
A
Hard and fast, really, doesn't it?
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. Bill doesn't really change. Bill becomes a kind of a state within the state. There's something sort of weirdly admirable about his determination and his absolute resistance of the world in which he finds himself. He just will not give into it. He persists in his idea that he's not mad. He persists in his regime, which is very, very regular. He is a man of fixed habits. He retains a sense of 1920s fashions. Towards the end of his period, in fact, in the late 1970s, early 1980s, the mentally ill began to receive the pension. And so Bill accumulated further monies in his account. And one of the things that he spent his money on was clothes. So he would outfit himself at this particular shop in Ararat, and the owner, Mr. Foster, would come in and take his measurements and fit him out for his sports jackets and his shirts and his cardigans. So he's quite the dandy. He looks the part. He looks like, you know, rather avuncular, rather a nice old man. You wouldn't have, if you'd passed him in the street, you would not have noticed him. But once again, you know, he's at odds with the world surrounding him.
- [12:11]
A
And the clinicians, to the extent that they were sort of working with him, still believed that he was a danger, I guess, to himself and to others.
- [12:19]
B
Look, once he gets to 80, he gets to 80 in the early 1960s, and it's decided that, look, Jay Ward's probably not the place for him now. So we'll move him to the main mental hospital, which, which is now called Aradale. A slightly less rigorous regime. And Bill does change to a certain degree. He begins to take an interest in chess. He becomes an absolutely obsessive and almost unbeatable chess player. He plays chess against everyone and it absolutely consumes him. And because he's quite presentable, because he looks like, you know, your old uncle, he becomes quite popular. He becomes a well liked figure. He's a guy who looks after himself. He has very extensive systematised delusions, but they don't do anyone any harm. And by the 1970s, people are going, yeah, it's remarkable. This guy's quite old. He's about to turn 100. He's gonna get a telegram from the Queen, he's gonna get a message from the Australia Day Council. So it becomes quite a big event. When he turns 100, there's a big. The local member comes to visit him, the head of the RSL comes to see him. He's presented with various gifts, he's featured in the local newspaper and in fact, over the last seven or eight years of Bill's life, he became a weird celebrity.
- [13:45]
A
But still in the hospital.
- [13:46]
B
But still in the hospital. He's a voluntary patient by this stage, so there's absolutely no reason for him to stay there. The only reason that he stays there is because he's got nowhere to go. In 1987, there's a push to close the system altogether and a journalist from the Australian called Stuart Rintoul goes up to Ararat and he encounters Bill there and he's told the story and he goes up and asks bill, do you know why you're here? And Bill says something like, there was a man. He has a very sort of rather metallic and rather robotic voice. There was a man. And then he pauses and he said, to tell you the truth, I don't know why I'm here. He's completely forgotten.
- [14:32]
A
How long has he been there by that stage?
- [14:34]
B
He's been there for 62 years. Yeah.
- [14:37]
A
When did he die? What were the circumstances of his death?
- [14:41]
B
He just conked out. 1989.
- [14:43]
A
It was 108. Listen to me.
- [14:44]
B
Yeah, so he's buried in the Ararat cemetery. He has quite a nice tidy tombstone. The funeral was attended by a handful of people from the hospital, but no members of the family were contactable. So it's a rather lonely affair.
- [15:02]
A
I don't know if it's Bill or if it's your storytelling, but it definitely. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking a lot about my grandmother, my mother's mother, who spent time in Bailey.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [15:13]
A
And so this story's teasing out lots of thoughts for me and emotions. And maybe you're right. Maybe a lot of us in some way can read into Bill's story and engage with it.
- [15:24]
B
It's extraordinary, but it also has a kind of an every person quality to it.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah, it does. Thank you to our guest today, Gideon Hay. Gideon's book, who Is Wallace? Is available now and there are links in the show notes to help you get your copy. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800respect.org au Indigenous Australians can contact 13 YARN on 139276 or 13 yarn.org au.
- [16:11]
B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the aboriginal elders, past, present and those emerging.