TODAY Chelsea is a populous and prosperous bayside suburb of Melbourne with broad streets and modern houses. It is located to the south of the CBD on the eastern edge of Port Phillip Bay, a region said to have more golf courses per square kilometre than anywhere else in Australia.
In 1924, however, Chelsea was on the outer fringes of the city, where the urban gave way to the bush. Its landholders were mostly farmers growing produce for the city markets, and their properties bordered paddocks of dense tea-tree scrub.
Just after 2 pm on Sunday 20 July that year, twenty-two year old James Smyth and his brothers George and Charlie, aged seventeen and fifteen respectively, set out from their father’s property in Wells Road and headed up the dirt track to what is today known as Chelsea Heights, but to the lads was Pigeon Hill, a land rise surrounded by bush. Late the previous day their father had run a fox into its den there and blocked up the hole. The boys had come out hoping to kill the animal, as the district was plagued by foxes and feral dogs. Eventually they found the place, a clearing where the trees gave way to patches of undergrowth. Here were animal skulls, sheep and cattle bones; and underfoot the crunch of smaller things: the bones of rabbits or of poultry thieved from local farms. But the fox, they soon found, had burrowed out of its prison. Disappointed, but still wanting for amusement, the lads tossed stones at a pair of big crows that had perched watching them in a tree. When the birds flapped away, cawing balefully, the brothers tore up some undergrowth and played a round of mock footy with a calf skull—until it shattered on a boot.
The afternoon was changing and rain was in the air. As they turned to leave, it was George who saw the white round ball, partially hidden under a shrub. When he showed it to them, James and Charles, like George himself, knew exactly what it was. In the comic pages they had seen drawings of pirate flags. This skull was as bleached as any of the other bones that lay about on Pigeon Hill. But it was human. George put it in his hunting bag—a cut-down hessian sack slung over his shoulder—to take home with him. James told his younger brother to tell their father. But George was reluctant: the grim novelty of the memento appealed to him and he wanted to keep it. That night at dinner the boys said nothing about the find.
After dinner, George took a better look at his souvenir by lantern light in the outhouse. The skull was quite empty, had no lower jaw and no teeth in its upper jaw. It was without flesh except for a thin strip of desiccated tissue that hung underneath and to which were loosely attached two vertebrae. George pulled the vertebrae off and dropped them into his pocket. He put the skull back into his hunting bag, went back into the house without comment and, after slipping the sack safely under his bed, lay down and went to sleep.
When Tuesday afternoon came and George had still made no mention of the find to his parents, James mentioned it for him, compelling George to show the discovery to their father. It took some argument to impress the point on George, who still looked on the skull as an extraordinary collector’s piece. But his parents realised that the find had to be reported officially. And so, just before 5 pm on Tuesday 22 July, Mr Smyth, with George in tow, presented the skull to Constable Feehan at the Chelsea police station. Feehan called the CIB.
The next morning Piggott was detailed to investigate with Detective Ethell. They caught the train and arrived at Chelsea mid-morning, Feehan meeting them at the station. It was cold and the men wore overcoats. The Smyth boys and their father were there too. Piggott lit a cigar and opened his notebook. He was aware of the pressmen milling about, but had nothing to say to them. He wanted to see the site of the discovery immediately. Did they have the skull with them? Feehan opened his satchel and handed it over. With one hand Piggott took the skull from him. He turned it over. A cameraman saw his chance and clicked the shutter of his camera. Piggott, meanwhile, noticed a small ‘tag of ligament’. It hung from the ‘side of the foramen magnum’—the opening at the base of the skull where the spinal bones attach.
Constable Feehan had the use of a car, hired for the day, and Mr Smyth had his own vehicle. While Constable Nolan from Chelsea kept the press at bay, the party set off on the 1½-kilometre trip to Pigeon Hill. When they came to the base of the rise, they left their vehicles and proceeded on foot along the path taken on Sunday by the boys. They found the place dotted, as Piggott recalled, with ‘sheep skulls, rabbit bones and shin bones of cattle’—it was a feeding ground to which the bones had undoubtedly been carried by wild dogs or foxes.
Piggott asked the boys if they had found any other bones along with the skull that they thought might be human. George answered that he only found the skull.
‘Are you sure?’ Piggott queried. ‘Look at this.’ He turned the skull over and pointed to the tag of ligament beneath it. George answered that in fact he had pulled away two small bones from underneath the skull. ‘Where are they now?’ Piggott asked. The boy reddened, dropped his head and admitted that, after carrying them around in his pocket for a day, he had thrown them away in the bush. He could not remember exactly where—maybe down near the creek. The boys were told to go home with their father.
Piggott, Ethell and Feehan combed the site for more signs of human remains but found none. The hill was surrounded by acres of dense brush and tea-tree. The three returned to the railway station, where a clamour of newsmen was waiting. Before boarding the train, Piggott took some questions, replying: ‘There is great significance attaching to the presence of the two joints of vertebra which were on the skull when young Smyth found it. These he carried about in his pocket and later threw into the scrub. These bones have to be recovered.’
Joining Ethell on the train, Piggott felt in his coat for another cigar and took his seat. ‘Seeing the bones were attached to the skull,’ he confided, ‘it is evident that they had been pulled away from the main trunk in the course of its decay.’
By late afternoon they were back at Russell Street, where Piggott presented both the skull and his report to Superintendent Potter. Many years a country policeman, Piggott had seen the effects of sun, drought and rain on sheep and cattle bones. ‘The skull was found on the surface,’ he reported, ‘where in my opinion it has been lying for at least ten or twelve months, judging by the bleaching.’ He had already ascertained that the area was ‘infested with foxes’ that had been ‘raiding poultry yards and farms nearby’. Piggott concluded that the skull had become detached from a body …
probably buried in the vicinity and scratched out by dogs or foxes. In order that no stone be left unturned, I suggest that two trackers come across from Dandenong and meet me at the Chelsea Police Station at 10am tomorrow Thursday 24th. I will then cause a thorough search of about 200 acres of dense scrub country. Please forward for coroner’s information.
The investigation was now running on several lines. Constable Feehan visited the municipal offices at Carrum Downs, the suburb neighbouring Chelsea, to inquire if there were records of any old graves in the area—pioneer or Indigenous—but there were none known. Ethell was checking missing person reports going back a decade. Piggott wanted charts of the Pigeon Hill topography and was talking by phone with the weather bureau.
Before catching the train next morning, Piggott called in at the City Morgue. Dr Mollison, coroner’s surgeon and lecturer in forensic medicine at the university, confirmed that the skull had been received late the previous day. In his opinion, he said, it was female. This he judged from several features, most notably the rounder, tapering top; and the supraorbital margin (the ridge between the eyes), which was more pronounced than would be likely for a male. Piggott thanked him and headed to Flinders Street Station, where he met up with Detective Ethell. On the train, Ethell showed him the morning’s edition of the Sun News Pictorial. It contained the snapshot of Piggott taken the previous day. It was captioned: ‘Alas, poor Yorick … Senior Detective Piggott as Hamlet examining the skull.’
A skull was found in the scrub near Chelsea in July 1924. The Sun News Pictorial captioned this photo: ‘Alas, poor Yorick … Senior Detective Piggott as Hamlet examining the skull.’
Working on the premise that the skull was female and that it had, on Piggott’s estimate, suffered exposure for some ten to twelve months, there was one missing person case that particularly attracted his attention: a woman who had disappeared from Mentone—a short rail trip from Chelsea—on Easter Tuesday 1923. Might the skull be hers? And, if so, how to locate the remains of her body?
Rain was falling steadily when Piggott and Ethell reached Pigeon Hill. A group of locals, including the Smyth brothers, had turned out to assist the police. Senior Constable Hogarth from Dandenong was there with Aboriginal trackers Warry Phillips and Martin Bligh. They had a pointer dog each. Constable Feehan had seconded his sons, Frank and Kingston. The group had gathered below the branches of a big gum tree for some shelter as Constable Nolan held up an umbrella for Piggott. ‘On the assumption,’ he said, ‘that a fox scented the body and dragged the skull to its den, it is likely that by following the wind, the body itself will be found.’ Piggott had noted the position of a foxes’ lair near where the skull was discovered, and had received information on the prevalent wind directions for the locality. He told the searchers that if they were to come upon any clothing or anything that looked to them like human remains they should not touch it, but hold their position and call out for either Detective Ethell or himself. ‘Good luck,’ he said.
The men spread out along a front of about 400 metres, moving ‘up windward’ from the spot where the skull was found. The rain, however, set in hard and the men, drenched and cold, were soon trudging through slush, incapable of searching effectively. At 11 am Piggott called off the search in the hope the weather might clear. At 2 pm the rain had stopped and the search recommenced. Half an hour later, having worked his way through a tangle of dense scrub, Warry Phillips came out onto some open ground and called out for his boss. Piggott and Ethell moved quickly in the direction of his calls and took charge of the scene. Constable Nolan was directed to notify the volunteers that the search was over and to thank them for their efforts.
In the clearing was a set of human remains in female clothing. The body was heavily decayed and the head was missing. The body ‘was in a comfortable position,’ Piggott observed, ‘as if the person had laid down to rest.’ It lay ‘on the right side with the knees slightly tucked up, left hand by the side, right arm tucked up towards the shoulder’, suggesting the hand had cushioned the head. Although deteriorating, the clothing on the body was intact and did not show disarray; the garments were still fastened. The dress was of one piece and the material, though much weathered, seemed to be a kind of navy check.
Just behind where the head should have been was a pair of patent leather lace-up shoes, the soles turned upwards. Next to these was the wire frame of a hat with some decaying light fabric still attached, and beside it was the upper plate of a set of false teeth. On the other side of the body was the lid of a billy can, placed there as if for drinking purposes. A couple of metres away, hanging on some tea-tree, was the billy can itself, and on a neighbouring branch was hung a pair of women’s stockings, ‘originally black,’ Piggott surmised, ‘now faded green’. The billy can had been on the branch for some time: the twigs of the tea-tree had grown over and around its handle. It contained dirty water, but Piggott was careful not to spill any, as he wanted it tested.
While Piggott remained at the scene, Ethell returned to the Chelsea police station to telephone a request for a photographer, notify the coroner, and arrange a vehicle for collection of the body. The body had been located about 45 metres from the foxes’ den—in almost a direct line. Ethell returned and, once photographs were taken, the body was placed in a kerosene case† supplied by Constable Feehan, who had been using it at the police station to file his paperwork.
On lifting the body, it was found to have been lying on a folded grey velour coat. The lower set of false teeth was then found.‘These had evidently hurt the deceased,’Piggott noted, ‘because she had packed a small piece of wadding on the underside to prevent pressure on the gums.’ Also found was a button off the coat, a hair comb, a two shilling piece and a ‘portion of her hair’.
The body was ‘very decomposed and unrecognisable’. But Piggott knew the clothing corresponded with that worn by Sarah Hammerly when she disappeared from Mentone in April 1923. While waiting for Ethell to return, he had made some measurements of the scene and used a tape measure to gauge the height of the skeleton. It corresponded with the information in the missing persons file, which stated: ‘Miss Hammerly was 40 years of age, 5ft 7 inches [1.7 metres] in height, of stout build and … dressed in a navy check zephyr frock, grey velour coat, black stockings, patent leather shoes, grey hat and green gossamer veil.’
The remains were taken to the Chelsea police station, where they were kept overnight. Early on Friday they were removed to the City Morgue and later that morning Mrs Josephine Riley identified the shoes, hair comb, button and other items of clothing as belonging to her sister, Sarah Hammerly.
Piggott had now to prepare the brief for the coroner and to find evidence to determine the reason for Hammerly’s death. That her body lay in a composed position suggested that she lay down of her own accord to rest. That she took off her coat to lie on, and also removed her shoes, stockings and hat, suggested that she may have died during warm weather, as it is unlikely she would have done this if the conditions were cold. Piggott checked weather bureau records and on the day Hammerly went missing the maximum temperature recorded in Melbourne was 86.8 °F (30.4 °C), warm enough to be consistent with his theory. But how did she come by her death? There were no visible signs of violence on what remained of her body. Her clothing was not in disarray. Did the woman kill herself? If so, by what means? No weapon was found at the scene, nor any bottle from which she might have taken poison. Moreover, many of the common toxins of the day—strychnine or arsenic preparations, readily obtainable for vermin control—resulted in muscular contortion, whereas in this case the body was found in a state of muscular repose. And beyond this, Piggott faced a bigger question: if Sarah Hammerly did kill herself—why?
The next day, Saturday, Dr Mollison made his post mortem examination:
The body was in an advanced stage of decay and consisted only of the bones and some portions of the skin, the soft parts being all destroyed, the trunk … was still covered with stays and portions of a rotten singlet. None of the internal organs were left and the bones were mostly disarticulated … the upper vertebrae of the neck were missing also the lower jaw, some of the bones were still moist and some were embedded in earth and small fibrous roots. The pelvis was that of a female … its cavity was capacious: there were no marks of violence on any of the bones.
Of the skull, Mollison noted it was more bleached than the other bones and quite bare of flesh other than the small shred of ligament already noted by Piggott. ‘There were no marks of violence on it.’ Mollison concluded: ‘owing to the complete destruction of the internal organs, it is not possible to state the cause of death.’
Piggott, however, persisted. ‘This woman may have poisoned herself,’ he reported to Superintendent Potter, ‘and traces may yet be found.’ On Monday the kerosene case and its contents, ‘Remains of body Sarah Hammerly’, was transferred to Charles Price, government analyst at the Melbourne Health Department.
Upon opening the case ‘there was no particular odour,’ Price reported, ‘other than a faint mustiness.’ Inside were ‘dark brown detached human bones … part of the vertebral column and pelvis, the bones of the feet, pieces of skin and a fat-like substance, together with … soil and leaves’.
Price removed about 200 grams of the tissue and fatty substance and analysed it for ‘metallic and alkaloidal poisons’. His results were ‘entirely negative’. He also received a brown paper parcel containing clothing from the body. On one of the pieces of dress material Price noticed some irregular darkcoloured stains which he thought may have been blood. On examination, however, the discolourations were found to be fruit stains. Price detected no blood on any of the clothing.
Finally, he turned his attention to the billy can, which ‘had a capacity of two quarts [2.4 litres] and showed signs of rust … Its under surface was darkened due to the presence of carbon, indicating that the vessel had on at least one occasion been exposed to a luminous flame. The lid was rusty and contained soil and tea-tree leaves’. There were about 60 millilitres of dirty water in the billy can. Price tested the water and found it gave ‘a neutral reaction, with no distinctive odour or taste’. He then analysed the water for poisons ‘with entirely negative results’.
Frustratingly for Piggott, science had failed to elucidate the mode of Sarah Hammerly’s death. In the end it was a simpler course—taking statements from those who knew her—that finally cast light on the circumstances leading to her death.
From interviewing her family, it emerged that as Sarah approached the age of forty she suffered increasingly from a form of melancholia that today would be described as severe depression. Her tendency to despondent moods was so great that she occasionally visited sanatoriums and health resorts in an effort to improve her outlook. In the latter half of 1922 her disposition improved markedly when, through her Sunday attendances at church, she met a railway worker, Daniel Gill. After the service they would take walks together and before long they were spending the greater part of weekends and evenings ‘keeping company’. Daniel was aware of Sarah’s unhappy state. ‘I was in sympathy with her illness,’ he said. ‘She had told me she was in bad health … I was going away to Daylesford for my holidays and she said it might be beneficial to her health to come with me.’ It was an idyllic time for Sarah, and when she returned she was in greatly improved spirits. Rachel Hammerly, Sarah’s sister, recalled:
Sarah showed me a signet ring and also a wedding ring that Gill gave her. The initials on the signet ring were ‘SH’. When she showed me the wedding ring, she told me that Gill had said ‘When I give you this ring I expect you to be my wife.’
From December 1922 Sarah was boarding with her married sister, Josephine Riley, in Mentone. Towards the end of that year, Sarah gave Daniel a gift of cufflinks for his birthday. He thought the occasion suitable to mention that he was, in fact, already married. The revelation so shocked Sarah that it triggered a recurrence of her melancholy. Over the ensuing weeks nothing could alleviate the despair into which she was sinking.
At the end of January 1923, Dr John Leon, the family’s GP, examined Sarah. ‘She was mentally worn down,’ he reported, ‘and on the border of insanity. I felt emphatically that she would be suicidal … I told her sister Mrs Riley that she should be watched very closely.’ Various plans for Sarah’s treatment and care were discussed, but the family decided it was best that she continue to be cared for at her sister’s home. It was with great concern therefore that Josephine found her sister missing from the house one evening in late February. The police were notified but it was not until 9 March that Sarah was located—wandering aimlessly through the hallways of an inner-city rooming house—by policewomen Madge Connor and Ellen Davidson. When they reunited Sarah with Josephine, ‘She was laughing and crying and did not recognise her sister for a while,’ reported Connor. Released into Josephine’s custody, Sarah was hospitalised for a time at St Vincent’s.
By the time of the Easter break, on the last weekend of March 1923, Sarah was convalescing with her sister at Mentone. On Easter Tuesday, 3 April, Sarah went missing again and although her absence was immediately reported to the police, the reports did not reach Policewoman Connor. Twenty-four hours after being reported missing, Sarah was seen by Connor walking towards the railway station in Flinders Street, Melbourne. On that occasion Connor had no reason to intercept Sarah, being unaware that her status was again that of a missing person.
Meanwhile, the Hammerly family were searching the Mentone streets and neighbouring bushland. When Sarah was not located after the first night of searching, her unmarried sister, Rachel, who had come from Malvern to help in the search, pressed the police to do more. She asked whether a search party should go out or if Aboriginal trackers might be deployed, but ‘there was nothing done in that regard,’ she later told the coroner, Mr Berriman.
At the inquest on 19 August 1924, Daniel Gill took the stand to depose that he was ‘just a friend’ of Sarah Hammerly’s; that he was indeed a married man and that he ‘never posed as a single man to her’. While Gill did admit to giving her a signet ring engraved with her initials, he declared: ‘I did not give her a plain gold ring and I never told her that I would marry her.’
Mr Berriman found that the evidence was ‘insufficient to determine the time or the cause of her death’. Proceedings in the matter concluded, and the coroner rose and left the court.
Out on Pigeon Hill near Chelsea on a mild evening in 1923, Sarah Hammerly took her shoes and stockings off, lay down on her jacket to rest and, as The Sun supposed, fell asleep ‘in her tea-tree boudoir’, succumbing to exhaustion, exposure and despair.