THE inquest concluded, Ross was returned to the Melbourne Gaol. While awaiting trial, his treatment in prison was the same as before. He rose at 7 o’clock, put on his ordinary clothes and was placed in one of the remand yards. Here he remained until 4.15pm, when the men were put in their cells. Ross was supplied with meals from outside, a privilege for those on remand. But the food brought to the gaol was always closely examined.
But what manner of man was this, what life had he led to bring him here?
Colin Campbell Eadie Ross was born at 8 Brook Street, North Fitzroy, on 11 October 1892, making him 29 at the time of his arrest. His mother, Elizabeth Campbell Ross, nee Eadie, was 25 when she bore him. Her husband Thomas, a groom, was 32. The Rosses had recently moved from Bulla, then a small farming village 25 kilometres north of Melbourne. The couple had married in 1888 and already had two children: Thomas McKinley, aged two, and Ronald Campbell, aged four. The family would eventually comprise five children: Alexandrina, born in 1896, when the Rosses had settled in Footscray; and Stanley Gordon in 1900, the same year their father, Thomas, died. As a result of his death, the older boys left school early to take whatever work they could find, as did Colin. He was well built and strong: at the age of 11 he began work in a nearby quarry. At Veal’s quarries in Brooklyn he earned a reputation for being one of the best ‘jumper-men’ they had ever seen, operating the heavy drill to make blasting holes in the rock. Yet after an operation for appendicitis in 1914, Colin found he was unable to perform heavy manual work. He then went to Sydney for about 15 months, working as a general labourer, before returning to Melbourne where, for the remainder of the war years, he worked as a wardsman at the Broadmeadows army hospital. Early in 1920 Mrs Ross and her sons Ronald (a veteran of the Lone Pine campaign) and Colin moved to the Donnybrook Hotel, 30 kilometres north of Melbourne. Mrs Ross was manager, Ronald licensee and Colin a partner in the business. Colin was now 27 and kept physically fit, jogging 3 kilometres each morning to the local mineral springs and back.
He had interests in Melbourne: Lily May Brown, a girl in her early 20s who worked at a city hotel. The pair had been going out for two years. Lily was quite prepared to let the relationship lapse following Colin’s move to Donnybrook, but Colin was still keen, too keen.
Early on the morning of Friday 5 March 1920, Colin Ross was waiting outside the Browns’ house in Brunswick. Just before 7.30 Lily was met by Colin. He told her that he had made preparations for marrying her that day. She replied that her impression was that she was going to work as usual. Ross persisted, but Lily took no notice. Colin then drew a revolver and asked if she intended to marry him. Lily replied in the negative and boarded a city-bound tram.
Colin followed her onto the tram and repeated that they would be married that day, adding that he would have her dead or alive. The other passengers knew Lily as a regular commuter and the intensity with which Colin was whispering to her was beginning to raise eyebrows. For her part Lily was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and annoyed. However, to placate Colin, she agreed to meet him again that evening at 6.15 outside Carlyon’s Hotel, where she worked.
During the day she phoned the police. It was arranged that Plainclothes Constable William O’Halloran would attend their meeting. Colin was waiting and asked Lily if she had changed her mind. Replying that she had not, she inquired whether he still had the revolver. ‘Yes,’ Colin said boldly, ‘and I will not be afraid to use it.’ At this point O’Halloran arrested Colin. On arrival at the watchhouse his pockets were emptied; they included a loaded revolver and a plain gold ring.
The next morning Colin Ross was charged in the city court with using threatening words towards a young woman and carrying firearms without permission. Mr Manchester appeared for Ross, explaining that the threats were merely those of a jealous lover, and that Ross had no real intention of hurting Lily. In reply to the magistrate, Mr Notley Moore, Lily stated that she did not regard herself as being in any danger. She was, however, certainly not going to marry him.
On the charge of using threatening words, Moore sentenced Ross to 14 days’ imprisonment—which was suspended on his entering into a 12-month good behaviour bond of £25. For carrying firearms without permission a penalty of £5 was imposed. Ross paid the fine.
In April 1921 the Ross family returned to Melbourne when Ronald, Colin and Stanley bought Mrs E Hoppner’s wine shop in the Eastern Arcade, which specialised in the sale of bottled ports, sherries and table wines. Ronald was bookkeeper and in official terms, the manager; Colin was nominated as licensee, thus being, in practical terms, the manager, since he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the saloon; and Stanley helped out between labouring jobs. The shop came with a part-time sales assistant: Ivy Matthews. She worked two jobs, the other in a small confectionery and mixed business in Lygon Street, Carlton.
Ivy Matthews.
The wine shop re-opened as the Australian Wine Saloon, but Ivy Matthews lacked a barmaid’s licence. She and the Rosses agreed that she be nominally considered a partner on a weekly wage. But somebody made the arrangement known to the police and Colin, as the licensee, was fined. After she left the saloon Ivy Matthews would sue Colin for wages and a share of the partnership. She claimed that she ‘was a registered partner. It was in May 1921 that an agreement was drawn up …’
Mrs Hoppner had run a quiet and dignified establishment, in contrast with the Ross brothers. They served anyone, attracting a clientele including alcoholics and others with criminal backgrounds. Matthews:
During Colin Ross’s tenancy of the wine cafe, I came into contact with all kinds of men, including thieves and fences. These men gave me their confidences, and I have never broken them. I used to have a very narrow outlook on life … My experience in the wine bar has been a great education.
Many customers drank to excess. With the lavatories outside the premises, intoxicated patrons were continually traipsing about the arcade. Some publicly vomited or urinated; men accosted passing women with suggestive remarks. The smell of the saloon permeated the arcade, with especial rowdiness between 5 and 6pm (the six o’clock swill, when patrons got in their grog just before closing). The other shopkeepers complained to the arcade’s management, who issued warnings, and to the police, whose licensing branch sent plainclothes detectives on ever more frequent visits to the saloon. Many in the arcade wanted Colin Ross’s saloon gone.
While Mrs Hoppner was her employer Ivy Matthews had made every effort to get along with the tenants in the arcade. Now she tried to steer a safe course between them and the Rosses. She exerted something of a controlling influence on Colin’s management of the wine saloon, at least so far as his customers were concerned. Thereby she limited the number of complaints against its licensee—and maintained her position—while simultaneously reducing the amount of urine and vomit she had to mop up. She boasted in Smith’s Weekly:
… [Colin] always feared me. He would never tackle a man single-handed. When fellows got drunk in his saloon they were taken away to the lavatory, and there their cash was taken from them. Ross always regarded me as a nark. Having brothers of my own, I would never stand a man getting a rough spin. When I thought a man had had sufficient drink I would see that he left all right.
This remark looked good in print after Ross had been arrested for murder. Yet statements Matthews made in the city court on the previous 31 October, only two weeks before leaving the saloon, indicate she had more than a passive role in Ross’s caper, and in fact helped set up the unwitting customers.
On Thursday 13 October 1921, two and a half months before Alma Tirtschke’s murder, John James Bayliss, 42, a travelling optician, had been drinking in Ross’s saloon all afternoon. Far from ensuring ‘that he left all right’ when he ‘had had sufficient drink’, Matthews continued serving him until 5.50pm—10 minutes before closing. By then Bayliss was paralysed with drink and semi-conscious. Matthews suggested Ross should put Bayliss out. Ross ‘practically dragged him’ out of the saloon, across the arcade to the men’s lavatory. Then Ross returned to the saloon where, during the course of the afternoon, he had struck up an acquaintance with Frank Rhodes Walsh, a fresh-faced English boy. Walsh was an unemployed pantryman; a muscular, good-looking fellow, eager to impress. Accompanying him was his 19-yearold girlfriend, Phyllis Gray. Since arriving from England, the lad had fallen in with bad company and now he had only his girl and a few bob to his name.
Walsh later told the police that Ross told him, on returning to the wine cafe, that Bayliss had ‘a roll on him. See if you can get it away from him and we’ll go fifty-fifty.’ Handing Walsh a revolver loaded in six chambers, Ross allegedly said: ‘Don’t be afraid to use this if necessary.’ He also instructed Walsh to wait until after 6 o’clock when there would be very few people about.
Ivy Matthews did not testify that she witnessed the exchange between Ross and Walsh, or that she saw any gun. She did, however, remember that shortly after 6 o’clock there was a knock on the door of the saloon. Ross passed the key to the arcade’s lavatory through an opening in the door.
The doorknocker was Walsh. He went to the lavatory and, catching hold of Bayliss, threatened him with the revolver and demanded his money. According to Walsh, Bayliss answered: ‘That cow Ross has got the money.’ Walsh tried to empty out Bayliss’s pockets, to strenuous resistance. During the struggle the revolver discharged, wounding Bayliss in the shoulder.
Robert Scott, who managed the spiritualistic science hall upstairs, peered down to see what the commotion was. He told detectives he saw a man with a nickel-plated revolver in his hand, and a second man bleeding from a wound in the shoulder. The man with the revolver snatched something from the injured man’s pocket and ran out into Little Collins Street.
In her subsequent book, The Murder of Alma Tirtschke, Madame Ghurka would also claim: ‘It was some few minutes after 6pm … I was seated in my office when Ross rushed in upon me. He was very pale and greatly excited. He said, “I want to use your b[loody] phone. There’s a b[loody] bastard been shot. I want an ambulance to take the bastard away.” He … sent his call through; then … bolted out of the office and rushed out through the back entrance of the arcade into Little Collins Street … I went, with some of the other tenants, to where there was a small crowd outside the wine shop. The victim of the shooting was on a chair opposite the wine shop door. He was bleeding freely, his shirt and other garments … soaked in blood. I took my handkerchief and rinsed it in water, and stuffed it into … the bullet hole to stay the flow of blood … I looked towards the staircase which leads on to the upper floor of the arcade, and there I saw a woman in fainting condition … Ivy Matthews.’
After the wounded Bayliss was removed, according to Ghurka, Matthews ‘revived, and I gathered … that she had some knowledge of the shooting …’ Some 20 minutes later, Detectives Holden and Sullivan called on Madame Ghurka in her office. They wanted a candle for the purposes of examining the lavatory. After their search they returned to her and asked: ‘Who do you think did the shooting?’ She replied: ‘Arrest Colin Ross, and question Ivy Matthews, and I think you will get the one that did the shooting.’
The events following the shooting may never be fully known. However, it is possible to attempt a reconstruction, from an analysis of court records, newspaper reports and the statements of Senior Detective Edward Holden, the CIB officer assigned to the case. The statements of Ghurka, Matthews, Ross, Walsh and Gray are also taken into account, but with caution, as self-interest affects their reliability.
Bayliss was admitted to the Melbourne Hospital just after 7pm, intoxicated and unable to remember anything before he was shot. A bullet was removed from his right shoulder.
When interviewed by the detectives, Matthews deflected their inquiries or otherwise declined to answer. But it can be presumed she knew she was in trouble, thanks to Ross. He had not said anything to her about a gun or getting Walsh to do the fleecing. That was not the way it was supposed to happen. Ross did the fleecing and Matthews got a cut for potting the customer and keeping her mouth shut.
Next day it can be surmised that Matthews had it out with Ross. She asked for her share of the take. But Ross said he didn’t have it: Walsh had absconded with the cash. Matthews didn’t know if Ross was telling her the truth. Unknown to him, she arranged, via Phyllis Gray, to meet Walsh at a house in Preston, on the night of 17 October. Walsh told her Ross had double-crossed him—and that he would ‘make him pay’.
The police continued to pester Matthews with questions. Were they watching her? She confronted Ross and told him what Walsh had said. Ross laughed and denied it. Again Matthews met with Walsh who, now desperate, said: ‘It will be either Ross or I for it. He has pulled me into this and has left Phyllis and me to fight it out.’
Around this time Matthews consulted Ghurka, claiming she had no part in the shooting or even knew about the gun, but merely asked Ross to put out a drunken patron. She also told Ghurka: ‘that Ross had provided himself … with a scapegoat … named Walsh’. That Friday, 21 October, Matthews told Ross that Walsh was still in Melbourne and had it in for him. She added that she was being badgered by the police and that it might only be a matter of time before they were all arrested. Ross gave Matthews £10, saying: ‘Here. Tell them [Walsh and Gray] to go, but remember, this will come out of your wages each week.’ Little did they know that at that very moment Walsh and Gray were being questioned by the police, Walsh having been arrested in a dawn raid.
Matthews went at once to take the £10 to Walsh, the plan being that he and Gray would leave Melbourne on an evening train. She found no one at the Preston house. She returned to tell Ross—but by this time he too had been arrested.
Next morning Walsh and Ross appeared in the city court charged with armed robbery. Sonenberg represented Ross, Walsh had no representation. Both men were remanded to appear on 31 October. For each bail was fixed at £300. Ross could provide the surety, but since Walsh had no money, he went to gaol.
Matthews simmered, fearing Ross might expose her part in the ploy or, worse, set her up to take more than her share of blame. She believed Walsh’s version, resenting Ross for his petty selfishness and stupidity which had nearly landed all three of them in gaol. She was angry but also afraid, unsure what Ross would do next. And Ross, rather than accept responsibility for bungling the theft or admitting to doublecrossing, told Matthews she was just as much to blame as he was. If he was sent down, he would take her with him.
The relationship between the pair was charged. Matthews at least had the £10 and her job. Madame Ghurka, meanwhile, was surprised to hear Ross was not in gaol. She had hoped the shooting affray would finally close the saloon—it intimidated her clientele, mainly women, who needed privacy and discretion.
At the committal hearing, with his arm in a sling, Bayliss confirmed that he had been drinking throughout the day and could remember nothing before he was shot. Phyllis Gray told the court that she overheard Ross telling Walsh to get Bayliss’s roll, that she saw Ross drag Bayliss to the lavatory, and that after Ross came out, she went in and saw Walsh pointing a revolver at Bayliss’s arm. She said she accidentally struck Walsh’s arm and that the revolver exploded. She did not know that Bayliss had been shot. She reported that Walsh said: ‘This man just asked me if I am Ross, because he has taken his money.’ She told Walsh to leave, but he replied that he would return the gun to its owner.
The story could not be confirmed by Bayliss, nor would it be supported by Walsh. It was also at odds with what Robert Scott saw from upstairs.
Then it was Matthews’s turn to testify. She believed she also had been double-crossed, and that, if it came to the crunch, Ross would try to make a scapegoat of her too. She told the court about the £10 given to her by Ross for the purposes of getting Walsh and Gray out of Melbourne.
Detective Holden read Walsh’s statement implicating Ross, then Ross’s statement: a declaration that, after 6 o’clock on the day in question, someone had called out for the lavatory key, which was a usual thing, and that he had handed it through the door.
The accused reserved their defence and were committed for trial on 15 November. Bail was fixed again, this time at £200 each. Ross put up the bail and was released; Walsh went back to prison.
Matthews’s testimony was much less supportive of Ross than of Walsh. The Ross family knew that if they did not get Matthews on their side before the trial, her testimony could easily put Colin in prison.
In the meantime Madame Ghurka canvassed for the closure of the saloon and the imprisonment of its licensee:
Being satisfied Ross was the main scoundrel, I determined to try and help his intended victim. To this end, I took up a collection to get money for the lad’s defence. I succeeded in collecting £7, and to this amount I added £10 out of my own pocket, and arranged with a firm of attorneys to undertake the boy’s defence …
I saw Ross standing at the door of the wine shop, and I went over to him and said, ‘Mr Ross, I am making a collection to help the boy whom you have dragged into this affair. Will you contribute anything?’ Ross replied and his face went livid with passion, ‘Not a b[loody] ha’penny; but I’d give £1000 to put him in.’ That reply shows the type of man Ross was.
During the fortnight between the committal hearing and the trial, Ivy Matthews was visited by a tearful Mrs Ross who pleaded with her not to put Colin in gaol. Other members of the family, including Colin, made a determined effort to win her favour. Matthews began referring publicly to herself as ‘manageress’ of the saloon, thus overstepping her share of the partnership, and drawing more money than she was entitled to from its profits. Though the Ross brothers were aware of what she was doing, they chose to tolerate it for the moment.
The case was heard before Justice Mann in the Supreme Court on 15 November. Under cross-examination by barrister George Maxwell, Matthews elaborated on several points: in the week prior to the shooting incident, Walsh had been cautioned by Ross for causing a commotion in the big parlour when Walsh revealed that he had a small revolver in his possession. Gray persuaded her beau to surrender the revolver for safekeeping; it was wrapped in a paper bag and she gave it to Matthews. Without opening the parcel, Matthews placed it under the bar counter; it was forgotten about for a number of days. In the witness box Gray confirmed she had given the parcel to Matthews. Although the gun was never found, its cartridges were in Walsh’s possession when the police raided the Preston house.
The outcome of the court case provided little satisfaction to Madame Ghurka. Ross was acquitted. Walsh got nine months’ hard labour.
On 16 November, the next day, Matthews turned up for work at the saloon as usual. She was confronted by Stanley Ross who, now that his brother was acquitted, unleashed a tirade. Incensed, she left, considering herself dismissed. In the following weeks Matthews’s solicitor and the Rosses corresponded. Matthews demanded a week’s wages in lieu of notice. Ronald Ross wrote back on 22 November reminding her that she still owed Colin £10, that the family were aware she had been drawing more money from the business than she was entitled to, and that he knew she was drawing several pensions under false names, including one as a married woman.
The day after, Colin Ross applied before the licensing court for a renewal of his licence to continue operating the Australian Wine Saloon. The application was opposed by the Victoria Police. Constable O’Halloran told the court that in March 1920 Ross had been arrested, charged, and subsequently convicted of carrying firearms and using threatening words. ‘Other police evidence was brought,’ said the Argus, ‘that Ross had been convicted in connection with charges arising from the conduct of the cafe.’ Mr Lewers, who was appearing on behalf of Ross, could do little. He applied for an adjournment until 12 December. By that time, he said, Ross might decide whether he would surrender the licence and take other premises. The adjournment was granted, but the licence would never subsequently be renewed.
In previous accounts, the relationship between Matthews and Colin has not been examined sufficiently. Matthews’s bitterness extended to the whole Ross family, but particularly Colin, who had double-crossed her and nearly had her arrested. His actions had put her in court, led to abuse and threats from his brothers and ultimately the loss of her job.