10

The Deadly Love Quadrangle

Since the beginning of murder as we know it, the love triangle has been responsible for many murders. It’s usually two men in love with the one woman, but not always – sometimes two women have fought for one man. To a lesser degree, women have been known to murder their lover so another woman couldn’t have him, and men have killed their woman and faced the consequences rather than have their beloved fall into the arms of another man.

But rarely have there been love quadrangles, where three men were in love with – and competed for the favours of – the one woman. It is a circumstance that could only end hideously. Such was the case of what became known as the ‘Mad Dentist of Wynyard Square’.

In 1860 the young Henry Louis Bertrand arrived in Melbourne from England and worked as a dental assistant before marrying Jane Palmer. Their young family moved to busy Sydney in early 1865, where Henry set up a thriving dental practice in busy Wynyard Square. Around the same time another young family, Henry and Ellen Kinder and their children, moved to Sydney from New Zealand and Henry Kinder took up work as a bank teller at the Wynyard branch of City Bank.

The Bertrands and the Kinders met and became friends, and it wasn’t long before Henry Bertrand and Ellen Kinder were having a torrid affair right under their respective spouses’ noses. While Henry Bertrand was a newcomer to infidelity, Ellen Kinder was an old hand at the game, having had numerous affairs with men in New Zealand. The most recent affair had been with a man named Frank Jackson, whom Ellen had been seeing up to the time she and her husband had left New Zealand for Sydney.

So when Frank Jackson moved to Sydney a few months later and took up with Ellen Kinder exactly where he had left off, and she made no bones about it to her new lover, Henry Bertrand, there seemed little else to do but make her choose between the two. Would it be Bertrand or Jackson, never mind the poor husband, who would be the only one savouring her wares? Ellen chose Bertrand, and Jackson was shown the door.

But, along the line somewhere, Bertrand had become friendly with Jackson and offered him lodging at his house in the hope that he (Jackson) would take up with his (Bertrand’s) wife, so that he would be free to be with the woman he loved. Jackson wasn’t interested. That aside, this left one minor problem, of course: what to do with Ellen Kinder’s long-suffering husband.

But the dentist had that all worked out. He would murder Henry Kinder. He told Jackson of his scheme and Jackson, in fear of his own life, fled to Maitland. What Bertrand hadn’t told Jackson was that he had found love letters between Jackson and Ellen Kinder, and he planned on murdering Henry Kinder and implicating Jackson with the letters. Then he would have everyone out of the way and be free to carry on with his mistress.

But while Henry Bertrand may have been good at pulling bicuspids, as a murderer he was a dismal failure. His first two attempts at murdering his mistress’ husband were a disaster. On the first occasion he took Alfred Burne, his 20-year-old dental assistant, into his confidence and got him to row him across Sydney Harbour to where Ellen and Henry Kinder lived.

While the young man waited by the boat, Bertrand concealed a tomahawk beneath his coat and snuck up to the house, but was foiled when he saw Ellen (who knew nothing of the murder attempt) talking with her husband, who was in a drunken stupor. A week later Burne again rowed his boss at midnight and went with him up to the house to find the Kinder asleep. Bertrand didn’t have the heart to axe Henry Kinder to death as he slept with his wife and, as it turned out, nor did his assistant, despite urging from his boss. They left with their mission unaccomplished.

Still intent on murder, Henry Bertrand decided on another method. He bought a pistol and practised with it by shooting at a pig’s head as a target. On 2 October 1865 his opportunity came when the Bertrand family joined the Kinder family at the Milson’s Point Hotel before adjourning to the Kinder home, where the children played outside, the women prepared lunch in the kitchen and the men played cards in the loungeroom.

A gunshot rang out and Henry Kinder slumped to the table, his head bleeding profusely. When the police and a doctor arrived to find Kinder barely alive, Henry Bertrand said that they were playing cards when Kinder, who was very drunk, suddenly produced the gun that now lay on the floor and shot himself in the head. Despite the huge wound and loss of blood Kinder survived, but when he recovered he was unable to recall the incident at all. Undaunted, Bertrand laced Henry Kinder’s milk with poison and this time he died, and the cause of his death was accredited to the gunshot suicide.

With the widow Kinder seemingly up for grabs, Frank Jackson returned from Maitland and told Bertrand that he would go to the police and tell them that Bertrand had confided in him that he intended to commit murder, unless Bertrand paid him £20. Instead, Bertrand went to the police and Jackson was sent to prison for attempted blackmail.

But, with everything he wanted now his, Bertrand displayed enormous guilt and confessed his crime to his sister and numerous other family friends. He came under police notice when he threatened a relative with a knife and was sentenced to 14 days in prison. With Bertrand in jail, Bertrand’s sister went to police and told them of his brutal behaviour to his wife and his confession to the murder of Henry Kinder. Bertrand, his wife Jane and Ellen Kinder were all questioned over the murder of Henry Kinder. The women were released on the proviso that they testify at his trial and Bertrand was charged with murder.

Henry Bertrand pleaded not guilty to murder and, in what was deemed as the trial of the century, Sydneysiders were shocked as every scurrilous, sordid detail of the affair was laid bare, with both women testifying against the man who was once their lover. Incredibly, the jury was undecided and Bertrand was ordered to stand trial again, where he was found guilty of the murder of Henry Kinder and sentenced to death.

Over the next couple of years Bertrand’s legal council lodged appeal after appeal and eventually succeeded in having his death sentence reduced to life imprisonment. After serving almost 30 years in prison, Henry Louis Bertrand was released and returned to England where he disappeared and was never heard of again.