Force and Fraud (3 page)

These works had no apparent influence on
Force and Fraud
. It was a genuine original, well ahead of its time and literary context. Nor was it apparently her first publication, as she was cited as the author of
Edith Travers
(as yet untraced).

The novel was the lead serial in the first issue of the
Australian Journal: a Weekly Record of Literature, Science and the Arts
(2 Sept. 1865). The magazine was closely modelled on the
London Journal
, also a fiction magazine, but with a difference – its major subject matter was crime. As such, it reflected not only a national preoccupation, but also the experience of the first editor, George Arthur Walstab, a former policeman.

That
Force and Fraud
opened this new venture indicates that Ellen Davitt was a staff and star writer. Consequently the
AJ
worked her into the ground. The novel was followed by two more, and a novella, all published in the first year of the journal. This formidable output meant quantity over quality. Only the debut is republishable, as a work which she had the time to craft, and even probably revise. One serial,
Black Sheep
, was so hastily written that the main character had two different names. Continuity errors can occur in serials, where early drafts get published without the chance of revision. Indeed,
Force and Fraud
's lawyer Argueville first appeared as Arqueille.
³²

Force and Fraud
's narrative begins with a murder, and ends with the solution – plus a romance added to the plot. Modern readers will note that it lacks a hero-investigator, but at the time that narrative mode had not gained genre dominance. An alternative model equally existed, splitting the role of detective among various characters. It can be seen in works such as Wilkie Collins' 1860
The Woman in White
; and even as late as Fergus Hume's 1886
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
, the best-selling detective novel of the 1800s.

In
Force and Fraud
, the investigators include a lawyer, the feisty heroine Flora, and a Scottish shepherd. But there is equally a cast of those seeking to obstruct justice and impede the investigation, as with Frances Trollope's
Hargrave
.

Ellen Davitt used her knowledge of art in the depiction of hero Herbert Lindsey. Much of her Australian experience is reflected in
Force and Fraud
. She had closely observed country townships, and bush homesteads. Her depictions are vividly realistic, adding to the novel's credibility. One scene, a charity bazaar held at the Melbourne Exhibition Building, was drawn from life. In 1856 such a bazaar was held, and Ellen Davitt presided over the stall of the Commissioners of National Education.
³³
Not many writers would have used such a domestic, indeed female scene in a crime novel, nor used it to introduce a vital if rather unprepossessing clue. Moreover, the dramatic near-shipwreck on Kerguelen's land had actually happened to the Davitts.

Anthony Trollope was not a fan of literary puzzles, unlike his mother. “I abhor a mystery,” he wrote, adding that he had “no ambition to surprise” the reader. He refused to construct his plots in great detail before actually writing his novels. In this attitude, he differed from his sister-in-law.

Force and Fraud
, a novel whose title is explained in the final sentence, was clearly plotted intricately beforehand. Ellen Davitt understood the importance of clues, of mining the text with details, initially insignificant, that later become vital. She was also adept at red herrings.
³⁴

Her other efforts for the
AJ
tend towards melodrama, although her last serial
The Wreck of the Atalanta
(1867) had mystery elements. The
AJ
described it as “certainly the happiest effort of MRS. DAVITT'S pen, and we promise our readers a rich treat in its perusal”.

To a modern reader, though, the serial is interesting largely for its sympathetic portrayal of a battered wife. It is otherwise flawed, its mystery plot lacking the finesse of
Force and Fraud
.
³⁵

Subsequently, Ellen's name began to disappear from the magazine. She had always proudly signed her works ‘Mrs. Arthur Davitt', ignoring the Victorian convention that women should publish anonymously. Her contemporary on the
AJ,
the remarkable police procedural writer Mary Fortune, always used a pseudonym. Ellen's stories now gained the byline “by the author of Edith Travers, etc.”

Such happened with ‘The Highlander's Revenge' (
AJ
, 31 August 1867). This story is included in this edition as a crime, rather than mystery story. It was the best of her short stories and a significant early fictionalisation of European atrocities against Aborigines. Possibly the editor thought the bloodthirsty matter was unsuitable to appear under a woman's name.

Almost certainly Ellen had met an eyewitness to the 1840s massacres in the Gippsland region; identifiable here from the details, such as the cannon loaded with glass, and the role of Scots settlers, who having been dispersed from their homes via clearances, were singularly keen in inflicting the same upon Aboriginals.

‘The Highlander's Revenge' comprises two stories, a memoir of genocide, and the reaction to it from an audience; yarners around the fire in a bush hotel.

The convention of oral narratives, as with the
Canterbury Tales
, was used in contemporary Australian writing. One instance was the pseudonymous ‘William Burrows' whose 1859 memoir,
Adventures of a Mounted Trooper in the Australian Constabulary
was published in London by Routledge, Warne, and Routledge. Another appeared in the Christmas 1865 issues of the
AJ
, at a time when Ellen was a major writer for the magazine. It seems likely the ‘The Highlander's Revenge' was written for the series, and possibly rejected as too strong meat.

It is interesting that part of the story was reprinted in the
Gippsland Times
(10 Oct. 1867, 4); the incident described being apparently recognisable. Missing are the worst of the atrocities, and the frame story, which shows the audience reaction. The listeners range from supportive to being utterly appalled; bloodthirsty to anguished white liberal, in our terms.

What was Ellen's position on the issue? In this subtly-nuanced story, watch how the murder of the speaker's uncle is paralleled with the treatment of an old black man; a point at which the speaker seems to lose all vestige of his civilisation. She first engages reader sympathy and then lets the narrator's own words damn him utterly, a powerful act of alienation. A very sophisticated writer can be seen at work here.

This skilled story apparently drew little attention; the Gippsland reprint apart. After 1868 it is impossible to trace Ellen's publications, although in September 1869 her name appeared in a list of contributors to the
AJ
. She may have continued writing anonymously, or working as an editor, for on an 1874 application form she coyly stated her profession as “Connected with literature”. Most likely she was writing the women's content of the
AJ
.
³⁶

In 1874 Ellen applied to rejoin the State Education system, which sent her to Kangaroo Flat, near Bendigo. At this point her story repeats itself, becoming again a tale of bureaucracy, intransigence, and jerrybuilt school buildings.

This school consisted of an eccentric but sound brick building, for the use of the male teachers and students; and for the females a weatherboard ‘lean-to' which Ellen described as: “wet, ill-ventilated and dilapidated”. Conditions were so bad, she claimed, that “pools of water stood on the floor, and the chalk was literally washed off the black-boards”.
³⁷

The leaky classroom was not the only cause of stress, another being the Head Teacher, John Burston. Prior to Ellen's appointment as first assistant he had expressed a bias against female teachers, and suggested that the job go to his brother Harry, who also taught at the school. The arrival of a middle-aged woman with a strong personality would not have impressed him.
³⁸

The situation was physically and mentally unpleasant for Ellen. She had not been given a teaching certificate, despite her previous experience, and was being paid at the lowest rate of salary for her position. Burston was trying to get rid of her, and it seemed she would soon be dismissed, as both he and the School Inspector found her teaching unsatisfactory. However, events took a dramatic turn.
³⁹

A dispute with some parents led to an inquiry into Burston's conduct; which all teachers were obliged to attend. On 15 April 1875, on a workday which the inquiry had lengthened until 8.30 pm, with, as Ellen claims, most of the teachers “fasting from the morning”, Burston lost his temper. In response to being called a liar, he struck Robert Farman, the Chairman of the Inquiry, in the face and the pair grappled on the ground before being separated. From a Victorian viewpoint such behaviour would have been particularly offensive because of the presence of women. One teacher, Charlotte Toogood, had hysterics.
⁴⁰

Burston was immediately suspended; and Ellen Davitt, as first assistant, was placed in charge of the school. She was soon removed, however, due to the regulation that women were not to control schools of over 70 pupils. Harry Burston, who had also behaved violently during the Inquiry, was put in her place. Subsequently, to quote Ellen, there “was a vulgar affair at the Courthouse” in Bendigo, with Farman suing for assault. Burston was fined 20 shillings, and ordered to pay costs. Subsequently he was transferred to Taradale State School, as its Head Teacher.
⁴¹

Ellen had what she described as a “somewhat sensitive constitution” and had found duties at Kangaroo Flat “fatiguing”, taking frequent sick leave. Now “her health gave way”, to use Allan's words, although he did not explain the circumstances leading up to her illness. Within several months she was unfit to work again and applied for compensation.
⁴²

Her situation was desperate, for the old age pension did not yet exist and she was facing destitution. “I am a widow and stand alone”, she wrote. Certainly she had a case and she argued it well: “there is not a scullery maid in the Colony who would have stood to do her work in such a wretched place”. Compensation was refused, though, on the grounds that she had received in 1859 the sum of £500.
⁴³

Very likely Ellen told Anthony Trollope about these events. He visited Australia that year, where his son Fred was squatting in New South Wales. Ellen noted that “Mr. Trollope called on me”, at the school, during working hours, in early May 1875. Anthony's account of his trip, published as
The Tireless Traveller,
describes a visit to the quartz mines of Bendigo. It does not mention Ellen, nor does she appear in his fragmentary diary of his earlier Australian visit, in 1871; nor indeed in any of his other writing. Their relationship may not have been close, as he visited her for an hour only. Incidentally, Trollope's best Australian friend, George Rusden, had been a member of the National Board of Education during the Davitts' time at the Model School.
⁴⁴

Ellen kept determinedly applying for compensation, and although “not equal to the fatigue of calling” on the claims investigators, as she stated in a letter of 15 Nov. 1877, supported herself by privately teaching ‘Drawing and languages'. On the 29th of that month, the Minister for Education declined to re-open her case. Thirteen months later she died of cancer and exhaustion, on 6 January 1879, at 62 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy.
⁴⁵

There was probably just enough money to transport her body to Geelong, where she was buried beside her husband, but not enough to inscribe her name on the vacant side of the joint memorial.

This omission was rectified by the Melbourne members of Sisters in Crime Australia, with the permission of the Geelong Cemetery Trustees and the Trollope family.

Ellen Davitt's true memorial, though, is
Force and Fraud
– a unique and accomplished early Australian murder mystery. The Davitt Awards for Australian women's crime writing, presented annually by Sisters in Crime Australian, is rightly named after her, for she was a significant pioneer of the genre.

 

A Tale of the Bush

 

by

 

Ellen Davitt

 

“Take care, master, or you'll fall into the creek; those old boughs are not always to be trusted,” said a labourer to a young man who, to aid himself in climbing a steep bank, caught at the branches of a tree; and the speaker to illustrate his remark, uprooted another at a little distance.

“Thank you, my friend, for your advice; but I shall go no farther at present,” replied the traveller, seating himself among the brushwood.