The Wicked Boy (44 page)

Read The Wicked Boy Online

Authors: Kate Summerscale

Psychiatrists have suggested. . .
See Wertham,
Dark Legend
, Green, ‘Matricide by Sons', Scherl and Mack, ‘A Study of Adolescent Matricide'.

in myth and literature. . .
See Gilbert Murray,
Hamlet and Orestes
(1914); M. Kanzer, ‘Dostoevsky's Matricidal Impulses',
Psychoanalytic Review,
35 (1948); Green, ‘Matricide by Sons'; Wertham,
Dark Legend
and ‘The Matricidal Impulse: Critique of Freud's Interpretation of
Hamlet
',
Journal of Criminal Psychopathology,
2 (1941); Aeschylus,
Oresteia
(circa 458 BC); Robert Bloch,
Psycho
(1959); Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Crime and Punishment
(1861); William Shakespeare,
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(circa 1600).

a psychiatrist. . .
Carine Minne, consultant psychiatrist in forensic psychotherapy at Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire, and the Portman Clinic, London.

a photograph of his gravestone. . .
On austcemindex.com.

Henry Alexander Mulville. . .
Account of his life from a handwritten memoir by Harry Mulville and from conversations and emails with his youngest daughter and her husband.

a hand-cranked punt. . .
Charles Mulville paid £135 a year for the right to run the Tyndale ferry – see Lismore
Northern Star,
18 January 1918. Harry said that he took £15 a month in fares.

Sydney Mail. . .
29 June 1927.

Smith
'
s marriage was dissolved. . .
The dissolution of his marriage to Pearl May Smith (née Garland) was announced in the
Sydney Morning Herald
, 15 January 1930. Entry on Harold William Smith, Pearl May Smith and Victor Rose (co-respondent) in the Matrimonial Causes files at the New South Wales State Library in Sydney (8/3110, 482.1928 and 8/3110, 1543.1928). ‘I would not go back to Smith again,' Pearl told the official who served divorce papers on her. For his marriage to Bertha, see Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 10 May 1930.

a well-known and well-to-do family. . .
See obituaries of his father and mother, William and Elizabeth Smith of Wollongbar House, in Lismore
Northern Star
, 25 April 1923 and 13 May 1925.

declared bankrupt in 1898. . .
See
Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser
, 19 February 1898.

he had served for only five months. . .
He was a part-time trooper with the New South Wales Lancers from 1900, and volunteered for the AIF in November 1915. See NAA: B2455, Smith W. See also Jean Bou,
Light Horse: a History of Australia
'
s Mounted Arm
(2009).

convicted of assaulting a man. . .
See Lismore
Northern Star,
11 March 1899.

Robert had settled in Nana Glen. . .
He appears in New South Wales electoral registers as a farmer in Glenreagh and Nana Glen from 1920 to 1949. For the experience of soldiers in the aftermath of the Great War, see Stephen Garton,
The Cost of War: Australians Return
(1996).

the dense web of the bush. . .
For history of the flora and fauna of the Orara Valley see
Orara River
Rehabilitation Project, Landholders Booklet
, published by Coffs Harbour City Council in 2012.

The region around the Orara. . .
For history of the area, see Mary and Clarrie Brewer,
Looking Back:
Nana Glen, 1879–1979
(1979), Annette Green and Margaret Franklin,
A History of Nana Glen
Primary School, 1892–1992
(1992), Elizabeth Webb,
Glenreagh: a Town of Promise
(1998), John Vader,
Red Gold: the Tree that Built a Nation
(2002), Nan Cowling (ed.),
Coffs Harbour Time
Capsule Book: 1847–2011
(2011).

The cans were collected. . .
Account of the Orara to Grafton cream truck run in
Sydney Morning
Herald
, 29 March 1932. For dairy industry, see Terry Kass,
Regional History of the North Coast
(1989).

Nana Glen public school. . .
Harry enrolled at the school in September 1928, according to the Nana Glen Public School Register 1928–1981 at the Coff's Harbour District Family History Society.

Cundy was injured. . .
Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 30 July 1930.

Harry was seriously injured. . .
See Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 21 June 1930, and
Sydney Morning
Herald
, 23 June 1930. None of the family is identified in these reports.

Harold Smith moved with his family to Grafton. . .
Smith was found guilty of assaulting Isaac Cundy, and fined a further £7 plus £10 9/- in medical and witness expenses. See Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 30 July 1930.

he had to re-enrol. . .
See Nana Glen Public School Register 1928–1981, Coff's Harbour District Family History Society.

the band kept going. . .
In 1925, for instance, the 45th Battalion band performed in a competition in Taree, 150 miles south of Nana Glen, in a military tattoo to welcome the American fleet to Sydney, and in the Sydney Armistice Day parade (
Cessnock Eagle and South Maitland Recorder
, 5 May 1925,
Sydney Morning Herald
, 31 July and 10 November 1925). From 1928, the band also played at battalion reunions. The popularity of brass bands in Australia faded after the advent of radio in the 1920s. See Duncan Bythell, ‘The Brass Band in the Antipodes: the Transplantation of British Popular Culture', in Herbert,
The British Brass Band
.

competed in chess tournaments. . .
See
Australasian
, 26 November 1927 and 14 January 1928.

after a year of drought. . .
See
Barrier Miner
, Brisbane
Courier-Mail
, Grafton
Daily Examiner
and Lismore
Northern Star
, 29 October 1936, and Brewer,
Looking Back
. In 1945 Robert wrote to the AIF to request replacements for the discharge papers that had been destroyed in the blaze (see NAA: B2455, Coombes RA). He said that since he did not have his birth certificate he needed the papers for ‘some legal formalities' – he may have been applying for a pension: if he had been born in 1886, as he had claimed when he joined the Army in 1940, he would have been about to turn sixty.

the 15th Light Horse Regiment. . .
The Light Horse had just doubled its troopers' pay to eight shillings a day. See Bou,
Light Horse
.

The couple won. . .
See Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 14 October 1938 and 6 June 1939.

Robert volunteered for the 8th Garrison Battalion. . .
See NAA: B884, N105727. Call for recruits and terms of service in
Newcastle Morning Herald
, 21 November 1940.

led the Armistice Day parade. . .
See
Newcastle Morning Herald
, 10 November 1941.

Harry was training. . .
See his service records, NAA: B883, NX46646.

in 1946 he was guest of honour. . .
Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 7 March and 13 June 1946.

died on 7 May. . .
See death certificate, repatriation case file NAA: C138, R30557 and obituary in Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 13 May 1949.

The assets he had bequeathed to Harry. . .
See deceased estate files at State Records Authority of New South Wales: NRS 13340/B29325/20/4740.

he appealed to the War Graves Commission. . .
See NAA: C138, R30557.

Harold Smith, who had died in 1944. . .
See obituary in Grafton
Daily Examiner
, 21 December 1944.

 

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For details of newspapers and periodicals, unpublished papers, parliamentary papers, websites and ‘penny dreadfuls', see Notes.

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