The Wicked Boy (42 page)

the laying of a new pitch. . .
See Partridge,
Broadmoor
.

Sandhurst Royal Military College and the Windsor police. . .
See cricket score book 1907–08, BRO: D/H14/G1/1/2.

listed in the local paper. . .
Reading Mercury
, 6 July 1907.

George Melton. . .
See
London Standard
, 13 March 1896, and BRO: D/H14/D2/2/1/1695.

Henry Spurrier. . .
See
Hampshire Advertiser
, 18 February 1899. According to the admissions register (BRO: D/H14/D1/1), he was discharged to the care of the Salvation Army in 1923.

Kenneth Murchison. . .
One of the best gunners in South Africa, Murchison had played a decisive part in the battle of Cannon Kopje at the beginning of the siege of Mafeking. When the Boers prepared to attack Mafeking on 31 October 1899, Colonel Baden-Powell sent about fifty men to fight them off from a small hill outside the walls. Murchison was put in charge of a seven-pounder cannon, which he used to tremendous effect, and by the end of the day the small band of British soldiers had defeated a force of about a thousand Boers. The next evening, Murchison dined at Dixon's Hotel in Mafeking with a British war reporter. The pair drank heavily and in the course of the meal Murchison's companion began to taunt him, accusing him of knowing nothing about guns; as they left the hotel, the journalist followed the lieutenant out into the town square, still goading him. Murchison suddenly pulled out his pistol and shot the man dead. Afterwards Murchison was bewildered and distraught, claiming to have no memory of the shooting. Pending his court-martial, he was confined in a gaol in Mafeking, from which he was temporarily released – with a rifle – when the Boers launched a heavy attack on the town in May 1900. He helped to drive back the enemy by nightfall and then returned to his cell. In June 1900, after the relief of Mafeking, Murchison was court-martialled by Baden-Powell, found guilty and
sentenced to death. Thanks to a petition by his friends, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he was sent to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight. In 1902, the South African war ended with a British victory over the Boers. After further pleas for clemency, Murchison was deemed to have been insane at the time of his crime, and was transferred to Broadmoor. See
Oxford Journal
, 11 August 1900,
Lloyd's Weekly
, 3 June 1900,
Warwick Argus
, 22 September 1900, and TNA: HO144/946/A61992. He died in Broadmoor in 1917.

Thomas Shultz. . .
See trial in OBSP. Shultz was discharged to the care of his father in 1910.

Frank Rodgers. . .
Account of his crime from the
Cambridge Daily New
s, 3 and 4 June 1904, and the
Herts and Cambs Reporter and Royston Crow
, 14, 15, 16, 21 and 29 April 1904, reproduced on meldrethhistory.org.uk. Details of his crime and his time in Broadmoor from TNA: HO144/995/119149.

Thomas Anstey Guthrie
'
s
‘
Vice Versa
'
. . .
The boy in this novel is discussed in Nelson,
Precocious
Children and Childish Adults
.

Granville Stanley Hall
'
s
‘
Adolescence
'
. . .
Quotes from Ferrall and Jackson,
Juvenile Literature and British Society 1850–1950
. Hall claims that psychoses and neuroses are especially common in early adolescence. He reminds his readers of ‘the omnipresent dangers of precocity' in ‘our urbanised hothouse life, that tends to ripen everything before its time', and recommends that a child be encouraged to visit nature, the ‘wild, undomesticated stage from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported him'. Quoted in Shuttleworth,
The Mind of the Child
.

He was one of 175 patients. . .
See Partridge,
Broadmoor
.

Patrick Knowles. . .
See TNA: T1/11342 and TNA: HO144/11429.

In his fifteen years in charge. . .
See Partridge,
Broadmoor
.

In the most recent of these. . .
See Gwen Adshead, 'A transient frenzy?',
British Medical Journal
, 1 August 1998.

The band played. . .
Reading Mercury
, 3 February 1912.

Dr Brayn had taken the view. . .
In a report in Robert's case file (BRO: D/H14/D2/2/1/1671) dated 20 July 1905, Brayn assessed his mental condition as ‘rational and tranquil', but replied ‘yes' when asked whether his insanity might recur if he were discharged. A Home Office note in the file suggests that the same assessment was made each May between 1906 and 1911.

As Brayn told a visiting journalist. . .
See Griffith,
Sidelights on Convict Life
.

Baker wrote to the home secretary. . .
Letter in Robert's case file, BRO: D/H14/D2/2/1/1671.

‘
He is not likely to trouble the Broadmoor authorities. . .
' From ‘Mustard & Cress', a column written by George Sims under the alias Dagonet,
Sunday Referee,
22 September 1895.

he handed back his uniform. . .
For the discharge process, see ‘Warmark',
Guilty but Insane
.

in the custody of Charles Pike. . .
According to a note in Robert's case file, BRO: D/H14/D2/2/1/1671.

PART V: WITH TRUMPETS AND SOUND OF CORNET

CHAPTER 16: SMOOTH IN THE MORNING LIGHT

An Essex woman. . .
See
Chelmsford Chronicle
, 15 March 1912.

Colony at Hadleigh. . .
For a history of the colony, see H. Rider Haggard,
The Poor and the Land: Report on the Salvation Army Colonies in the United States and at Hadleigh, England, with Scheme of National Land Resettlement
(1905) and
Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of the Salvation Army in Great Britain
(1910); Mark Sorrell, ‘The Farm Colony at Hadleigh, Essex' in
Essex Journal
, spring and winter 1992; Anon,
Hadleigh: The Story of a Great Endeavour
(Salvation Army Press, 1902); Walter Besant, ‘The Farm and the City',
Living Age
, 29 January 1898; Anon, ‘Up from Despair: the Salvation Army Industrial Colony at Hadleigh' in
Boston Evening Transcript,
4 May 1901; Gordon Parkhill and Graham Cook,
Hadleigh Salvation Army Farm: A Vision Reborn
(2008).

The Salvation Army. . .
See Pamela J. Walker,
Pulling the Devil
'
s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army
in Victorian Britain
(2002) and Boone,
Youth of Darkest England
.

8,000 of the 11,000 Mancunians who volunteered for service. . .
See Urwick (ed.),
Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities
, which also reported that 30 per cent of young men examined for the Army nationwide were rejected as unfit, and a further 40 per cent were thrown out in their first two years of service. The decline in men's health was attributed by the author to the massive shift of population over the previous fifty years from the country to the town.

‘
We came down in a farm wagon. . .
' Quoted in an illustrated guide to the Hadleigh farm colony published by the Salvation Army in 1926.

despatched to Canada. . .
Essex Newsman
, 29 March 1912.

he wrote to the chief steward. . .
Robert's requests and acknowledgements, addressed to Alexander Sayer at Broadmoor from Castle House in Hadleigh, are in his case file, BRO: D/H14/D2/2/1/1671.

He could see. . .
Description of the view adapted from the Salvation Army publication
Hadleigh: the
Story of a Great Endeavour
.

Robert
'
s father had moved out. . .
When he left London as chief steward on the
France
on 10 October 1895, he gave his address as 509 Barking Road, Plaistow – see NMM: RSS/CL/1895/60015
SS
France.

found time to visit his son. . .
A note in Robert's case file, BRO: D2/2/1/1671, shows that his father visited on 26 November 1895 – no further visits were recorded from him or anyone else, but the case files rarely include such records and no visitors' log from the period survives.

Charlie Sharman was declared bankrupt. . .
For his bankruptcy and theft from clients, see
Essex Newsman,
12 September 1896, and
Chelmsford Chronicle
, 20 November 1896. For his alleged assault, see
Chelmsford Chronicle
, 19 February 1897. For his career in organised crime, see James Morton,
East End Gangland
(2009). He was convicted of theft at the Old Bailey in 1925, at the age of seventy-five, and sentenced to three years' penal servitude. He died in 1933, five years after his release from Dartmoor prison.

Nattie remained the smaller. . .
See his Royal Navy record, TNA: ADM 188/500/306663.

‘
the lowest class of sailorman
'
. . .
Robert Machray,
The Night Side of London
(1902).

Nattie had been scarred. . .
See his Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy records, TNA: ADM 188/500/306663 and NAA: A6770, Coombes NG.

The stokers
‘
come and go. . .
' In Chadwick et al.,
Ocean Steamships
.

He had been lent. . .
See Nattie's RAN record of service, NAA: A6770, Coombes NG.

HMAS
‘
Australia
'
. . .
See Vince Fazio,
The Battlecruiser HMAS Australia, First Flagship of the Royal Australian Navy: A Story of Her Life and Times
(2000) and
www.navy.gov.au/hmas-australia-i
.

‘
I have been down many coal mines. . .
' See
Maitland Daily Mercury
, 27 September 1913 .

hailed by the defence minister. . .
See
www.navy.gov.au/hmas-australia-i
.

to execute his father
'
s will. . .
When probate was granted on 11 October 1913, Robert gave his occupation as ‘tailor' and his address as ‘West View, Hadleigh' – West View was a two-storey dormitory with its own library, which had been built in 1912.

He sailed on 2 January 1914. . .
See passenger list for SS
Otranto
in TNA: Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890–1960 (BT 27).

She sailed out to the Atlantic. . .
See
Sydney Evening News
and
Perth Daily News
, 3 February 1914.

Nattie had lodgings. . .
For Nattie's address in Australia, see RAN record of service, NAA: A6770, Coombes NG. He gave his next of kin as his cousin Robert Macy, the son of his aunt Mary, who had moved to Newcastle, NSW, a few years earlier.

He found work. . .
See 13th Battalion embarkation roll, AWM: 8/23/30/1.

CHAPTER 17: SUCH A HELL OF A NOISE

When war broke out. . .
See Peter Pedersen,
The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front
(2007).

About a quarter. . .
See Peter Hart,
Gallipoli
(2011).

Robert trained in a series of camps. . .
Account of training camps from Thomas A. White,
The Fighting Thirteenth: The History of the 13th Battalion AIF
(1924); Arthur Graham Butler,
Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Volume I – Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea
(2nd edition, 1938); Winsome McDowell Paul,
Blessed with a Cheerful Nature: a Reading of the Letters of Lieutenant George Stanley McDowell MC, 13th Battalion AIF 1914–1917
(2005); and diary of Charles Francis Laseron, ML: MSS 1133, at Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

Robert was assigned to the 13th Battalion. . .
For his service with the 13th Battalion, from September 1914 to December 1915, see 13th Battalion embarkation roll (AWM: 8/23/30/1) at Australian War Memorial in Canberra (
awm.gov.au
) and his AIF record (NAA: B2455, Coombes RA) at National Archives of Australia in Canberra (
naa.gov.au
).

Robert was one of about twenty-eight men selected. . .
A picture of the band was published in
Sunday Times
, Sydney, 29 November 1914.

the band marched through Melbourne. . .
See diary of Byron Hobson, AWM: 2DRL/0694.

During the six-week voyage. . .
Account of life on board from diaries of the 13th Battalion soldiers William Frederick Shirtley (AWM: 2DRL/0792), Byron Hobson (AWM: 2DRL/0694), Charles Francis Laseron (ML: MSS 1133) and Eric Susman (ML: CY4933 1–98). See also
Barrier Miner,
5 February 1915, and Bea Brewster and Marie Kau (eds),
Diary of Bandsman H. E. Krutli, D Company, 14th Battalion, 4th Infantry Brigade Australian Imperial Forces (AIF): September 1914 to April 1916
(2009). Krutli played with the 14th Battalion band, which travelled on the same transport as the 13th.