The
Gun Alley Tragedy
Record of the Trial
:: of ::
COLIN CAMPBELL ROSS
Including
A Critical Examination of the Crown Case
with
A Summary of the New Evidence
by
T. C. BRENNAN, Barrister-at-Law
1922
FRASER & JENKINSON, Printers, 343-5 Queen St., Melbourne
GORDON & GOTCH (Australia) Ltd., Publishers
PREFACE.
No trial in Australian history has created such a public sensation asdid the trial in Melbourne of Colin Campbell Ross for the murder ofthe little girl, Alma Tirtschke, on the afternoon of December 30th,1921. It was presided over by Mr. Justice Schutt and lasted for morethan five days. Mr. H. C. G. Macindoe conducted the case for the Crownand Mr. G. A. Maxwell appeared, with Mr. T. C. Brennan as junior, forthe defence. For many reasons, it is desirable that the proceedings atthe trial should be placed on record. It is not merely that the storyitself—a veritable page out of real life—makes tragically interestingreading. The nature of the evidence was so unusual, and the characterof the chief Crown witnesses was so remarkable, that it is entirely inthe interests of justice that the whole proceedings should be reviewedin the calm light of day.
While the trial was on, and for weeks before it was on, anything inthe nature of a dispassionate review was impossible. Public opinionwas inflamed as it has not been inflamed within the memory of thisgeneration. Ross was tried for his life in an atmosphere charged andovercharged with suspicion. Whether guilty or innocent, he enteredthe dock in circumstances under which few men are compelled to enterit. As everyone in Australia knows, he was condemned almost entirelyon the strength of two confessions he was alleged to have made. Itwould probably be admitted that, in the absence of those allegedconfessions—which he strenuously denied ever having made—no jurycould have convicted him. It is doubtful, indeed, if without them therewas a case for the jury. But did he actually say what either the womanIvy Matthews or the man Harding declared he said? The verdict of thejury does not supply an answer. The question remains unanswered, andthe doubt in regard to it constitutes the enduring mystery of the Rosstrial.
All students of criminology—and all friends of truth—are under adebt of gratitude to Mr. Brennan for the cool, precise and perfectlydispassionate manner in which he has, inter alia, analysed thestatements of these two people, Harding and Matthews. He has placed thesalient features side by side. There seems no escape from theirresistible logic of his conclusion—that Matthews and Harding,knowing certain facts about Ross from an outside source, were compelledto fill in the gaps in their own way. They could not have been drawingfrom the one alleged source when they differed so absolutely as to theessential circumstances of the crime.
As Mr. Brennan points out, he is not undertaking to prove that Ross wasinnocent of the Gun Alley murder. Anyone who reads his closely reasonedpages can have little doubt that such is his opinion. But his task issimpler. It is to show that Ross should not have been convicted onthe evidence, that the evidence for the Crown was, to a large extent,contradictory—far more so than in the heat and passion of the trialwas allowed to appear. He is able to go even