Force and Fraud Read Online Free Page B

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.

FORCE AND FRAUD
    Â 
    A Tale of the