The Baby Farmers by Annie Cossins

Author:Annie Cossins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS004000, book
ISBN: 9781743434512
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2013-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The obsessions of James Joyce: digging, redigging and more digging

9–14 November 1892

On Tuesday 9 November 1892 there ‘were some fresh and sensational developments’ in relation to the ‘mysterious MacDonaldtown discoveries’ when Senior Constable Joyce ordered his constables to take their picks and shovels to Redfern. He had continued his obsessive investigations during the Burren Street inquests, ‘not sparing either time or labour’ to gather more evidence to prosecute the Makins. As he began to realise that the Makins had been baby farming for much longer than he originally thought, he tracked down all the previous addresses of the Makins for the past two years. Because this particular Tuesday in November was a public holiday, it was ‘considered a good day to re-commence digging operations’ since the police hoped there would be enough locals ‘holiday-making’ so they could dig in peace. Joyce selected the two addresses that had been most recently occupied by the Makins.1

The house at 55 Botany Street was the first in a terrace of eight houses known as Smith’s Terrace about two minutes’ walk from Redfern police station. The Makins had relocated there on 16 August after their hurried departure from Burren Street. Oddly enough, they left about ten days later after the landlord gave the Makins notice to quit.

When Constables Brown and Griffin arrived at 55 Botany Street, they found the backyard had been recently bricked over and decided if there had been any buried babies, their remains would have been discovered by the workmen. Upon hearing this news, Joyce sent his men to the house the Makins had lived in just before moving to Burren Street. Number 109 George Street, Redfern was a roomy, ‘pleasant-looking cottage of a kind suited for a workman in receipt of good wages’. Located next to the post office which backed onto Redfern Court, it was just one door up from the Redfern police station. At the time, the cottage was owned by Mr Jacob Fischer, although it no longer exists today.

Joyce and the Redfern police had previously inspected the backyard, with the permission of the new tenant, Mr Ralph, who, coincidentally, was the assistant stationmaster at Macdonaldtown. Mrs Ralph told the police that when she and her family moved in she had ‘noticed almost immediately . . . a most offensive odour proceeding from the back yard’ which she put down to bad drainage.

The backyard was divided ‘into two unequal parts by a substantial iron-railed fence’. As soon as Joyce entered the backyard he pointed to the section closest to the house, which had once been a garden enclosed by the wall of the kitchen, the fence of the next door neighbour and the iron-railed fence, and declared: ‘If we find anything it will be there’. He reckoned that if there were any bodies they would be found here because it was the most concealed spot from the neighbours and the earth was soft enough for digging.

Not long after the digging started on this wet November day, the first

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