Murder, Misadventure and Miserable Ends by Catie Gilchrist

Author:Catie Gilchrist [Gilchrist, Catie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

OUR PLAYGROUND WAS THE STREET

‘To say that the Glebe and Sydney Municipal Councils have neglected the health of the neighbourhood, would be mincing the matter; they are truly guilty of gross negligence, conducive to the sacrifice of many lives annually.’83

Three-year-old Mary Moss was out playing on Ultimo Street on Tuesday, 23 July 1878 when a terrible tragedy occurred. She was like so many of the city’s youngsters, who regularly frolicked outdoors, in backyards, down the lanes and alleyways, upon the wastelands. Sometimes mothers just needed to shoo their children out and away from under their feet for an hour or two of peace and quiet so that the never-ending daily chores could be done without bother.

Little Mary Moss vanished like a puff of smoke – there one minute, gone the next. Her mother last saw her playing with some of the other children near the newly laid sewer drains along the creek between the Parramatta Road and Blackwattle Swamp. It was a busy and crowded residential area, and with the brewery and the old sugar works site, drains had been wanting. The locals all reckoned they were going to be a good thing, but the council had also left them open. The drain holes were eighteen inches across and level with the street. They overflowed after heavy rains and stank to high heaven on hot and blustery days.

Mary’s neighbours and the police searched for her all day and into the next too. Her father, Patrick, began searching for her from the moment she went missing around midday until she was found about eight o’clock the following evening. He even placed an ad in the Herald in the Lost and Found column: ‘Lost from Ultimo Street, off Bay Street, 23rd instant, Mary Moss, 3 years of age. P. Moss, Ultimo Street.’84

Mary Moss was found on Wednesday night, lying still and quite dead in an open drain. She had fallen in headfirst and had been trapped under the filthy water. Patrick Moss carried her home and Dr Arthur West was called from The Glebe to proclaim her cause of death.

Henry Shiell held an inquest into her death at the Australian Youth Hotel on Bay Street, Glebe. His jurymen decided that she had died from suffocation. They also issued a rider which stated that the Corporation of Sydney were censurable for permitting the drain pipes to remain open. This was highly dangerous to the area and to the local children, and that letting the drains remain in that condition ‘evinced an utter disregard for the public safety’ and was ‘reprehensible in the extreme’. It was stating the ‘bleedin’ obvious’ for many residents. And they weren’t going to bet their last shilling that anything would change any time soon.85

Journalists called it ‘gross negligence’ and the Evening News called it a ‘Municipal Murder’. The Department of Justice wrote to the Mayor to pass along what Mr Shiell’s jury had said.

But nothing changed.

IN THE 1880s, about 90 per cent of children lived to twelve months, 82 per cent to five years and only 78 per cent became adults.

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