The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey by Julia Laite

Author:Julia Laite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

On the form that accompanied this mugshot the police seemed to think Carvelli was born five years earlier than he really was, called him ‘Alfredo’ and listed his occupation, somewhat mysteriously, as ‘architect’. These kinds of mistakes on supposedly official registers – on birth, marriage and death certificates, as well as crime records – were very common, especially when they concerned those who actively sought to obscure their real identities. Carvelli was thousands of miles from anyone who knew him: he could be any age and take any name he liked.

He was only out of prison for a week when he was charged again, in May 1901, with theft. This earned him another month in a prison cell. While still inside, it seems new charges came up against Carvelli and he was sentenced to an additional ten months’ hard labour. Five more charges in three separate trials followed in 1902 and 1903, this time for crimes committed in Adelaide and Port Adelaide: unlawful possession and four counts of stealing. His love of fine clothes frequently proved his downfall: he was caught wearing a pair of expensive boots that he had stolen. He served almost two and a half years for these crimes.30 There are no records of what Carvelli may have learned and whom he may have met during his various stints behind bars, but it is very likely that the dining halls, cells and exercise yards of the gaols of Sydney and Adelaide were key sites where his early criminal-business networks began to form. For many men, prison made for an excellent education in bookmaking, fraud, confidence tricks and pimping.31

Then, in 1904, he passed his prison uniform over to the guard for what he hoped was the last time. He had his sights set on Australia’s ‘wild west’, where the growing towns of Perth, Fremantle and Kalgoorlie stood as gateways to the expanding goldfields.32 He stepped on the boat in Adelaide as the notorious thief Antonio Carvelli, but alighted in Fremantle as Aldo Cellis: translator, teacher and frontier entrepreneur.

*

Carvelli seemed genuinely to want a fresh start, and his hunger for social status was soon on full display. Signor Aldo Cellis, who claimed to hold a degree in belles-lettres from the University of Turin, advertised his language school in the Moir Buildings in busy downtown Perth in the local newspapers.33 Soon he had found work as a translator for the French consul who, it was said, thought very highly of him, and he also taught classes in Latin and Greek at the Christian Brothers College. He sang opera for the mayor of Subiaco, a suburb of Perth, to the guests’ great delight.34 He also established himself as a shipping and indent agent, importing goods from Italy and Colombo, so that the residents of Perth and Fremantle could dine on salami and olive oil and wear cheap Ceylon cotton.

Over the course of three years it seems Carvelli experimented with every respectable identity that he had pretended to have while robbing hotel rooms.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.