Mollie’s family was already problem-filled. Her father George, a tough school principal, died during her childhood. Her mother Ethel Dean was manipulative, controlling and physically violent. Ethel had just one plan for Mollie: to quickly marry her off, to a specific groom - mechanic Adam Graham (the Deans’ lodger in Elwood in 1921).
Truth, 1st February 1931
But Mollie was talented and Adam Graham was not. She was a special education teacher in North Melbourne, and by her early 20s had won literary awards at Teachers’ College. So instead of going out with the very boring Adam Graham, she socialised with George Browne, Vice-Principal of the Teachers’ College, composer Hubert Clifford and law student George Sell.
Mum Ethel apparently did not know about Molly’s dearest lover, Colin Colahan (1897-1987). After all, Colahan was safely married and was therefore "out of Mollie’s reach".
Mum Ethel upped her violence, stalking Mollie with Adam Graham, and confronting Browne, Clifford and Sell to herher expr displeasure. Once, when Clifford returned Mollie to the front gate, Ethel dragged her daughter inside by the hair. Mollie later apologised!!
In Nov 1930, late on her 25th birthday, Mollie arrived at St Kilda railway station. At midnight she found a public telephone box to contact Colahan at home in Hawthorn to discuss leaving her teaching job in favour of journalism. Colahan told her that any hurried decision would be foolish! Anyhow... the call caused Mollie to miss the last Brighton tram at 12:11am, so she walked the 2ks home.
Some witnesses saw Mollie sitting outside the St Kilda station and noticed a be-suited man, walking with a peculiar gait, watching her. Others saw her being followed by the same man as she entered her own street. But they did not see her as she was brutally bludgeoned from behind, dragged into a laneway, killed and mutilated. On the footpath outside her front gate, the police found a pool of blood, her hat, coat, handbag and book. Dean was rushed to hospital, but died from haemorrhage.
This murder came straight after another shocking and unsolved tragedy, the murder of 11-year-old Mena Griffiths in Nov 1930. Her strangled body was found in a derelict house in Ormond. Then another murder, 16-year-old Hazel Wilson, followed six weeks later. Sinister!
Truth, 1st February 1931
At the coronial inquest (Jan 1931) re Mollie Dean, endless sensations were revealed. Attention focussed on Molly’s personal life, her appalling mother Mrs Ethel Dean, and her mother’s dodgy relationship with young Adam Graham. The police noted that Adam Graham had a peculiar walking gait; her blood was found on his suit; and that mum Ethel strongly objected to Mollie’s bohemian, arty friends.
Witness statements collected during the police investigation and placed in the Public Record Office Victoria were examined as part of the coroner’s briefing notes. The coroner Mr Grant agreed with the police, and found that Adam Graham had maliciously inflicted the injuries.
Graham was ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court, but for some reason, the Crown Prosecutor said the police and the coroner were wrong. In Mar 1931 the Crown Prosecutor advised that no trial be started. There was to be no justice for lovely young Mollie Dean!
Six years later a completely unconnected man confessed to the killings of teenagers Mena Griffiths and Hazel Wilson, so even Mollie’s old colleagues lost interest in Mollie’s murder. Some of her friends left Australia and others got busy developing Victoria’s art colony Montsalvat in semi-rural Eltham. Mollie's case faded.
Witness statements collected during the police investigation and placed in the Public Record Office Victoria were examined as part of the coroner’s briefing notes. The coroner Mr Grant agreed with the police, and found that Adam Graham had maliciously inflicted the injuries.
Graham was ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court, but for some reason, the Crown Prosecutor said the police and the coroner were wrong. In Mar 1931 the Crown Prosecutor advised that no trial be started. There was to be no justice for lovely young Mollie Dean!
Six years later a completely unconnected man confessed to the killings of teenagers Mena Griffiths and Hazel Wilson, so even Mollie’s old colleagues lost interest in Mollie’s murder. Some of her friends left Australia and others got busy developing Victoria’s art colony Montsalvat in semi-rural Eltham. Mollie's case faded.
Truth Newspaper, 30th Nov 1930
Lena Skipper, who with her husband Mervyn Skipper and others founded the famous art colony Montsalvat in the 1930s, wrote of Mollie in a detailed diary. And playwright Betty Roland featured Mollie in her history of the Montsalvat circle. Luckily handwritten letters from Mollie survive in the State Library of Victoria.
For decades Australians have read the novel My Brother Jack (1964), George Johnston’s story of inter-war Melbourne. Yet few would have recognised that the plot aped this true murder story of 25-year-old schoolteacher, novelist and Bohemian Mollie Dean, mistress of artist Colin Colahan. The author George Johnston never met the victim; only 20+ years after the events did he become close to the sociable Colahan and Johnston’s famous wife, Charmian Clift. The novel was then serialised for the ABC in 1965 by the very same Charmian Clift. Finally Colahan’s work appeared in Misty Moderns, a 2008 National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition; the catalogue’s chronology noted her murder VERY briefly.
The Portrait of Molly Dean by Katherine Kovacic (right) Twitter
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12 comments:
I heard Gideon Haigh talk about his book on Radio National one Sunday morning, didn’t know about the other one, I was particularly intrigued because that dreadful murder happened right around the corner from where I live! Who would have thought so much drama once happened in those peaceful Elwood streets?
Fascinating story. It is a long time since I have read My Brother Jack, and the associated books. Things were certainly difficult back then for round pegs who would not fit into square holes.
The art colony in Montsalvat in time became a beautiful place to live, work and socialise. No wonder Mollie's mother despised her daughter's Bohemian friends.
Hello Hels, It seems that there was weak motive for Ethel and Adam to actually go to the degree of murdering Molly Dean, especially since with Molly gone Adam could certainly not have married her. The peculiar remarks made about Adam and about Molly's mother make me wonder if there is not more to the case--financial aspects and so forth.
--Jim
What a rich, cultural era this was. Katherine Susannah Prichard was another mentor, role model and salon hostess.
Sue
not only was your suburb a lovely part of Melbourne, but Mollie Dean was an educated young woman in a respected position. Thus you would not have expected a brutal murder locally, nor would you you have expected the police/courts to have pursued the murder with less than complete commitment.
88 years later it is still a blotch on Melbourne's crime history.
Andrew
My Brother Jack refers to many events, and if you had not heard of Mollie Dean, there is no way you would have detected the references. However the Gideon Haigh and Katherine Kovacic books are right on topic.
Square pegs and round holes was apt then as it is now, yes. Mollie Dean could never meet her mother's expectations, nor could she be an equal with the men in her cultural and social world.
Joseph
when Justus Jorgensen returned home from Paris and London in the late 1920s, he wanted to work, teach, exhibit and socialise in an open, green part of outer Melbourne. Although the main buildings and gardens were not completed until after Mollie Dean's death, the idea of establishing perfect conditions for a creative art colony was already very popular.
Mrs Ethel Dean hated the Bohemians, disapproved of artists having sex before/outside marriage and believed her daughter needed to be firmly under her control in the family home.
Parnassus
I have no doubt that Adam Graham did what he was told to do, but that Mrs Ethel Dean had to take responsibility for the murder of her daughter. The Australian (14/4/2018) cited the police records that were very telling about Ethel: Ethel’s reaction to her daughter’s assault ranged from hostility to indifference. “So far as I am concerned you can let the matter drop. If I did anything to my daughter to bring about her death, I cannot remember doing it”, she told detectives.
Not proof of course, but it made me very uncomfortable.
Deb
Correct. Melbourne's many art schools contributed to the city's reputation as an art centre. In the 1930s, an alternative to the National Gallery of Victoria under Bernard Hall, was run by George Bell, who was more open to Modernism than was Max Meldrum. Among his pupils were Russell Drysdale and Fred Williams. Bell became president of the new Contemporary Art Society in 1938, a counter society to the conservative Australian Academy of Art.
The same would be true about Melbourne being a centre for literature during the inter-war era. Just reiterating the women's names we already know is an impressive start: Miles Franklin (b1879), Katharine Susannah Prichard (b1883), Christina Stead (b1902), Dymphna Cusack (1902), Betty Roland (b1903) etc
The veneer of civilisation that covers us is shown to be very thin sometimes. There was a famous murder, near where we were living before our present address, that was unknown to the modern world until a serialised TV drama.
Sometimes the real horror that people are capable of can be brought home to us with force; probably at a similar time - that was a love triangle but Mollie's demise seems to have been much more sinister!
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bazza
Interesting, isn't it? In every case, there was always a reason for murder. Even in countries where guns were illegal or difficult to get, angry or jealous people could always use a knife, a fast car, poison or some other weapon. No screams were heard by the many witnesses, so either the victim knew her murderer and was not frightened, or Mollie Dean was smothered without time to scream. Surely the pathologists would have made sense of her dying from shock, haemorrhage and collapse of the lungs.
But I am horrified (still) that a lovely and talented young thing, with her entire life ahead of her, could be so callously ignored in the days and years after the murder. I agree, the veneer of civilisation that covered us back then was shown to be very thin indeed. And still is?
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