Margaret: Daughter of Destiny: The Journey of a Lifetime

By Christine Lynch

“The damage done tonight will resound down the generations!”

These words, spoken in anger by an outraged mother in the year 1904, will prove prophetic. Fourteen years later, a child enters the world, innocent, yet blighted by the repercussions of a distant crime, committed on a summer night, in remote Western Australia. From the beginning, the odds are stacked against Margaret as she is robbed of her childhood.

In due course, Margaret reaches adulthood and to her horror, finds herself powerless to prevent the outcome she most dreads. The malevolent forces of destiny reach down to a further generation and into the lives of her children.

This story is a tribute to the courage and tenacity of a mother’s love. It plays out against the backdrop of a period spanning two world wars, a great depression and the dawn of a new millenium. Through all of this, Margaret faces the additional challenges of being a single mother in an unforgiving era.

The story follows the relentless power of generational forces, pitted against the strength of the human spirit. It relives one woman’s heroic struggle to change the future. Margaret forges a path – ultimately – to release and redemption.

Margaret’s story is told by the person who shared so closely in this journey of struggle and redemption: her daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398489707

Christine Lynch

Christine Lynch is the daughter of Margaret, the woman whose story deserved to be told. A graduate of the university of Western Australia, she pursued a career in the field of education. Once retired, it was time to address a lifelong urge to write and there was no doubt in her mind as to the story she needed to tell. The book is dedicated to the memory of her remarkable mother. Christine lives in Perth, Western Australia, with her husband, Greg. She has four adult offspring and seven grandchildren.

Book preview

Prologue

Princess Royal: 1904

‘The harm you’ve done tonight will reach down the generations!’

– Ellen McAuliffe

Just four days to Christmas and Ellen McAuliffe stands on swollen, aching feet, knowing she’s close to finished for the day. Her hands have been too long in the bowl of greasy water on the big kitchen table, while sixteen-year-old Mary stands, good-natured as always, at her side, drying dishes on a thin towel. The kerosene lamp lends light to what they’re doing. She can see that it’s time to change the water, but water’s short, there’s a long summer to get through and only the two rainwater tanks. Anyway, she’s almost done. She dabs her moist face with her apron and glances at the clock, ticking audibly on the shelf above the stove. Half past eight. The last of the fruit mince pies are in the oven, the fire can be let die. When the pies come out, Patrick’s meal will go in to warm. Outside, the lads are still playing in the moonlight and that’s the place for them. This is no night to be indoors. The house is stifling, and she doesn’t want them underfoot.

She glances through the open door, wishing even the slightest breeze might waft in, with momentary relief, but the air is still. The last of the sun’s glow has gone now and a full moon has risen. Ellen guesses the boys will be playing hidey, the game they like most on a hot evening as the light fades and darkness steals in. Add a full moon and it’s the perfect night for their game. It never fails to excite the young’uns, running around outside, as the sky turns inky black and the stars reveal themselves, but on these nights leading up to Christmas there’s excitement of a different kind. School’s over for the year and they’re counting down to Christmas. She sighs. Give another half hour and they’ll be in, looking for a slab of bread and dripping as if they’ve forgotten they ever had tea. There’s never a need to call them.

The fruit mince pies come out of the oven and all Ellen can think of is finishing, taking a chair outside and sitting with a mug of tea until Patrick comes home at the end of his shift.

Ellen never gets her mug of tea that night. As she walks out of the open doorway, to throw the greasy dishwater on the struggling grape vine, she sees Herbert and Eugene coming out of the darkness, with little Myrtle, wailing.

Herbert is older, fourteen, and he does the talking. He starts before they’ve reached their mother, full of it, pouring it out, breathless, garbled, outraged.

‘We was playin’ hidey, it was my turn at the base. Myrtle didn’t come back for a long time and nor did Bert Lamont, so Archie and me went lookin’ for ‘er. Then we seen ’er comin’ back and she was limpin’ and cryin’ loudly. She said Bert done somethin’ wrong and hurt her. We went lookin’ for Bert and seen him runnin’ off between the tank and the cyanide vats.’

‘Bert Lamont! What’s a seventeen-year-old doing playing with you young’uns?’

Herbert explains, ‘We was playin’, Eugene and me, with Walter and Harold and Archie. Myrtle was playin’ too. After a while Bert come along and wanted to join the game. He was wearin’ a light brown suit and a cap and that’s who we seen runnin’ away between the tank and the cyanide vats towards his house after we found Myrtle.

Ellen leaps into action. She lifts her sobbing, seven-year-old daughter as she says to her sons, ‘Go into the kitchen and wait with Mary.’ And with that she carries Myrtle into the main bedroom and closes the door. Moonlight shines through the narrow window. She puts Myrtle onto the old four-poster bed that creaks so badly and lights the lamp. When she removes the child’s bloomers, she can see that she’s red and sore and, to her horror, she detects recognisable stains on the bloomers as well as the dress. Myrtle tells her mother that she ran between the shop and the Workers’ Hall to the stable behind Whiteharts, where there’s a low, roofed tank with the side cut out. She started to crawl inside when she saw that Bert Lamont was already in there, on his knees. He grabbed her dress, pulled her in and wouldn’t let her go.

‘He did wrong things and he hurt me.’

Ellen McAuliffe is known in the little gold mining community as a strong woman and feisty. She orders the boys to stay where they are until their father comes home. Still wearing her apron and carrying Myrtle, she calls Mary to accompany her and storms across the settlement in the darkness, heading for the Lamont house.

Like Ellen, Molly Lamont has her doors open, front and back. Ellen bursts in, demanding, ‘Where are you, Mrs Lamont!’

Ellen reaches the kitchen, with Mary behind her, before Molly has time to respond.

Molly is overwhelmed. Always a timid woman, she’s at a loss to know how to respond to the wild accusations being hurled at her. She murmurs that her son would never do such a thing, while Ellen rages over the top of her, ‘Where is the brute? Where is he now?’

Molly dithers, but when Ellen insists, she says he’s in his room, the room he shares with his brother.

‘Bring him out here!’ Ellen demands.

Albert Lamont is brought into the kitchen, looking bewildered and fearful, as he faces the full force of Ellen’s anger. He denies having seen Myrtle after they all ran off to hide.

Now Mary, who has been silent, on the edge of the violent scene, surprises everyone by speaking up, her voice strong as she supports her mother.

‘You people don’t seem to believe anything my mother says. Albert Lamont, you insulted me two years ago!’

‘Mary, didn’t I go down on my knees and apologise to you?’

For Ellen, this startling revelation heaps fuel on a crisis that already has her incensed and serves to inflame her outrage to an extremity she wouldn’t have thought possible. She flies at Bert, knocking him to the ground, as the child at the centre of events cowers in the embrace of her sister.

Ellen McAuliffe screams, ‘I’ll make you own up to what you’ve done!’ She has lost all control and is hell bent on throttling the youth as she grasps his neck and shakes him violently. Henry Lamont appears through the back door and by the time he pulls Ellen away from his son, Bert is barely conscious. The seventeen-year-old falls upon his mother and this is the scene that confronts Molly’s neighbour and friend, Fanny Mulholland, as she rushes in to join them in the chaotic kitchen. From a distance, she has heard the screaming that disturbs the stillness of the night.

It’s well for Ellen, as it is for Bert, that she’s physically restrained by Henry, a burly prospector, but she has not been quieted. She continues to shout at the three members of the Lamont family whose kitchen she has ignited.

‘This brute has ruined my little girl’s life. She’ll never be the same. She’ll carry this with her for the rest of her days! And now I learn that the monster has insulted Mary as well!’

She turns directly to Bert and screams into his face, ‘You’ve stolen my daughter’s innocence! I’ll have you put behind bars for what you’ve done. Mark my words, the harm you’ve done tonight will reach down the generations!’

It’s around midnight by the time Ellen and Patrick McAuliffe drive the five miles to Norseman by horse and cart, where Myrtle is examined by the acting medical officer, Doctor Harvey. He confirms that, undoubtedly, the girl has been tampered with. He would later give evidence that, ‘…there were signs of fluid on her parts, but there had been no penetration.’

Next morning, the Lamonts file a complaint against Ellen McAuliffe for the assault on their son, Albert, and she is summoned to the police court where she is fined ten shillings. At this point, she reports the incident that led to the attack and Albert Lamont is arrested that same day, December 21.

The Kalgoorlie Western Argus reports that at the court hearing the lad was charged with attempted carnal knowledge, pleaded not guilty and was defended by Mr Hudson, counsel for the accused. Evidence was given by several children who had been playing out of doors that night that the accused had joined their game just prior to the alleged assault and subsequently was seen running from the scene, in the direction of his house. The newspaper reports:

"The justices took it upon themselves to discharge the accused, but the Crown Law authorities did not let matters rest at that and a re-hearing was ordered, with the result that Lamont was re-arrested on February 2, 1905, and committed for trial before a jury."

On Tuesday, March 21, 1905, at a hearing of the Kalgoorlie Circuit Court, Albert Edward Lamont, accused of attempting to have carnal knowledge of Myrtle May McAuliffe, under the age of ten years, is led into the dock for His Honour, Mr Justice Parker’s summing up, the case for the defence having closed on the previous day. His Honour refers to the identification of a person in the moonlight.

‘I made observations last night when the moon was almost at its full and found it most difficult to recognise the features of any person from one side of the road to the other.’

He questions the likelihood that the moonlight would show the colour of clothing of a light brown nature as has been described by witnesses for the prosecution. He addresses the possibility that the person in the tank might have been a person other than those in the game. Since the attacker did not at any time speak and since there was little light inside the tank, Myrtle McAuliffe may have been mistaken in believing the person who attacked her was the accused.

‘The question of the identity of the person who committed the assault, is for you, the jury to decide,’ Mr Justice Parker instructs. ‘It is your duty to decide whether it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that it was the accused who was in the tank and who committed the offence. If you have any doubt, you should give the accused the benefit of the doubt.’

The members of the jury retire to consider their verdict only to return with the announcement that they cannot agree. His Honour suggests further consideration and the jury again retire, returning at 3.20pm with the intimation that they have not agreed and there is little possibility of doing so. The jury is then discharged. The Crown Prosecutor says that in view of the heavy calendar this session, he will ask for a retrial next session. This will give the Crown an opportunity to reconsider.

The Crown subsequently lodges a Nolle Prosequi notice, the case is dropped and Albert Lamont is discharged.

There is no record of Ellen McAuliffe’s response to the indecisive outcome of the trial, but we can guess at her strong emotions. Little is the likelihood that she will have changed her mind about anything she said in the heat of events on 20 December 1904. She believes, whether Albert Lamont spends further time behind bars or not, that he has damaged two of her daughters, violations that can never be undone. In the case of little Myrtle, particularly, Ellen McAuliffe is adamant that her child has been prematurely and wrongfully introduced to adult behaviour in an ugly and violent way, her childhood innocence robbed, a blight placed upon her future and very likely, that of generations to come.

Introduction

Into the Future: 2018

‘She handed me my assignment. Her story needed to be told.’

– Christine, daughter

It’s Saturday morning and friends are coming to lunch. Normally, I’d have embarked on a fruitless search. Where am I likely to find a recipe that requires minimal effort and even less skill, yet guarantees a result to impress all at the table? I’m referring, of course, to dessert, the concoction that tradition demands will wrap up a meal with panache and leave diners floating on a sugary high. Unlike my mother, who took pleasure in creating sweet treats for those she loved, I’m a dismal failure. I’ve carelessly neglected acquiring the necessary skills, I go to great lengths to avoid creaming butter and sugar and most shameful of all, I display a flagrant lack of interest in learning. When it’s time to offer the final indulgence, topped with lashings of whipped cream and met with predictable protests of, ‘Oh, just a sliver for me,’ I’m a flop and so is my cake. Today, however, I’ve found a reprieve. One of the invited guests has reached a milestone during the week and I’m skipping off to the local bakery to pick up a birthday cake.

It just happens that the patisserie closest to where I live is part of a small shopping strip adjacent to the retirement complex where my mother spent the final two decades of her life. She moved into a light-filled, ground floor unit that she could call her own and there was good reason for its importance. The unit became her delight, a place where she lived as happily as one can hope, when life leaves you abruptly widowed and experiencing the gradual loss of health and independence that comes with age. Time and again, to the very end, she reminded her family of how much her small, self-contained home meant, with its two bedrooms and comfortable living area. Perhaps her greatest joy was the walled patio to the rear, which seemed endlessly bathed in sunshine and where she nurtured her plants, or simply sat in the warmth with a mug of tea. It’s no surprise that Margaret treasured her final home, because, for much of her life, she’d lived in someone else’s house and at her lowest point, as a mother of three young children, she’d found herself homeless and desperate.

Into the patisserie I go. I’m a woman on a mission because there’s much to be done. It takes little time to identify the cake of my choice in the glass display cabinet. An elderly man, presumably from the retirement village, is sitting at a small table squeezed into the corner, observing the scene, unhurried, a cup of coffee placed before him. From behind the counter, the breezy Austrian woman with the appealing European accent, owner of the business, is attending to two white-haired ladies. It’s clear that they’re together and as I stand waiting, I decide that this must be a regular Saturday event for them, an outing they look forward to at the close of each week. They have no reason to hurry, in fact they appear to enjoy lingering over decisions and transactions and as they do, I feel my agitation growing. Eventually, every decision has been made, but no, one lady wishes to add another small pastry to her order. It takes time. The Austrian woman is delightfully pleasant and patient, demonstrating clearly that she wouldn’t dream of rushing their small purchases. All the while, my stress mounts. I check my watch.

By the time I have the ridiculously creamy, sugary, Black Forest cake inside its cardboard box and I’m heading towards my car, the ladies have seated themselves at a table outside the shop where they’re sipping coffee in the mild warmth of the winter sun. That’s when I think of my mother, two years gone now, and instantly, my mood softens. The unsettling sense of urgency and haste that’s been with me throughout the morning eases, and I’m able to smile, I can’t help but smile, as I pass the elderly pair. I find myself pausing for a few moments’ conversation, wanting to show them they’re valued in the community, hoping to add a touch to the pleasure of their morning. It’s clear that the ladies are ready to engage in chat.

They tell me that yes, they’re from the retirement village and now it’s my turn to remark, chattily, that my mother lived at number ninety-eight for many years, in fact almost, but not quite, until she, herself, was ninety-eight. I go on to say how much she enjoyed life in the village.

‘Oh, what was her name?’

‘Margaret. Margaret Marston.’

‘I knew Margaret! What a lovely lady she was.’ The response is warm, spontaneous, convincing.

Soon I’m in my car and heading home with the cake sitting beside me and as I drive, I’m smiling inwardly. My mood has altered. My priorities are in better order.

I ask myself, ‘What matters, what’s important? Will my guests care if the table isn’t set when they arrive?’

I’ve paused long enough to connect with two gentle ladies who have lived a long life and earned every right to take time in the patisserie on a Saturday morning. They were born into much the same era as my mother and I have time to reflect on the challenges they must have faced. I think of the remarks made by the ladies, complimentary, not gushy. They’d known my mother and spoke of her with a blend of warmth and respect. Looking back, I find it impossible to imagine her offending anyone on her journey through life, though I guess she must have. Then I remind myself of how judgmental and disappointed I could be as she aged, how depleted I felt at the end of each visit, while she remained gentle, appreciative and undemanding, hating to impose, always gracious. A realisation fills my head, takes me by surprise. For over seventy-four years, I was part of her life, and in that time, I never heard bitter or angry words pass my mother’s lips. In fact, if I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t been there for all those years, I’d have decided that here was a person who’d somehow dodged life’s blows, who’d enjoyed a blessed and privileged life and come through the decades unscathed by hardship or misfortune. I would have believed that life had smiled, unceasingly, upon Margaret and that her serene face, along with her remarkable gentleness and grace, were simply the outward signs of exceedingly good fortune. I’d have imagined a childhood filled with nurture and love, followed by a long marriage, characterised by affection, harmony and security. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

My mother’s early life coincided with a series of catastrophic events that cascaded one upon another. Born during the final, devastating months of the Great War, she entered a world further blighted by pandemic, the Spanish Flu, which persisted for more than two years and resulted in a greater number of deaths than the total casualties of the horrific war meant to end all wars. She proceeded to be a child of the Great Depression and entered adulthood to the backdrop of a Second World War. Added to the dire global events unfolding around her, were experiences catastrophic to her, personally, all of which shaped the individual she became, the beliefs she lived by and the resounding choices she made.

As I drive and reflect, my mother’s gentle, familiar voice sounds in my ears with a comment she made more than once, over the years.

‘You know Christine, in retirement villages and nursing homes across the country, there are little old ladies, meek, frail, dependent and seemingly unexceptional, who hold onto secrets and whose life stories would amaze you, perhaps shock you, if they were to be told.’

It was as if she were seeing herself in her final years and handing me my assignment, to be undertaken when she was gone. It seemed that my mother, who chose never to speak of her deepest and most private self and held onto many secrets, who liked to say, ‘How little we know of what goes on behind closed doors,’ was suggesting, ‘if you wish to trace my story, perhaps it should be told.’

At that point, I could not have anticipated the journey it would be, unfolding and laying out my mother’s story. I certainly had no idea that the incensed woman who carried Myrtle McAuliffe across the settlement at Princess Royal Gold Mine, on the night of 20 December 1904, was my great-grandmother and the little girl she carried was the grandmother I would never meet. Perhaps Ellen McAuliffe had a moment of exceptional foresight when she declared, in her anger and distress, that her daughter’s future had been blighted by the events of that evening. It may have been the repercussions of those events that reverberated so painfully down the generations and affected my mother cruelly and unfairly.

Chapter 1

The Lost Years: 1918–1920

‘This child will have much to overcome.’

– Fairy Godmother

Thirteen is said to be an unlucky number. On 13 June 1918, Violet May McAuliffe was born at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. From the miraculous moment when a child takes its first breath, this baby girl was essentially alone in the world. Yes, she would have been cleaned, wrapped and placed in a hospital crib. She would have learnt to suck from a bottle and in due course she’d have been ready to leave the hospital, but how often was she held in those first days? Was she cuddled during the early weeks of her life? Was she soothed by kind, human voices? Or was her earliest experience limited to the busy efficiency and institutional environment of a hospital nursery in 1918? Certainly, she was missing the single, warm and wonderful figure with whom she should have been bonding, her mother.

It’s highly unlikely that Violet’s young mother, Myrtle May McAuliffe, was permitted to see her new-born daughter, let alone hold her and as the years passed she could only have hoped, imagined and wondered what became of her child. She would have been advised to get on with her life, put this unfortunate event behind her and not repeat her shameful mistake. We now know that she never had another daughter, nor could she know that her only daughter, Violet, in turn had a daughter and after that, another daughter and a son. It was some years after their mother’s death that Violet May’s family learnt of the sad events that continued to unfold in Myrtle McAuliffe’s life. She was thirty-four when she married Arlington Wallace Bucirde, who had been severely injured in the First World War and died a year after their marriage, at the age of thirty-seven. Nine years later, Myrtle lost her only son, born to that marriage. He was electrocuted while climbing on a roof. She lived the remainder of her life, probably alone, in Perth, not knowing that her precious first-born daughter and her three grandchildren were just a few suburbs away and desperately in need of her help.

On her discharge from hospital, all that Myrtle was able to leave for her child was an entry in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Perth, Western Australia, 2018, stating the date and place of Violet’s birth, the names she was given, along with her mother’s name, age and place of birth. Her mother was twenty years old and was born in Norseman, Western Australia. A firm, close-lipped line was drawn through the space reserved for father’s name and details, as well as the place and date of the marriage that never took place. As she left with empty arms, it may be that Myrtle bestowed upon her child one last gift, a heartfelt prayer, for she was part of a family that prayed and in time Violet proved, against all the odds, that she was a survivor.

At the time of these events, Myrtle’s strong, feisty mother, Ellen, was forty-nine years old. Where was she and what were the circumstances of her life in 1918? We know that she lived to the age of sixty-five. Was she aware of Violet May’s existence and if so, why wasn’t she there to embrace her granddaughter and support Myrtle? On Violet’s birth certificate, Myrtle gave her address as 170 Brown Street, East Perth. How had she survived in the city through the months of her pregnancy while her family remained in the goldfields? Where would she go now?

From the glimpse we’ve had of three generations of the female line of the McAuliffe family, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this story is not unfolding as an enchanting fairy-tale where all goes well and ends happily ever after. Enter, Violet’s fairy godmother, to bestow upon the new-born the gifts destiny has chosen for her. The stout godmother waves her wand over the sleeping baby and with an air of benevolence and authority, announces the jewelled blessings of beauty and health. With a final, satisfied flourish, she turns to leave. Then she falters, for she is having second thoughts.

‘This child will have much to overcome. There is one more gift she will need. I bestow upon her the great gift of strength. Not only will she be healthy and strong in body, but exceedingly strong in spirit.’ With that, the fairy godmother disappears and leaves Violet to navigate her destiny.

All records have been destroyed that could have told us where Violet May McAuliffe spent the first two years of her life and the level of care she received, but she survived. It’s almost certain she would have been in an institution. There’s not a single photograph of Violet as a child, but judging by her beauty as an adult, it can be assumed that she grew into a pretty little girl, with dark, glossy hair, light olive skin and an appealing face. Had she been born a generation or two later, one would assume that the new-born would have been adopted eagerly by a young couple longing for a child of their own. Western Australia had been the first Australian state to pass adoption legislation, in 1896, but in the early twentieth century, the adoption of babies and very small children was surprisingly rare. Most adoptions were of older children, boys who could chop wood and girls who would be a useful help in the home. What we are sure of, is that this unfortunate child began life alone, adrift in the world and handicapped by the stigma of illegitimacy in an era when so many disadvantages flowed from this. She knew herself as Violet, a child who belonged to no-one in particular. Then suddenly, at the age of two, she was removed from all that was familiar. The name Violet ceased to be spoken and the faces she knew, she never saw again.

Chapter 2

A New Identity: 1920

‘You cried and cried when you first came to live with us. You didn’t know how lucky you were.’

– Mary Ann Hannah, foster mother

At the age of two, Violet was placed with the woman who would foster her throughout childhood. What a day that must have been! How do you explain such abrupt and alarming upheaval to a small child? How can you prepare a two-year-old for a displacement that will separate her from all she’s previously clung to for survival and security? It’s unlikely that in 1920 much thought was given to this aspect of the arrangement. From Violet’s point of view, she was wrenched, without warning, from everything she knew and left, abandoned and forgotten, in an unfamiliar house with two strangers, who didn’t even know her name. For some reason, they insisted on calling her Margaret. It would have been a profoundly disturbing experience with the potential for far-reaching consequences, unless handled with sensitivity, patience and understanding. The child brought few familiar possessions with her, as comfort, but nothing could separate her from the gifts she’d received at birth and which she had yet to discover were hers, beauty, health and strength.

It would be reasonable for any observer, including officers from the Department for Child Welfare, to assume that Violet’s luck had changed, that she landed on her feet the day she was taken to live with Mr and Mrs Hannah at 7 Alvan Street, Mount Lawley. Her new address was in a quiet, respectable part of Perth and she was taken in by a well-to-do couple. Yes, they were old enough to be her grandparents and had five adult sons, but the charming Federation style house couldn’t fail to impress with its size and the graciousness of its architecture. It stands today and since the house is heritage listed, remains unchanged when