Shot of Spirits: Episode 6: Brighton Beach and Dunluce Castle

Does the ghost of shark attack victim Kitty Whyte haunt Brighton Beach, South Australia? Does Rev Macully haunted Dunluce Castle, Kitty's childhood home...watch to find out.


Read more about this haunting in the Haunts of Adelaide: Revised Edition

https://www.amazon.com.au/Haunts-Adelaide-History-Mystery-Paranormal/dp/B08JLQLLC5

Kate Cocks: Pt V(a): The Stolen Generation

Kate Cocks: Pt V(a): The Stolen Generation

 (As this is a long and contentious issue, this post will be spread out over a couple of weeks.)

In 1935, after serving 20 years in the South Australian Police Force, Kate Cocks retired from her position. Her main reason for leaving the police force was to care for her elderly dying mother.
 Cocks, during her career in the police force, had often given so much of herself helping others, that she became known as “the friend of the down and outs”.
 Often, she had allowed homeless girls to stay at her house at Parkside and later suggested the Methodist Women’s Association open a home for women and children to find shelter. That home was eventually opened, located at 46 Wattle Avenue, Brighton in Old Oxford House, a former training college for young Methodist men, then a nursing home for a short time.

The Methodist Women’s Home Mission Association invited Cocks to become a voluntary superintendent of the home. Cocks, even in retirement, worked tirelessly in the home, taking in unmarried girls and their newly born babies. Cocks relied on her strong religious faith, with her welfare efforts an extension of her unwavering religious zeal and enforcing her own personal motto; “prevention is better than reformation”.
 For Cocks, taking children away from a situation that could cause them harm, whether it be an abusive father, a poor family, or a mentally unstable parent, was better for a child in the long term over reformation.

  Additions to The Methodist Home for Babies and Unmarried Mothers included the Wyld Maternity Home, an enclosed playground, and an extension of the wards and rooms. Later, in 1967, The Kate Cocks Memorial Adoption Agency was added to the complex.
 After her death in 1954, the complex was renamed in Cocks honour as The Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home until 1976 when the institution was closed. 

 The organisation continued as a daycare facility as part of the Central Methodists Mission, with the Adoption section of the organisation closing in 1978.

 The Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home and many other church organisations have been accused of taking part in forced adoptions and being directly involved with the Aboriginal stolen generation.

 The following Women’s Welfare Department Annual Report from 1954 emphasis’s the organisation's view of unwed mothers, adopting out of their children, and the shame it brought to the mother and her family.
 According to the organisation;

 ‘Of the sins in this world a babe out of wedlock is not the worst, but the young mother carries the whole burden, often in the face of resentful intolerance. It is to help her through the difficult time and to make it possible for a new start and a second chance that the Methodist Home for Girls exists. Worked in conjunction with the Babies’ Home and with the facilities of the Wyld Maternity Home, the girls live normal lives under careful supervision; and the babes make their appearance with the help of qualified staff and doctors. It is not for these tiny people to bear the burden of their parents’ wrong-doing and whether they go home with the mother, stay on in the Babies’ Home, or are adopted into new families, their first few weeks are spend under their mothers’ care, and Matron’s supervision. Fifty girls have passed through the Home during the year.’

 Women’s Welfare Department Annual Report – Methodist Conference – 1954 PR 9/38

 According to an Advertiser article published in 2011, The Uniting Church of South Australia had previously denied the practise of forced adoptions but now accepted that it was “highly likely” (as quoted by Uniting Care Wesley chief executive, Simon Schrapel, 2011).

Schrapel was also stated in the article; “He said the decision to accept responsibility came after church leaders had read moving accounts to a current Senate inquiry into forced adoptions, which many victims said occurred at the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home at Brighton.”

 Next Week: Kate Cocks: Pt V(b): The Stolen Generation

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2018

Bibliography on final post.

Kate Cocks: Pt.1: The Early Years

Kate Cocks: Pt.1: The Early Years

Ms Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks (M.B.E.) was born in Moonta, South Australia on the 5^th of May 1875 to parents Anthony Cocks, a miner and Elizabeth (nee George) a school teacher (Kate also had two brothers). 

 Mr Cocks sunk his money into a farming property near Quorn, but hard times fell upon the family and he was forced to go back to mining to pay off his debts.

 It was at this time, while the mid-north was in drought, that Kate learned valuable lessons about poverty that would remain with her into her adult life. It was also during this time that Kate prayed to God for rain, as the farm and its animals were suffering. That Friday rain came; this event cemented her strong Methodist beliefs that stayed with her for life.

 In her teens, Kate’s father went to New South Wales to work as a miner. The rest of the family moved to Riverton, where Elizabeth worked as a school teacher.
 Eventually Anthony returned home, and it was decided they would move the family to Parkside. Anthony opened a store and bakery to supplement their income.

 Kate, now an adult began to look to the future, and chose her career. She decided to follow in her mothers’ footsteps and become a school teacher. She ended up getting the second job she applied for, at Edwardstown and became the School Teacher and Sub-Matron of the Receiving Home for State Children. 

 Kate spent the next three years working with the under-privileged. She said of her experiences there;

“Sheltered in a good home I had not known anything of vice or cruelty and I never bathed a neglected baby, or tended a sad-faced dirty child, without realising that I had been led by Providence to have my vision adjusted to see life in reality and try to alter some of its in justices. How responsive to my love all those tiny ones were, and. often. I would creep away and shut myself in my wardrobe and cry a little. The wardrobe was the only private spot I could find. I am not prone to tears ordinarily, but I defy any woman, worthy of the name, to go through those three years without occasionally seeking the relief of tears.  
 The 'foster-mother system. I could see, needed more oversight, and my great ambition centred upon becoming an inspector. Our ordinary duties were concerned with children, from infants to girls of 21, and boys up to 18 years. But, once again, my plans were thwarted, and looking back, I see it was all part of my discipline.”

 Her position at the Receiving Home, and being overlooked for another position, led to Cocks becoming interested in the state probation system for juvenile delinquents’. She studied the system and found it inadequate for the offender’s rehabilitation. Cocks soon became a Juvenile Court Probation Officer.

Next Week: Kate Cocks: Pt.2: Juvenile Court Probation Officer.

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2018

Bibliography on final post.

SUICIDE FOLLOWS GHASTLY DEED ADELAIDE

SUICIDE FOLLOWS GHASTLY DEED ADELAIDE

In 1931, Ivan White awoke to the horrifying sounds of screams from his neighbour's house on Brighton Road, Helmsdale. He jumped out of bed and ran across to the bungalow. Looking through the window, to his horror, he saw his neighbour, Stanley Jones, bashing his wife in the head with a hammer...


Stanley Jones was married to Gertrude, and together they lived with their 18-year-old daughter Marjorie and a 35-year-old female border by the name of Ms Sullivan.
Stanley owned a Billiard Saloon Hall in Glenelg that had always been reasonably rewarding financially, but in recent times had become somewhat of a strain on his hip pocket.


On the night in question, Mr Jones came home from work and sat down to dinner with his wife, daughter and border. The foursome ate, and afterwards, Ms Sullivan and Marjorie excused themselves and returned to their rooms.
Ms Sullivan, later in her police statement, said after she had left the dining room, and returned to her room, Mr and Mrs Jones had sat at the table engrossed in amicable conversation.
At some point the same evening, after saying goodnight to his wife, Stanley began to write a note explaining that he was sorry for all the trouble he had caused and that the “The Billiard Saloon was the cause of it all”.
 At about 2:45am, Stanley went into his daughter Marjorie's room and slit her throat with a razor. Marjorie couldn’t scream, but she managed to get up and make her way to her mother's room.
 As she entered her mother's room, Stanley, her father, struck Majorie in the back of the head with a hammer.
Marjorie fell to the floor at the foot of her mother's bed.

Gertrude began to scream, and as she did, Stanley came at her with the hammer, swinging wildly At the same time he also slashed at her with a cut-throat razor.
In another part of the house, Ms Sullivan had been awoken by the screams. Realising something terrible was happening in the house, she jumped out through a window to escape and ran into neighbour Ivan White as he crossed the street to see what was going on.
Looking through the window at the horrors before him, Ivan tapped on the window. Stanley turned and looked him in the eye, with a savage expression on his face, and turned back to beating his wife around the head with the hammer.
Mr White rushed down the street to the nearest telephone box and called the police, who arrived within in five minutes.

The police entered the house to find Marjorie was still alive, but in a very bad way, they followed a trail of blood through to the rear of the house and into the backyard where they found Stanley, who had taken the razor to himself and slit his throat from ear to ear. He was still alive.


In the brief amount of time it took for medical help to arrive, both Majorie and Stanley died from their wounds...