Fractured Silence. Emma Curtin

       Dr John ‘Jock’ Rhys Williams. Date unknown

      A little ‘Googling’ and some research on the Ancestry website provided quite an impression of Jock. Educated at Wesley College, he’d graduated from the University of Melbourne medical school in 1915. A year later, as a 23 year old, he joined the Army Medical Corp with the rank of Captain, serving as a Medical Officer in France during the First World War. Here he demonstrated his generous and heroic spirit, saving the life of a young French girl whose siblings had been killed by a German bomb. Almost 80 years later, the grand-daughter of that little girl would write to John’s family to express her gratitude to ‘“saviour” Captain Jack’. On his return from the war, John became Registrar of the Melbourne Hospital in 1920. Eight years later, he was appointed to the diabetic clinic at the Hospital, probably the first specialist in this field in Melbourne. He was also a member of the British Medical Association (which was transformed into the Australian Medical Association in 1962).

      Jock’s qualifications and character made him a force to be reckoned with. And his knowledge of the family, combined with medical qualifications, made him a central figure in the Toorak drama. He was often called upon to provide his expert opinion in court and coronial settings. And he was highly regarded in the medical community, as well as being popular with his patients, thanks to his gentle nature.

      It seemed almost natural then that he would take a lead role in the investigations surrounding Norma’s death, becoming something of an advocate for Norma and the family. To the police, as we’ll see later, he became a proverbial thorn in their side.

      But, was Dr Williams determined to find the ‘truth’ or simply protect his family from prying eyes and exposure? Norma’s death would attract so much interest as inquisitive onlookers vied to learn more about her private life. Naturally, this meant speculation about her broader family relationships and the community in which she lived.

      To understand this fascination and the importance of privacy in the Toorak community, we need to learn more about the context of time and place. What was Norma’s world like and what was her place within it?

      Chapter Two

      Norma’s world: Toorak in the 1920s

      The Melbourne suburb of Toorak is about five kilometres south-east of the city's central business district. It sits within the municipality of Stonnington, although in 1929 it was under the domain of the City of Prahran council. Today it has a population of approximately 14,000; in 1920 about 5,700 people called Toorak home.

      Despite having a less than elegant name, meaning ‘weed in lagoon’ or ‘reedy grass’ in the Kulin language of the Yalukit-willam people, Toorak has always been, and still is, synonymous with wealth and privilege. As Sally Wilde stated in her history of the area, the suburb has “traditionally been the home of Victoria's most affluent citizens and … the hub of the kind of activities that were reported in the social pages of the newspapers”.

      In the nineteenth century, Toorak was known for its grand gentlemen’s houses built on acreages of manicured lawns, tennis courts, conservatories and beautifully kept gardens. It had the largest number of private houses of more than 12 rooms than anywhere else in Victoria.

      During Melbourne’s land boom of the 1880s, developers began to look at opportunities to subdivide large estates in Toorak. The depression that followed in the 1890s had an economic impact on many of those in the large private mansions of the suburb, creating new opportunities for subdivision. Selling first-class real estate helped many of the financially-hit recoup their losses.

      By the beginning of the new century, grounds were being divided, new streets created and “building allotments in prime positions appeared throughout the district”. By the beginning of the First World War, land in Toorak was “selling for £18 to £20 per foot, whereas in Prahran [its neighbouring suburb] the going rate was between £6 and £8 per foot”.

      According to Wilde, Toorak didn’t suffer a decline in status as old homes were demolished or their lands sold off. “On the contrary”, she said, “if anything, the status of Toorak and South Yarra rose in this period”.

      The aspirational, professional upper middle-class, to which the McLeods belonged (Major Norman McLeod, Norma’s father, was a civil servant working for the Department of Defence; his father had been a storekeeper in Beaufort, a small country town about 170 kilometres west of Toorak), saw the area as a perfect place to build their own dream homes with all the latest conveniences. This sentiment was captured in a 1927 advertisement for the Mayfield Estate: “All Australia knows Toorak as Melbourne’s outstanding residential centre. It is a name synonymous with the best in home life, its excellence being the standard for comparison”.

      On 19 August 1912, Norman McLeod bought his prestigious piece of land on what was known as the Mandeville Estate (part of the land originally belonging to Mandeville Hall, now Loreto Hall Girls’ School). The estate had first been advertised in 1902, promoted as “finely situated” in a “select neighbourhood”. Norman bought the land from builder Matthew Cumming of Prahran for the sum of £1,000, which represented about eight times the average annual salary at that time. Norman had taken out a mortgage with the National Bank of Australasia, which wouldn’t be discharged until after his death. So he was clearly not a man of ‘family money’, like many in the Toorak community, but he was a man of ambition who obviously valued social status.

      Mr Cumming also built the McLeod home, as well as other properties in Mandeville Crescent. He’d complained to the Prahran Council in 1910 about “the trouble he was put to in connection with the sewerage in Mandeville Crescent … his two brick villas were left unsewered”. And in May 1912 he wrote to the Council Surveyor: “I would esteem it a favour if you could asphalt the footpath in Mandeville Crescent Toorak from the corner of Orrong Road to the right of way in front of the new brick villas I am just finishing”. Once the sewers were fixed and a footpath laid, the McLeods moved from Williams Road, Hawksburn into their new Mandeville Crescent home in 1913.

      The McLeod house exterior reflected the style of the day and an elegance that is still admired today. A picket fence marked the boundary of the front garden, with a low hedge adding to the screening. Two small native trees adorned the entry to the house.