A bizarre
colonial murder - suicide which
shocked Australia and
the London theatrical world
is revealed in an old
scrapbook which once belonged to
a man given the task of reviving the
Anglican Church in
Darwin .
By Peter Simon
I found the battered
scrapbook , kept by
Thomas Anstey Parkhouse,
on the
floor beneath a
pile of books
in a dark
and jumbled shop
during a trawl through South Australia’s Barossa
Valley, looking for oddities , old photographs and assorted
ephemera .
Back in
England in the
l870s , Parkhouse had
been involved in
the printing and
book selling industry.
He came from
a well connected
family involved in
law, civic affairs , religion and one which
had been in
the bookselling trade
for l60 years.
Members of the
family made their
mark in New Zealand,
South Africa, Australia ,
Canada and Samoa
.
The horrific event
involved two British actors , husband
and wife , with
the stage names
of Arthur Dacre
and Miss Nellie
Roselle. The husband, Arthur James ,
was a stage -
struck doctor with
dubious acting talent,
excitable and given
to wild outbursts .
From a theatrical family , his wife ,
nee Amy Adams ,
apparently Parkhouse’s second
cousin , had been
a competent actress . Once he
married his wife , the doctor made unreasonable demands in terms and conditions of her theatrical
contracts , which often insisted he be given a
part in her plays . As a result
, entrepreneurs were reluctant to employ her and
their
income suffered.
With the death
of their only child
, she
had gone downhill
physically and withdrew from
life for many
months. In financial
difficulties, she and her
husband came to
Australia in l895 on
a theatrical tour
in the twin
hope of improving
their finances and
reviving their stage
reputations. Unfortunately, the
plays in which they
appeared in were
poorly received in Melbourne and
Sydney . Dacre became involved in
a bitter dispute
with theatre management
over his part
in the play
The Silence of Dean Maitland ,
and other matters.
A valet
was summoned to
the boarding house
where the actors were staying
and Dacre gave
him letters to
post and notes
to deliver. His wife
was noticed lying
on a couch with
a hanky over her
face. While the valet
was leaving the premises he
heard a crash
of crockery, but did not return to
investigate. A servant, however, heard the
noise , followed soon after
by what sounded
like a pistol
shot.
A man
gained entry into the
locked room via the
balcony and Dacre, his
throat slashed, stumbled towards
him moaning, "Oh,God! What
agony! What agony!"-words said to be
curiously like the lines
used by Dean
Maitland under the
strain of mental
torture. Dacre then
fell down on the
floor. His wife was stretched out with
two bullet wounds
to the heart.
On a table , written in a shaky
hand , was a note from Dacre :
Thank the Lord
we died together . There is one more shot left.
Instead of shooting
himself, he went
to the bathroom and cut his
carotid artery with a razor,
it being found at
the bottom of
the blood-filled basin.
COLLAPSED IN A FIT
While Leitch
was puzzling over
the letter, a man ran
in and screamed
out the horrific news
that Mr Dacre
had murdered his
wife and cut his
throat, then the messenger collapsed
on the stage in a fit
. Miss
Hardy issued a statement saying
the couple had been
great friends of
hers and she
had come to Australia under their chaperonage. Dacre, she said, had been
under a misapprehension as she
was by no means in want .
Eccentric of late, she said
he been greatly worried
about financial matters.
A newspaper account of the
event said it had
caused a sensation in London
