“Cock-Eyed Bob” Sheds light on House of Death.

“Cock-Eyed Bob”
Sheds Light upon House of Death Compact.

The fair, slimly-built Detective Parker took his last survey of the faded and dusty rooms. His work was complete. The mystery of the Kalgoorlie Death Pact was a mystery no more. The admissions of the man and woman who lay in the hospital corroborated in every detail the pathetic and intensely human story that the house had revealed to the trained eye of the detective. There had been no need that last Saturday afternoon to draw up the blinds. The storm, as startling and as damaging as any in the history of the old mining town of Kalgoorlie, had done its work with discriminating thoroughness. The storm had found the rotten nails in the roofs of churches and public buildings seemingly stoutly built, it had kicked into heaps of debris dilapidated halls and jerry-built shanties whose defiance of every building regulation tolerant officialdom had winked at.

Detective Parker

It had lifted a thousand iron sheets from neglected buildings and hurled them hither and thither to the danger of humankind. In a moment of carelessness, out of harmony with its otherwise general humanity, it had thrown a cruel and jagged piece of iron against the gentle, tiny leg of a girl, almost severing it at the hip and sending the little mite inopportunely to the gods. Some called it a ‘Cock-Eyed Bob’. Others a tornado. It was, both and neither. It was not the single whirlwind of Cock-Eyed Bob, twisting along an irregular course and lifting and tossing everything in its path. It had not the straight and narrow path of the tornado levelling destruction, that men read about.

It was like a windy octopus, with, tentacles spread over a wide area, that lashed here, there and everywhere, missing more than it hit, but hitting effectively where it did hit. It lifted the walls of a hotel balcony bathroom completely from around the embarrassed bather, whose unconsidered order of going was too fast for the swiftest cameraman.

It laid old churches in ruins. Whole rows of fencing with foundations rotted by ants exposed their weakness. An army official Government building inspectors could not have exposed as effectively the rottenness of the building regulations in Kalgoorlie and their dangers to life and limb in any passing wind. It slipped with freakish touch, this windy “Bob” past the ‘House of Death’ alongside the railway. It sucked at the tangle of woodwork and canvas that shut out the light from the front bedroom and tore it aside letting in a stream of light for the first time in many months. With a raucous shriek, it eddied over the vacant allotments all around, gathering up the rubbish and tins and pelting it across the street and shanties & a couple of blocks away

If “Cock-eyed Bob” had come three months earlier, would Charles Francis Hawkins, 55yrs, and Elizabeth Mary Smith, 31yrs, now be lying in the Kalgoorlie Hospital, preying that death will complete the job they bungled?

It is just possible they would not. The deliberate gloom of that house was part of the complaint of this unfortunate couple, whose recovery will involve a legal tangle that will require the finest judicial brains of the State to unravel. Three months of sunshine for Charles Francis Hawkins and Elizabeth Mary Smith might have made all the difference.

The detective looked around in the new and unaccustomed brightness of the front bedroom. There lay the double bed upon which the couple had been found on Wednesday, February 1, the woman with a bullet in the temple and breast and the man with a bullet in the temple. In the back room lay another bed— a single bed— upon which were also splashes of blood, indicating that here, as in the front room, a tragedy had been enacted. It seemed obvious that either the man or the woman – had shot himself or herself on that bed. They both were found together on the front bed. The mystery of the single bed was elusive. But all things come to those who wait. The detective was patient. He found that,

Though a person had been shot on that single bed, neither the man nor the woman in the front room had shot himself or herself on that single bed.

But to begin at the beginning. The visitor to Kalgoorlie is apt to be intrigued by the presentation of seeming innumerable fortresses—outposts—dotted over the landscape, in the form of dwellings enclosed by formidable corrugated iron fences, spiked on the top and surrounded, in many instances, by two and three rows of barbed wire. Such a house lies some little distance west of the ‘House of the Death’. It is known as the Primrose Block. Here, behind formidable and completely enclosed fencing, peep the roofs of several dilapidated dwellings. Three rows of barbed wire top the cruel, spiked, 7-feet corrugated iron fence. The only means of ingress and egress is through a corrugated iron gate or door, to pass through which a password must be given. If the police wished to raid the place, they would require the assistance of a fire brigade and an extension ladder, for the ladies who live in these fortresses take no risks, from the visits of either police or larrikins. Many other houses in Kalgoorlie are protected by similar, though less formidable fencing, the object in most cases being to raise protection against the red dust storms that make life interesting for the inhabitants of the most famous town in Australian mining history.

“Justice consists in doing no injury to mankind; decency in giving them no offence.”

So wrote Cicero, long, long ago. There has been no alteration in the truth of that principle. Whatever brought Charles Francis Hawkins, railway shed hand, and Elizabeth Mary Smith, widow, together in a liaison that could not expect to find approval according to the laws of moral civilisation, they undoubtedly thought it was their own business. They inflicted no injustice upon anybody. They sought to give no offence by cutting themselves off, more or less, from society and from those who are lynx-eyed neighbours.

An Englishman’s house is his castle. Charles Hawkins saw to it that he made his home his castle. He paid £200 for the property, a five-roomed house standing in about an eighth of an acre of land at 181 Forrest Street, Kalgoorlie, and it is something of a revelation of property values in Kalgoorlie that he wrote pathetically to his brother that he “paid far too much for it, and his heir (the brother) would not be likely to realise anything like that sum for it.” He was right. From the grand old mining town of a thousand imperishable memories similar houses have been carted away to settlers’ farms’ miles away, the purchase price being the proverbial song. Whatever the house lacked in public value, Hawkins saw to it that it lacked nothing in private value, for the house stood in the midst of a veritable network of three sides of corrugated iron fencing, surmounted by rows of barbed wire. Only the front was exposed to a picket fence, but the front verandah access to the house was boarded in, and the side entrances were guarded by the most cunning of homemade devices, such as is shown in the picture below.

The arrow indicates a homemade tin catch attached inside each door and gate. On the outside of the door or gate, only the tiniest piece of tin (undiscernible to a strange eye) obtruded. By pressing a fingernail on this, the catch inside lifted and allowed the gate or door to open when a key turned in the lock would fail to open it.

All other doors and gates were similarly guarded. Access was only possible to those who understood the secret of the catch. Habit is the deepest law of human nature. The force of the habit of living with a man who was not her husband and could never be while his own wife was alive, imperceptibly induced Mrs Smith, a widow, to take a philosophical view of her position as one of right or “adverse possession” to which little exception could be taken by reasonable minded persons.

Hence, she applied to the State Child Welfare Department for the return of her children from the Convent. She wished to look after them herself, now that they had a second “father,” apparently willing to support them. She thereby learned, poor woman, her first lesson!

Whatever may be the views of some private individuals regarding the sanctity of marriage and the morality of life without it, Governments have not yet reached that stage when they can afford to lightly respect public opinion and the instinctive regard for that morality (marriage) that is still the vestibule of 20th-century religious sentiment and the fabric in which civilised society, as we know it, has its being.

When the officers of the Department called to ascertain whether the home was a fit and proper place for the children of the widow and housekeeper Mrs Smith, they were pleased and surprised it the tidiness of the home and the air of cultivated domesticity surrounding it.  There were cherished old-fashioned portraits of beloved relatives, past and present, on the walls. Many knick-knacks dear to the heart of a woman adorned the corners mantelpieces and recesses.  Family albums, chock-a-block with portraits, from richly decorated officers of the army and navy, down to sparsely clad toddlers with chubby arms and laughing eyes, were placed neatly on the centre of each table.

It was such a home that the officers of the department might well have considered most suitable for young Australians—something more intimate and personal and therefore, ordinarily more acceptable for young children than even the loving though necessarily more impersonal care of the Convent, at the State’s expense. But there was a fly in the ointment. It was the double bed in the front bedroom. As there was also a single bed in the rear bedroom, there was nothing very unusual about a double bed in the front room, and Mrs Smith, had she been clever and ingenuous, might easily have explained that away. But she was not made that way. She made no pretence about the single bed in the rear room. It was not, as a general principle, occupied by herself or by Mr Hawkins. It settled the question. The officers let themselves out. In due course, Mrs Smith learned that she was not to have the children. She had raised a new and permanent barrier between herself and her children. There is in all this cold and hollow world there is no love like that within a mother’s heart, for a cherished child

The house at 181 Forrest Street, Kalgoorlie.

181 Forrest Street, Kalgoorlie in 2023

In the three and a half months of Hawkin’s long leave of absence (every railway servant becomes entitled to leave after many years of service) the pair or either of them was seen only four times out of the house. On the fourth time, the woman went, out alone.

She went to purchase a revolver

More than three months of that long service leave had slipped away. For more than three months, the man and the woman had lived alone— the man with a woman he could not marry and the woman who could not have her children. Three months is a long time to live behind corrugated iron fencing and barbed wire, and gates and doors with secret catches.

Charles Hawkins was just a railway shed hand. His picture would suggest that he was a middle-class storekeeper or retired gentleman. He was better fitted to either. He was not at home amongst the ready-witted mates of the railway shed. He was moody and a little strange to them. Few of them understood the symptoms of neurasthenia, that second cousin to madness. Only a neurasthenic could have lived as Hawkins lived — behind closed doors. Only a neurasthenic, whose body and mind called for a change of scenery and outlook, could have spent those three and a half months of long-service leave behind corrugated iron fencing and barbed wire, shunning the world and its cheerful company.

True, there was little, for the moment, in Kalgoorlie to invite a sick man out for a walk. The town of a thousand memories— the city proper—is still full of sparkle in its aged heart, but the outer suburbs, with their vacant allotments and scattered bricks, and. toothless gums of ancient foundations sticking up ghastly here and there and everywhere from mother earth were enough to give a sick man the blues. “Cock-Eye’d Bob,” which came in a whirlwind a week or two later, only added a few more streaks to the picture. So, after more than three months of holiday leave. Charles Hawkins had spent behind closed doors and secret catches he sent Mary out to purchase a revolver.

In his weak state, he leaned upon the weaker sex even then, as he did later when came the hour of the test. She was clever, in a subtle mad sort of way, was Mary Smith. Anybody might be pardoned a little surprised—even suspicious—at a man walking into a shop to purchase a revolver. The assistant behind the counter at the Federal Loan Office (pawnshop), in Kalgoorlie, did not suspect the dreadful purpose of this smiling woman. Did he have a revolver to sell?—Yes, he had a very good one. For what purpose was it wanted? To kill cats?—He had the very thing! The assistant at the Federal Loan Office, being a man of business, would have sold a hundred cats’ lives for one revolver.

The bargain was quickly made. The revolver was a good one— a very good one. “Would it—would it kill a man?” the woman ventured in the ingenuous way of the simple creature who wanted to be sure that she didn’t take risks with anything more valuable than cats’ lives. It would most certainly kill a man, the assistant warned her. Probably, however, being a mere man, he would like to have added, that both men and cats were safe enough for a woman’s aim. But he didn’t say it if he thought He was sorry he explained, that he had no cartridges. He didn’t, as a matter of fact, stock them. Mary Smith was distinctly disappointed, but only for a moment. The assistant told her where she could buy bullets. The most suitable? He suggested the .22 calibre short—for killing cats. It was here that the woman in Mary Smith stumbled.

She had subtly ascertained that the revolver would kill a man, but she neglected to ascertain—perhaps ‘Sick of Life’ she didn’t like to repeat the query— whether .22 “short” bullets would kill a man. The .22 “long” undoubtedly would. But with the .22 short (which is only a little more than twice the size of an ordinary shot) there would be a doubt. Mary Smith, being a mere woman, did not know that. She went home with the revolver that would kill a man and .22 short bullets that would kill a cat. The man behind the closed doors awaited her.

For three months poor Charlie Hawkins had troubled dreams. In a day or two, he was due back at work and life’s daily toil would begin anew. Charlie Hawkins wanted that toil to end. He was tired and sick. He wanted to awaken, as from a dream, from this life of mortal breath. He made, with the woman he could not marry and who could not have her children, a compact that they should die together. And the woman who could not marry him and could not have her children agreed.

She would take her life and he would take his. So came the night that preceded the dawn of the 1st of February, when Hawkins was to return to life and toil. Two bottles of whisky were bought to fortify the nerves for the deed. Two bottles of whisky were drunk, and still, the deed was undone. It was the woman who moved, at last, the weaker sex that, stretching out for strength found it, at 7 o’clock in the morning.

All night long they had deliberated the deed. Neither slept. At the hour of 7 a.m., the woman rose and placed the revolver that would kill a man, containing a bullet that would kill a cat, against her temple and pulled the trigger. Half an hour later, she put the revolver against her left breast, and, aiming for the heart, pulled the trigger again. It was a woman’s aim and it missed the heart. Then the turn of the man—the stronger sex. Hour followed hour. The woman lying on the bed was still conscious. She was waiting for the man to follow her, according to the pact.

Come working time hour, and the ‘call boy’ came from the railway reminding Hawkins that he was due to restart work after 31 months of leave. He got no response to this knocking on the door. Came the hour of two blasts of the whistle, of the Transcontinental Express from Perth sounded in the distance – Hawkins knew that the train was bringing his brother Harry. To that brother, he had written a letter, headed,

“My last farewell before leaving this earth,”

describing his intended end, giving explicit directions for the disposal of his property, and beseeching “a decent burial” for himself and Mary Smith. And now that brother was arriving, express haste, in response to the strange and disconcerting call. To face him, alive and well, must have seemed to the poor, demented Charlie Hawkins, a humiliating end. The train rambled nearer. With a final blast and thunderous rattling and crashing noise peculiar to the worst train service in the world, it clanked past the Hawkins home, just across the road, and died groaningly away in the distance.

Now or never! It was his last chance. Charlie Hawkins lifted the revolver. For a moment he hesitated. He who hesitates is lost. The arm fell nervelessly to his side. He could not do it. In his extremity, the man did what the stronger sex has many a time done before and will do many a time again

he turned to the weaker sex for help.

Bending over the prostrate but still conscious woman, he explained his helplessness. “Mary,” he said, “will you do it for, me?” The weaker sex rose to the occasion. While Hawkins’s anxious brother was hurrying to the house from the railway station the woman followed the man to the single bed in the rear room. Upon it the man laid himself, and willing victim, set up a new and startling variation of the criminal code, by inviting the woman to “commit his suicide for him”, by murdering him. The woman pressed to the man’s temple the revolver that would kill a man, with a bullet that would kill a cat, and pulled the trigger.  The bullet hit the bone, flattened and stuck inside. Then the man who should have been dead followed the woman who was waiting for death into the front bedroom, and

they lay upon the double bed to die together.

Thus the anxious brother and the police found them and hurried them off to the Kalgoorlie Hospital. Thus too, was presented to the dapper Detective Parker, the intriguing mystery of the Single Bed. What happened there? Piece by piece, with the aid of sundry interviews at the hospital, the detective unravelled the story of the tragedy that, has no precedent in “West Australian,’ criminal history. The scattered blood stains on the single bed in the rear room indicated that one of the suiciders had been shot there. Yet neither the man nor the woman had shot himself or herself there. Now, how does the law stand? Neither party had been charged. It was a Suicide Pact. The nerve of the man failed him. The woman stepped into the breach and did his part as well as hers, at his request.

Of what is she guilty if the case is proved against her? Rationally, the world will say that if both recover, both will be charged with attempted suicide. But the law will doubtless say that because the woman shot herself and then shot the man, she must stand accused of attempted suicide of herself and attempted murder of the man. The man’s invitation to kill does not matter. The law does not give liberty to kill. So, if the man dies, the woman, if she is judged sane, must stand her trial for murder.  A strange complex is it not? Pity the Crown Prosecutor, the Judge, and the jury. Strange are the crimes to be found in the criminal calendar, but surely none is stranger than this, which may lead to a charge of murder or attempted murder by the weaker sex that confessed to helping the stronger sex to carry out a mutual agreement of suicide.

The Aftermath:
1. Both parties survived their attempted suicide.
2. Charles Hawkins appeared in Court in March on the charge of attempted suicide, he pleaded guilty and was and was placed on a good behaviour bond for 12 months.

3. Mary Smith was brought before the court in April and was charged with attempted suicide and was released under her own recognisance for six months for the amount of £10. Her relatives took charge of her.

4. Just prior to the event Charles and Mary had bought a Tatts lottery ticket and gave it to a friend to collect should it win

5. Charles’s brother, Harry Hawkins, told the police that he had received a telegram and a letter from Charles telling him to “Come at Once”. Charles said in the letter that he had hardly left his house for three months and was due to start back at work from long service leave, but he was very weak with his nerves. Harry said his brother had received a blow to the head as a child which had affected him all his life.

About Charles and Mary:
Charles Francis HAWKINS: after the failed suicide attempt Charles spent 54 days in the hospital before being discharged. He was born in Amhurst Victoria in 1873. He was the son of Joseph Francis Hawkins and Anne Phoebe Matthews. In 1903 he married Isabella Robeson in Perth WA. He is shown on the Electoral roll for Kalgoorlie by 1912. Charles was to die not long after his suicide attempt in November of 1931. From the following notice, it looks like he remained close to Mary.
Charles’s wife remarried  David Abraham Johnson in South Australia in 1906. This may have been a bigamous.

Goldfields Observer 1 November 1931, page 1

Kalgoorlie Miner 8 December 1931, page 2
IMPORTANT PROPERTY SALE TOMORROW AT 181 FORREST-STREET (Between Railway Station and Goods Shed.) At 2 p.m. sharp. CECIL BROWN and CO., having been favoured with instructions from the executors of the estate of the late Charles Francis Hawkins, to sell by public auction, the undermentioned FREEHOLD PROPERTY, being the whole of the land comprising north-eastern Kalgoorlie Lot R244, situate at 181 Forrest street, and being the whole of the land comprised in Certificate of Title, Reg. Vol. 687. Folio 16, on Which is erected a substantially built 5-roomed weatherboard house, all iron lined throughout, lofty walls, large rooms, spacious verandahs, all in excellent order, all conveniences, securely fenced. Also -the whole of the HANDSOME FURNITURE and General Household Effects. A good clean first-class lot, much of which has not been used.

Elizabeth Mary Smith:   After the failed suicide attempt, Mary spent 72 days in the Kalgoorlie Hospital before being discharged. She was born in Hotham Victoria in 1892 and was a twin to brother James Edward. She was the daughter of James Pollock and Susan Hallinan. In 1914 in Perth WA, Elizabeth had an illegitimate daughter called Marjory. In 1919 Elizabeth Mary Pollock married Daniel Ross Smith in Perth WA. The couple had two children: Theodore Daniel Smith born 1919 and Patricia Kazaih SMITH born 1921. Elizabeth was to be widowed in 1926 when her husband died. He was a miner aged 58yrs and he died under anesthesia prior to an operation from heart failure, he is buried in the Kalgoorlie Cemetery. It’s not know how the two children were admitted to the convent but it could be because Elizabeth was unable to care for them.  Within the next two years, she would meet and form a relationship with Charles Hawkins.

Elizabeth’s father James Pollock founded the Pollock garage show in the well know photograph below in Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie. During the time of Elizabeth’s troubles, she had both parents, two brothers and a sister in Kalgoorlie.

James Pollock Garage, Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie – Photo SLWA

In Oct 1931 (a month before Charles’s death)  she was admitted to the Kalgoorlie Hospital with Influenza under the name of Elizabeth Mary Hawkins. Her address was 181 Forrest Street, Kalgoorlie. It’s not known if Elizabeth did regain custody of her children, but in 1932 in Sydney NSW she married Reginald Pearson who was from Kanowna near Kalgoorlie. They had one son, Reginald Neil born in 1934. I have been unable to find Elizabeth’s death after much searching and can find no mention of her after Reginald’s birth.