Bigamy is much less common today. Paperwork is digitised, and marriage is no longer the sole criteria under which two mutually attracted adults may live under one roof. And for that, women should be eternally grateful.
One hundred years ago, an unhappy or hasty marriage was for life. The law was written to preserve the sanctity of the married state, and to obtain a divorce was an expensive, time-consuming and harrowingly public business. Escaping to another relationship took some doing, and often involved committing bigamy, a resort that was growing more difficult to hide. Gone were the days of turning up in a distant place with bands on the appropriate fingers and declaring that you were Mr and Mrs Murgatroyd, of the Thargomindah Murgatroyds. Now, a suspicious local could make telephone or telegraphic contact with Thargomindah and confirm that no such family had ever graced that locale with its presence.
Fortunately perhaps, the provisions of Section 656 of the Criminal Code permitted Judges and Magistrates to sentence first offenders to good behaviour bonds, rather than prison. This meant that a lot of very unhappy situations were not made even worse.
Ada Allen
Ada Allen, aged 27, of slight build and with brown hair and eyes had a sad journey to the dock in the Toowoomba District Court. She had been born Ada Coomer in Inverell, New South Wales in 1894, and in 1910, at the age of 16 married Frederick Allen. All of the relevant adults gave their consent to the union. Ada stuck it out with Frederick Allen for four years, before leaving him, and going to Queensland.
As a young woman who could only barely read and write her name, the employment market was limited, and Ada laboured as a domestic before meeting William George Hayman, a timber getter from Barcoola near Chinchilla. Ada was calling herself Ada Ryan, and Hayman was keen to marry her – to the point of pressuring the not very sophisticated young woman. They went through the form of marriage in Chinchilla in 1915, and Ada stayed with him for three years before leaving him. Until the War ended.
Ada travelled to the Banana district and worked long and hard in a sawmill cutting timber, before going to work at the Smith’s New Haven station. The Smiths thought very highly of Ada, and gave her a good character in Court. The Court sentenced her to a good behaviour bond, and released her to live with and work for the Smiths.
Ada Allen was poorly educated, given in marriage at sixteen, and had run away from that marriage under an assumed name at twenty. She was pressured into a bigamous marriage by William George Hayman, who it turned out was not the ardent suitor of Ada’s dreams, but a man seeking to avoid conscription. She stayed with Hayman until the War was over, and he could fend for himself. She then struck out on her own, doing manual labour. The sun-browned woman in the release photo looks very timid and much older than her twenty-seven years.
Kathleen Ballam
Kathleen McCluskey Ballam Neville Ellis has the most complicated history of all of the bigamy cases of the time. The reports of her adventures don’t quite know what to make of her. She seems an unlikely candidate for scandalous bigamist who, in her own words, “carried on” with another man in her family home. Her release photos show a disheveled young woman, the bow at her collar askew, and hair coming loose from its moorings. She looks mildly amused by her predicament, and the notoriety it had brought her. By the time she had this photo taken, she had two husbands at once, a child by each, and had lost one of her children.
War Bride
On May 16 1916, Kathleen McCluskey, aged twenty, married Michael Benjamin Ballam at St Luke’s church, Charlotte Street, Brisbane. Ballam was in the AIF, and was shipped overseas shortly after the wedding. When he returned, he lived with Kathleen and her mother at Mrs McCluskey’s house. In April 1917, they had a little girl, Pearly May Norma Ballam.
A few months after the baby was born, Mrs McCluskey took a boarder, who went by the name Jack Richard Neville. That made five people living together, and Neville had a rather forceful presence from the first. He talked his way out of paying board, and indeed Mrs McCluskey found herself buying a new suit for him because he lacked something good to wear.
Pack Your Duds
Neville found young Mrs Ballam interesting company. Michael Ballam noticed the attention the boarder was paying to his wife, and complained that she paid more attention to Neville than him. Neville told Ballam that Kathleen was “too good for a Cockney like you,” adding that he would give Ballam something to be jealous about. Being tussled over seemed to please Kathleen, and she responded to Neville’s attentions.
Matters came to a head when Jack Neville took to wearing Kathleen Ballam’s wedding ring. When a frustrated Ballam challenged him over this, Neville replied, “Are you man enough to come and take it off? You had better pack your duds and get.” Ballam, defeated, packed his duds and got, in March 1919.
Over Mrs McCluskey’s horrified objections, Kathleen and Jack began to live as man and wife. Kathleen thought it was love at first sight, but felt pressured to go through a bigamous marriage with him. He convinced her to give her name as Kathleen Manning, and to burn her original marriage certificate. This she did, and they married on 16 May 1919.
Tragically, Pearly May Ballam died in Brisbane Hospital three days after the wedding, aged two. Michael Ballam came to the hospital to see the child, and found that Neville had gained entry to the child’s ward by claiming to be the girl’s father. Ballam had stayed well clear of his wife and her new partner because he felt he couldn’t control his feelings about the situation. But he mustered enough grace to offer to “let bygones be bygones” at the hospital. Neville would have nothing to do with Ballam, or his offer.
It wasn’t until Kathleen gave birth to Neville’s baby in February 1920, that the ever-patient Michael Ballam stopped giving his military allotment money to his wife.
Kathleen named the baby Kathleen Audrey Neville, although, perhaps wary of too many documents piling up about the situation, registered her as illegitimate, but named Neville as the father. The couple split up in July 1920, and Neville moved on to another woman. Kathleen remained at her mother’s house, where the Police came to visit her about some information they had received about a bigamous marriage.
Bigamy Trials
Kathleen willingly gave a statement about her situation, admitting the bigamy, and telling the Police that she had been pressured to go through the wedding ceremony with Jack Neville. She gave evidence of her own crime on the condition that Neville should also be charged with bigamy.
Kathleen’s hearing came first. Jack Neville attended Court and cheerfully gave evidence against her, claiming that he had no idea that she was already a married woman when he married her.
Mr. McGill (for Kathleen Ballam): Do you expect people to believe that? Your claim is that you have been innocent in the matter – that you have been the dupe.
Neville: I don’t know about the dupe, but I have been the goat in the matter.
Mr McGill: The position is you have been “had”?
Neville: Apparently.
Mr. McGill: You are the sort of man who would contribute to the support of your child, aren’t you?
Neville: In certain circumstances, yes; in these circumstances, no.
However persuasive Neville had been with the Ballam-McCluskey family, he did not stand up well to the interrogation he received from Kathleen’s lawyer. He admitted that his real name was Callinan, and that he had been convicted of dishonesty offences five times before, and had served sentences in two States. Still, he left the Court confident that he had given enough evidence to convict Kathleen.
Kathleen May Ballam was given a first offender’s good behaviour bond, posing for that rumpled, bemused police photograph on release.
Jack Richard Neville, having done his civic duty as a witness, was appalled when a Constable approached him in Queen Street and advised that he would be charged with bigamy as well. “I won’t forget this for you; you are at the back of the McClusky crowd: you went against me in the Court the other day. I will have them all charged with perjury.” He was found guilty and given three years’ hard labour in prison.
Divorce
After all of this, poor Michael Ballam went to the Supreme Court (as one did in those days) and filed for a divorce from Kathleen McClusky Ballam. Informed by the Bench that his wife’s bigamous marriage had ended his own with her, he replied that he needed a certificate from the Court.
Ballam gave evidence about the seismic impact of Jack Neville’s arrival in his family’s life. He described the scene at the hospital, when Neville had claimed to be Pearly Mae’s father. (His Honour: I never heard of such impudence.) He had even tried a reconciliation before the funeral, but was rejected. The decree nisi was granted on the spot.
Kathleen, now a divorced woman with a baby, waited a clear two years before venturing once more down the aisle. She married Joseph Ellis at Brisbane in November 1923, without incident.
Shake your head all you will at modern morality, but then think of all of those Adas and Kathleens who married young and regretted it, then married again and really regretted it.
Moreton Bay and More 