A Scandal in Bohemia by Gideon Haigh (Hamish Hamilton, 2018) tells an incredible story. Mollie Dean (1905-30) was very attractive Melburnian, a young woman who had great plans for the future. Many men said she was an exceptional person, with great vitality and was a good conversationalist. Women (like playwright Betty Roland) said Mollie was sultry or sullen-looking. Everyone agreed she was slim with dark bobbed hair and simple makeup. And that she was forceful and Bohemian, wanting to energetically discuss art, culture and politics with the males. Clearly Mollie was a rising star, absorbed in literature and writing a novel that would be called Monsters Not Men.
Mollie’s family was already problem-filled. Her father George, a tough school principal, died during her childhood. Her mother Ethel Dean was manipulative, controlling and physically violent. Ethel had just one plan for Mollie: to quickly marry her off, to a specific groom - mechanic Adam Graham (the Deans’ lodger in Elwood in 1921).
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Mrs Ethel Dean (left) and Mollie Dean (right)
Truth, 1st February 1931
But Mollie was talented and Adam Graham was not. She was a special education teacher in North Melbourne, and by her early 20s had won literary awards at Teachers’ College. So instead of going out with the very boring Adam Graham, she socialised with George Browne, Vice-Principal of the Teachers’ College, composer Hubert Clifford and law student George Sell.
Mum Ethel apparently did not know about Molly’s dearest lover, Colin Colahan (1897-1987). After all, Colahan was safely married and was therefore "out of Mollie’s reach".
Mum Ethel upped her violence, stalking Mollie with Adam Graham, and confronting Browne, Clifford and Sell to express displeasure at their relationships. Once, when Clifford returned Mollie to the front gate, Ethel rushed outside and dragged her daughter inside by the hair. Mollie apologised to the men regarding her vengeful mother.
In Nov 1930, late on her 25th birthday, Mollie arrived at St Kilda railway station. At midnight she found a public telephone box to contact Colahan at home in Hawthorn to discuss leaving her teaching job in favour of journalism. Colahan told her that any hurried decision would be foolish! Anyhow... the call caused Mollie to miss the last Brighton tram at 12:11am, so she walked the 2ks home.
Some witnesses saw Mollie sitting outside the St Kilda station and noticed a be-suited man, walking with a peculiar gait, watching her. Others saw her being followed by the same man as she entered her street and was close to home. But they did not see her as she was brutally bludgeoned from behind, dragged into a laneway, killed and mutilated. On the footpath outside her front gate, the police found a pool of blood, her hat, coat, handbag and book. Dean was rushed to hospital, but died from haemorrhage.
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Colin Colahan (left) and Adam Graham (right)
Truth, 1st February 1931
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Colahan was a loyal follower at the studio of famous tonal artist Max Meldrum, promoted in The Bulletin by Mervyn Skipper, and by Betty Roland and Sue Vanderkelen in their cultural salons. Even one day before her death, Colahan was completing a lovely and fresh nude of Mollie folded into an armchair. The painting, called Sleep, was on Colahan’s easel as she was being murdered.
Lena Skipper, who with her husband Mervyn Skipper and others founded the famous art colony Montsalvat in the 1930s, wrote of Mollie in a detailed diary. And playwright Betty Roland featured Mollie in her history of the Montsalvat circle. Luckily handwritten letters from Mollie survive in the State Library of Victoria.
For decades Australians have read the novel My Brother Jack (1964), George Johnston’s story of inter-war Melbourne. Yet few would have recognised that the plot aped this true murder story of 25-year-old schoolteacher, novelist and Bohemian Mollie Dean, mistress of artist Colin Colahan. The author George Johnston never met the victim; only 20+ years after the events did he become close to the sociable Colahan and Johnston’s famous wife, Charmian Clift. The novel was then serialised for the ABC in 1965 by the very same Charmian Clift. Finally Colahan’s work appeared in Misty Moderns, a 2008 National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition; the catalogue’s chronology noted her murder VERY briefly.
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A Scandal in Bohemia by Gideon Haigh (left)
Mollie’s family was already problem-filled. Her father George, a tough school principal, died during her childhood. Her mother Ethel Dean was manipulative, controlling and physically violent. Ethel had just one plan for Mollie: to quickly marry her off, to a specific groom - mechanic Adam Graham (the Deans’ lodger in Elwood in 1921).
Truth, 1st February 1931
But Mollie was talented and Adam Graham was not. She was a special education teacher in North Melbourne, and by her early 20s had won literary awards at Teachers’ College. So instead of going out with the very boring Adam Graham, she socialised with George Browne, Vice-Principal of the Teachers’ College, composer Hubert Clifford and law student George Sell.
Mum Ethel apparently did not know about Molly’s dearest lover, Colin Colahan (1897-1987). After all, Colahan was safely married and was therefore "out of Mollie’s reach".
Mum Ethel upped her violence, stalking Mollie with Adam Graham, and confronting Browne, Clifford and Sell to express displeasure at their relationships. Once, when Clifford returned Mollie to the front gate, Ethel rushed outside and dragged her daughter inside by the hair. Mollie apologised to the men regarding her vengeful mother.
In Nov 1930, late on her 25th birthday, Mollie arrived at St Kilda railway station. At midnight she found a public telephone box to contact Colahan at home in Hawthorn to discuss leaving her teaching job in favour of journalism. Colahan told her that any hurried decision would be foolish! Anyhow... the call caused Mollie to miss the last Brighton tram at 12:11am, so she walked the 2ks home.
Some witnesses saw Mollie sitting outside the St Kilda station and noticed a be-suited man, walking with a peculiar gait, watching her. Others saw her being followed by the same man as she entered her street and was close to home. But they did not see her as she was brutally bludgeoned from behind, dragged into a laneway, killed and mutilated. On the footpath outside her front gate, the police found a pool of blood, her hat, coat, handbag and book. Dean was rushed to hospital, but died from haemorrhage.
This murder came straight after another shocking and unsolved tragedy, the murder of 11-year-old Mena Griffiths in Nov 1930. Her strangled body was found in a derelict house in Ormond. Then another murder, 16-year-old Hazel Wilson, followed six weeks later. Sinister!
Truth, 1st February 1931
At the coronial inquest (Jan 1931) re Mollie Dean, endless sensations were revealed. Attention focussed on Molly’s personal life, her appalling mother Mrs Ethel Dean, and her mother’s dodgy relationship with young Adam Graham. The police noted that Adam Graham had a peculiar walking gait; her blood was found on his suit; and that mum Ethel strongly objected to Mollie’s bohemian, arty friends.
Witness statements collected during the police investigation and placed in the Public Record Office Victoria were examined as part of the coroner’s briefing notes. The coroner Mr Grant agreed with the police, and found that Adam Graham had maliciously inflicted the injuries.
Graham was ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court, but for some reason, the Crown Prosecutor said the police and the coroner were wrong. In Mar 1931 the Crown Prosecutor advised that no trial be started. There was to be no justice for lovely young Mollie Dean!
Six years later a completely unconnected man confessed to the killings of teenagers Mena Griffiths and Hazel Wilson, so even Mollie’s old colleagues lost interest in Mollie’s murder. Some of her friends left Australia; others got busy developing Victoria’s art colony Montsalvat in semi-rural Eltham. And by then, even Mollie’s correspondence was thought to have disappeared.
Witness statements collected during the police investigation and placed in the Public Record Office Victoria were examined as part of the coroner’s briefing notes. The coroner Mr Grant agreed with the police, and found that Adam Graham had maliciously inflicted the injuries.
Graham was ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court, but for some reason, the Crown Prosecutor said the police and the coroner were wrong. In Mar 1931 the Crown Prosecutor advised that no trial be started. There was to be no justice for lovely young Mollie Dean!
Six years later a completely unconnected man confessed to the killings of teenagers Mena Griffiths and Hazel Wilson, so even Mollie’s old colleagues lost interest in Mollie’s murder. Some of her friends left Australia; others got busy developing Victoria’s art colony Montsalvat in semi-rural Eltham. And by then, even Mollie’s correspondence was thought to have disappeared.
Truth Newspaper, 30th Nov 1930
Lena Skipper, who with her husband Mervyn Skipper and others founded the famous art colony Montsalvat in the 1930s, wrote of Mollie in a detailed diary. And playwright Betty Roland featured Mollie in her history of the Montsalvat circle. Luckily handwritten letters from Mollie survive in the State Library of Victoria.
For decades Australians have read the novel My Brother Jack (1964), George Johnston’s story of inter-war Melbourne. Yet few would have recognised that the plot aped this true murder story of 25-year-old schoolteacher, novelist and Bohemian Mollie Dean, mistress of artist Colin Colahan. The author George Johnston never met the victim; only 20+ years after the events did he become close to the sociable Colahan and Johnston’s famous wife, Charmian Clift. The novel was then serialised for the ABC in 1965 by the very same Charmian Clift. Finally Colahan’s work appeared in Misty Moderns, a 2008 National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition; the catalogue’s chronology noted her murder VERY briefly.
The Portrait of Molly Dean by Katherine Kovacic (right)
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Why did Mollie Dean's virtually disappear from Melbourne's art-world history? Perhaps Max Meldrum and Colin Colahan belonged to Melbourne’s very cliquish artistic circles and these proved too cliquish for poor Mollie Dean. Or perhaps she was just too assertive for a young woman. Fortunately her story is now being reassessed in a new novel (Katherine Kovacic’s Portrait of Molly Dean, 2018).
Why did Mollie Dean's virtually disappear from Melbourne's art-world history? Perhaps Max Meldrum and Colin Colahan belonged to Melbourne’s very cliquish artistic circles and these proved too cliquish for poor Mollie Dean. Or perhaps she was just too assertive for a young woman. Fortunately her story is now being reassessed in a new novel (Katherine Kovacic’s Portrait of Molly Dean, 2018).