The little-known side of a prominent Australian missionary and teacher

Extract from Ian D. Richardson’s non-fiction book, God’sTriangle, about the church scandal 

and cover-up revolving around Florence Martha “Florrie” Cox, her husband 

Frank E. Paice, and A. Olga Johnston

Rev. Hedley John Sutton 1876-1946 

Much is known about my missionary great uncle, Hedley Sutton, for reasons that I will explain shortly. He was a man of exceptional intellect and from a large and fairly ordinary family. In some respects he could be seen as a marginal player in the story of God’s Triangle, but in truth his involvement was significant.

There were two chief reasons for this: 1) he was the most senior Baptist missionary in East Bengal at the time Frank, Florrie and Olga were there, and 2) Hedley and Florrie were members of the same extended family. (Hedley’s sister, Ethel, was married to Florrie’s brother, Arthur junior.)

Hedley’s parents, John and Lucy Sutton, emigrated to Melbourne from Lincolnshire, England, where John was an agricultural labourer. He worked for many years for the Hawthorn City Council, doing labouring jobs, including sweeping the streets. He was hard working and financially astute and at one point owned three houses.

John was, by all accounts, a severe, very religious and daunting man, with little understanding of the many children he had fathered. By contrast, Lucy was considered warm and affectionate. Nonetheless, Hedley felt aggrieved that his mother was much less keen than his father on his pursuing academic studies. 

Hedley was the seventh of 12 children born to John and Lucy. His education began at the Auburn State School before he became a student of Wesley College then Melbourne University’s Trinity College by virtue of hard-won scholarships.

Hedley grew up to be austere, hard-working, hugely-competitive and rather self-centred. His competitive spirit was obvious not just from his academic studies but also as a keen amateur footballer.

As a college and university student, Hedley was forever conscious that he was a labourer’s son mixing with the privileged children of the prominent and wealthy. This rankled, especially as the scholarship money had to be supplemented by part-time jobs, tutoring fees, loans from his father and prizes from educational competitions.

Hedley’s main interests, aside from his faith, were the classics and languages. Immediately after graduation from Melbourne University with an honours degree in his early twenties, he was appointed classics master at Brighton Grammar in Melbourne, a post he held for five years.

Hedley was brought up as a Methodist, but in his matriculation year at Wesley College, he transferred his religious commitment to the Baptists and remained with them for the rest of his life.

This conversion to the Baptist faith led to his training as a missionary at Ormond College in Melbourne. He was ordained in November 1903 and sailed later that month for a missionary life in East Bengal. Apart from two periods of furlough, he remained there until 1927.

Hedley’s second furlough was primarily to marry Miss Elsie Luke, a daughter of a respected and financially-comfortable Australian family. She was a niece of Aeneas Gunn who wrote the Australian classic We of the Never Never and a cousin of Sir Hudson Fysh, a co-founder of the Australian airline, Qantas.

Hedley and Elsie became friends through her role as secretary of the Baptist Women’s Missionary Union. By the time they married in Melbourne in June 1920, Hedley was about to turn 44 and Elsie was

49. Elsie accompanied Hedley back to Mymensingh in East Bengal in November the following year, but could not adapt to the hardships and health hazards routinely faced by a missionary wife. She returned to Australia in poor health early in 1927, to be followed late that year by Hedley, who then resigned as a missionary.

Hedley had been heavily involved during his 1920/21 furlough in plans to set up a Baptist school in Melbourne to honour the memory of the missionary William Carey. Carey Grammar was established in 1923 and on Hedley’s resignation from the missionary service, he was appointed Vice-Principal. He held that post until retiring in 1941.

Hedley was rather unworldly and did not seem to be a man in danger of being overwhelmed by lustful thoughts about the opposite sex. In his youth, he did have a friendship with an Emily Winstone who lived in the  Melbourne area. This did not appear to be an intimate affair and Emily went on to marry someone else.

When Hedley was in his early forties, still single and working in Mymensingh, he produced Hedley–His Story, a lengthy part-work about his life before becoming a missionary.

It was hand-written for Elsie’s private consumption, but found its way into the archives at Carey Grammar. Hedley would sign off each chapter in this private autobiography with “Elsie’s loving lover, Hedley” or “Hedley Dah”. There was no indication, otherwise, that he was writing to the woman who was to become his wife, though to be fair, I did find one rather obtuse love poem that he once sent to Elsie.

Hedley’s siblings were barely mentioned in his life story—the first reference, half way through, was a passing one to a sister, Lydia—and at no time did he mention that another sister, Ethel, was married to Florrie Cox’s brother, Arthur. But there were a number of affectionate references to his friendship with Emily Winstone. There was no indication that he thought Elsie might regard this as a little insensitive.

The structure and content of his autobiography was curious and revealed unintended sides to Hedley’s character. He wrote almost entirely in the third person. In other words, “Hedley did this”, “Hedley did that”, rather than use the word “I” or “me”.

It could be argued that this was from a sense of modesty, but there is little modesty on display in his life story. Indeed, he seemed rather pleased with himself. At the same time, there was an underlying sense of grievance about the attitude of his parents towards him and his achievements and the snobbery he encountered as a student.

There was the revealing entry he made in my mother’s autograph book in 1929: “To learn what to love and what to hate, what to honour and what to despise, is the purpose of education.” A truly astonishing thing to claim, not least for a teacher and devout Christian. Thus the cumulative effect of Hedley’s austere, rather self-centred character suggests to me that he was not emotionally well equipped to deal with the events of God’s Triangle. 

Hedley, who died in Melbourne in February 1946, had an impressive impact on Carey Grammar, particularly in its early days, and a whole section of the school’s archive has been devoted to his life and his works. His contribution to society is further commemorated by having the Baptist Hedley Sutton Community Aged Care home in Camberwell, Melbourne, named after him. Unfortunately, his writings—at least the ones that have survived—contained no references to Florrie Cox or the cover-up.

How true are film or television "true stories"?

I've learned through bitter experience that scepticism is required when coming across a movie or a television drama that is "based on a true story". Sadly, many are more fiction than fact, often unnecessarily so.

The full story is HERE on my website.

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Paperback, Kindle and ePub copies of God's Triangle are available HERE

The importance of genealogy

One of my more insensitive friends once told me that genealogical research was akin to train spotting. Rubbish. Family history research requires the instincts of an ace detective and a fascination for knowledge about our historical context. 

Would I have taken such an interest in the causes of the First World War and the horrors it caused had I not learnt that my maternal grandfather, Arthur J. G. Cox, was gassed on the Western Front in 1917? Probably not. Would I have learnt anything about airships if I hadn't discovered that my other grandfather, John S. Richardson, had been chief inspector on the famous R34 airship? No. Would I know anything about the shocking Highland clearances in Scotland if several of my wife’s ancestors not be driven from their homes by greedy land owners anxious to replace people with sheep? Not likely. 

Now tell me what I would have learnt about life if I had spent my days gathering locomotive numbers? Nothing of historical importance.

Genealogy: The complexity of marriages and other sexual relationships

Modern society’s broad acceptance of cohabiting couples and children born out of wedlock is creating a severe headache for genealogists who love to see their ancestors’ families neatly laid out.  

Previous ages, though often dominated by strict church dogma, had more than their share of de facto marriages and births judged to be “illegitimate”, but nothing compares with the present time. 

      
One of my friends had three marriages and at least two settled cohabiting relationships. Another friend married the same woman twice with a divorce and a 10-year gap between the marriages.  And I know of another man who married the same woman twice with a divorce and another marriage and divorce in between.

These examples of multiple relationships are raising serious challenges for family historians. At what point, for example, does a sexual relationship become formally recognised? Is it when they move in together? When they have been together, say, for a year? When they get married, if they ever do?

It’s a nightmare.

Then there is the related issue of homosexual relationships, both male and female. If a same-sex couple moves into an established relationship, should that become part of the family tree, no matter how messy it might be judged in genealogical terms? I think it should. So, what would I then do if a lesbian relative not only married another woman, but with the aid of artificial insemination, had children? Would I skirt around the subject and write “father unknown”? And finally, what should go on the family tree when a traditional male-female couple have a child whose natural father was a sperm donor?

Questions, questions, questions. But no simple answers.

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The book resulting from a story I stumbled across while researching my family history:

https://www.godstriangle.com/

How X/Twitter can boost a social campaign

X, formerly called Twitter, has a very poor reputation – a reputation that is often well deserved. It can be very nasty; it can be dishonest; it can be boring. But it can also be a powerful tool for good, if used sensibly. I use it as a source of useful and accurate information, doing my best to filter out the rubbish and lies, and as a weapon against local council failures. I also use it with modest success to promote my books and my blog.  In all those cases, It works well for me.

More recently, I offered to help Linda Lawless, a friend and member of my wife’s extended family in Australia boost her campaign to get proper recognition from the Catholic Church that she was secretly fathered by a Catholic priest. After months of agonising, she decided to go public about the discovery she made through a DNA test and agreed to join others in this compelling Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PADNmpeZEeM&t=329s

The ABC uploaded the documentary onto its YouTube channel late last September, but it didn’t attract a great deal of interest, even though the program rated very well when original transmitted in Australia. Between the posting in September last year and January 7this year when I took a special interest, there had been just 4,542 viewings. I began tweeting the link to interested persons and groups, hoping to increase the viewings to, perhaps, 20,000. But Linda’s story obviously captured the imagination of a great many, and when I last checked, well over half-a-million had viewed it, and it was still climbing by many hundreds of viewings each day.

It should be added that Linda’s campaign is not just for herself, but for the many mothers and children around the world who have suffered as a result of priests breaking their vow of celibacy. A great many people have commented on this documentary, and an overwhelming number think that the celibacy rule is at the heart of child abuse and the shame and secrecy surrounding children of priests. But it doesn’t appear that this rule is going to change any time soon, as a Vatican spokesman interviewed in the documentary described priestly celibacy as a “precious gift”. Some gift!

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A friend has pointed out that Lord (Roy) Hattersley, once one of the highest-profile politicians in the United Kingdom, was also the son of a Catholic priest -- born in truly scandalous circumstances. The details are HERE.

A special photograph that escaped being destroyed

     As a keen genealogist I have many family photographs that I would regard as “special”, but this is one that I wasn’t supposed to see. Nor were any other descendants of the couple who are pictured.  

      The couple were my great aunt, Florence “Florrie” Cox, and the Rev. Frank E. Paice, on the day they were married in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in December 1914. 

Both Frank Paice and Florrie Cox were Baptist missionaries from Melbourne, Australia, stationed in the early 1900s in East Bengal, now Bangladesh.  

Their marriage fell apart in scandal for two primary reasons: 1) Frank Paice had fallen for another missionary, Olga Johnston, during the two-year engagement that the church required Florrie and Frank to spend apart. 2) Florrie had a rare variation of the intersex condition, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Although she looked and felt like a woman, she had male chromosomes and no internal female organs. 

When Frank and Olga’s scandalous affair became known, both were forced to resign.  Florrie returned to Melbourne, but was a family embarrassment with the breakdown of her marriage a relentlessly taboo subject.  

The Australian press – normally addicted to such juicy stories – was prevailed upon to look the other way when the divorce went through the Supreme Court and the judge ordered that the file be “closed for all time”.  

Frank and Olga married on their return to Bengal where Frank took up an engineering management job. 

When they returned to Australia some years later, they reinvented themselves as pillars of society, with Frank taking on a number of high-profile civic positions in Melbourne.  No mention was ever made of Frank or Olga’s time in India or their six years as missionaries. Not even their only son and close friends knew of their missionary past. 

I learned of the scandal only because my mother let it slip when we came across a photograph taken just before Florrie was about to depart for her wedding in Calcutta. 

It took me 18 months of email exchanges, letters and telephone calls to get a Supreme Court judge in Melbourne to lift the ban on access to the divorce file, revealing Florrie’s condition. But nowhere could I find photographs of Frank and Florrie’s wedding as they had been destroyed by the family – probably out of embarrassment and anger.  

      
Then I got lucky.  

      
A very distant cousin showed me a photograph of two people he could not identify. I was stunned to see that it was Frank and Florrie after their wedding at the Circular Road Baptist Chapel, Calcutta.  

      
My hunt was over thanks to a large dollop of luck, and the fact that the distant cousin's family had never been told about the scandal and didn't realise the photo's significance.  

The story of Florrie Cox and Frank Paice is told in Ian D. Richardson’s book God’s Triangle, available in paperback, Kindle and ebook HERE . 

Travelling Down Under: How to translate Strine, Australia's national language.

The first 30 years of my life were spent in Australia and since moving to London, I have made at least one trip every year to the land of my birth. But despite the frequency of my visits, I am increasingly finding it difficult to understand the language.

It now seems that most descriptive names in Australia are reduced to words ending in “o” or “ie”.

Over the years I have become  accustomed to “arvo” (afternoon), “tinnie” (can of beer or a small tin boat), "cossie" (swimming costume) “rellie” or “rello” (a relative) and being referred to as a “journo” (journalist), but what was I to make of a headline in the Australian papers about a man’s leg being chewed off by a “saltie”? 

I found that answer only by reading well down into the story and learning that a “saltie” is a salt water crocodile. I also noted that the man with the chewed leg was in a critical condition in “hossie” (hospital).

On one recent trip, I was challenged by a large illuminated sign over a highway “Have you renewed your rego?” My immediate response was to shout: “Well, I might renew it if I knew what it was”. A friend later enlightened me. “Rego” was short for car registration, the Australian equivalent of the UK’s road tax. 

I note in recent emails the increasing use of "renos". This turns out to be the Strine short form for renovations. 

Some of this word reduction and slang is amusing, and I couldn’t help smiling when I learned some time ago that “carked it” meant that someone had died (i.e. become a carcass). On a recent trip to my homeland several people used "carked" in their conversion, such as "Did you know that old Fred had 'carked' it?" 

I also love the much-used “hoon”, the short form of hooligan, and “rort”, the term most frequently applied to phoney expenses and rip-offs by politicians (“pollies”).

What surprises me is how the slang has been adopted in recent years by Australia’s mainstream media. 

It is common, indeed usual, for Australian newspapers to refer to “firies” (firemen), ambos (ambulance drivers), and “schoolies” (drunken end-of-school-year parties).

Scanning the Australian papers on the internet the other day I also came across “tradie” (tradesman, such as plumber, electrician and carpenter), “boatie” (someone with a small boat), “yachtie” (a yachtsman) and “servo” (a motor vehicle service station).

And then there are the slang words that pop up in emails and social media postings from my friends (“mates” is preferred) and relatives (sorry, rellos) in "Godzone" (Australia): There is “bowlo” (member of a lawn bowls club), “sando” (sandwich) and “trannie” (no longer a transistor radio; now a transexual). Also, a friend reported that their child had a "tantie" (tantrum).

I received an email from a friend who apologised for failing to "corro" recently. Corro? Yes, of course. That turned out to be the short form for "correspond". He told me that he had been busy with the builders brought in to do some "renos" (renovations).

I recently tore my hamstring in a fall. I received several sympathetic emails from Australian friends in which they referred to my "hammy". 

Finally, I should tell you about a recent email in which a women friend heaped praise on her “gynie”. No doubt, by now, you will have decoded this to be a reference to her gynaecologist.

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And how did the Aussie accent come about? Here are some suggestions:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/28/drunken_slurring_aussies_strine_forefathers/