What a newspaper tells us — and what it cannot
This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (#AtoZChallenge), where I’m exploring historical newspaper clippings—one story at a time—through my series “Behind the Newsprint.”
THE CLIPPING
The following item appeared in the Camperdown Chronicle
on Tuesday, 14 June 1938, three days after Lincoln James Todman died at a
country dance in the small farming community of Brucknell, near Cobden, in
south-western Victoria. It is the most detailed of at least ten newspaper items
published across Australia in the days that followed.
“SUDDEN DEATH AT BRUCKNELL DANCE
Sudden tragedy occurred during a
dance which was held at “The Barn” on Mr. Ludeman’s property at Brucknell on
Saturday night last. About 11.30 o’clock, Mr. L. Todman, a visitor from
Melbourne, collapsed and died during a dance, and when a doctor, who had been
summoned from Terang, arrived, he pronounced life extinct. Prior to the arrival
of the doctor, Miss Waite, a local nurse, did all that could possibly be done
in the circumstances. The tragic event naturally upset the gathering, and
several young ladies fainted and had to receive attention. Much sympathy is
felt for Mr. Todman’s young widow and two children, who had accompanied him on
his holiday to Mr. Norman Crump, Mrs. Todman’s uncle. Prior to his death, Mr.
Todman appeared to be in good health and excellent spirits. He had been out
shooting during the afternoon, and appeared to have thoroughly enjoyed himself.
He was employed by the Shell Oil Company in Melbourne. An inquest will be held.”[i]
WHAT IT
SUGGESTS
At first reading the item is a model of the genre:
economical, sympathetic in tone, and tidily resolved. A visitor from the city
collapses at a country dance. A nurse attends. A doctor is summoned. Life is
pronounced extinct. The language is formal and distancing — “life extinct”
rather than “he died” — and the emotional register is managed carefully: “much
sympathy is felt,” the gathering is “naturally upset,” and the young widow and
her two children are mentioned in a single sentence before the piece moves on
to the inquest notice.
The clipping tells us Lincoln was thirty or thirty-one
years old, that he worked for the Shell Oil Company in Melbourne, and that he
was on holiday visiting his wife’s uncle, Norman Crump. It suggests a sudden,
unexpected death in a man who appeared well and was enjoying himself. It is accurate in all the essentials. But accuracy and completeness are very different
things.
LOOKING
CLOSER
The death was covered not just locally but nationally.
The same item — or a wire-service version of it — appeared in the Brisbane
Telegraph, the Tasmanian Advocate, the Grafton Daily Examiner, and papers in
Mackay and Melbourne. This was not because Lincoln Todman was prominent; he was
an ordinary working man. It was because “man dies at country dance” was a
compact, self-contained human-interest story that filled column inches
efficiently.
When the newspaper accounts are read alongside the
inquest documents, some details begin to shift. The Camperdown Chronicle places
the collapse at “about 11.30 o’clock” — but Senior Constable Casey’s police
report and Dr S. I. Weir’s sworn testimony both record the time as
approximately 10.30 pm. The doctor did not arrive until some time after that.
The Chronicle’s “11.30” likely reflects when the doctor pronounced death, rather
than when Lincoln fell.
More significantly, the clipping states that Lincoln
“appeared to be in good health and excellent spirits.” This was the public
version. The private record is more complicated. At the inquest, Myrtle Todman
testified that her husband had complained of chest pain at midday on the
Saturday — a pain he described as coming and going two or three times during
the day. He told her before they left for the dance that the pain was much
better. No one present at the dance would have known this. The newspaper, drawing
on local witnesses, could only report what was visible: a man dancing,
apparently well.
The inquest found the cause of death to be coronary
occlusion. Dr Weir’s post-mortem found well-marked disease of the coronary
arteries and a large recent infarct of the left ventricle. Lincoln’s heart had
been failing quietly, invisibly, all day.
The family had driven down from Caulfield South —
Lincoln, Myrtle, and their two children, Warwick, aged five and Judith, aged
three, to stay with Myrtle’s uncle Norman Crump at Brucknell. They were part
of a larger gathering of extended family. The children slept in the car outside
the dance hall while their parents danced.
WHAT LIES
BEHIND IT
The newspaper gives us the public event. But there was
another story running alongside it — the one the paper could not see and had no
language for.
What Judith Todman remembers is not her father’s death.
She was three years old, asleep in the back of the car while the dance went on
inside. She remembers the arrangement that was ordinary to her: the children
tucked into their sleeping bags in the reclined rear seat of Lincoln’s 1927
Chevrolet, parked outside Ludeman’s Barn, while their parents danced. She
remembers that either Myrtle or Lincoln would come out periodically to check on
them. She remembers someone lifting her at some point during the night — she
never fully woke — and drifting back to sleep in someone’s arms. She woke in
the morning in her camp stretcher in the barn, and the world had changed. It is
this that the family memoir preserves: not the event itself, but the texture of
the ordinary evening that preceded it, and the bewildering morning after. As
later recalled in family memory:
“She took Judy by the arm and led her
impatiently outside and knelt down to speak to her. ‘I don’t want any nonsense
now, and there’s nothing we can do about it. You won’t be seeing your dad any
more, he’s gone to heaven.”[ii]
What we do know is that at some point that night, after
the doctor, the police, and the coroner’s arrangements had been attended to, Myrtle
got into the front seat of Lincoln’s Chevrolet to make the drive back to Norman
Crump’s house – her husband’s body in the back seat where the children had
slept during the dance. Whether Judith was in that car or travelled separately,
she cannot now say. She was three years old, and the adults were managing as
best they could.
The newspaper’s single sentence:
“Much
sympathy is felt for Mr. Todman’s young widow and two children”
contains all of this and none of it. It is grammatically
passive, collectively voiced (“is felt” by the community at large), and moves
immediately on. There is no room in a paragraph-long item for the wicker picnic
basket, the songs on the long drive down, Lincoln winking at Judith when Myrtle
scolded her, the children asleep in the back seat while the dance went on.
What happened next is also invisible in the press. Myrtle
gave her sworn deposition to the Deputy Coroner the following morning. Lincoln
was buried at Springvale Cemetery on Tuesday, three days after he died. By
late July, probate had been granted, and the estate inventoried. Myrtle found
work in a sweet factory, sold the house at Teak Street, South Caulfield, and
moved in with her mother. The children went to live with their grandparents in
Balaclava while the immediate crisis was managed.
Lincoln Todman was thirty-one years old. He left no will.
REFLECTION
To modern eyes, one detail in the family memoir is
startling: two small children, aged three and five, left to sleep in a car
outside a dance hall while their parents were inside. Today, we would likely be
horrified by that. But according to Judith, it was common practice at the time
— unremarkable enough that nobody mentioned it, including the newspapers. The
children do not appear in a single one of the ten press items that covered
Lincoln’s death. They were simply invisible, in the way that ordinary, accepted
things are invisible. This is itself a lesson about newspapers as historical
sources: they record the noteworthy, and noteworthiness is always defined by
the assumptions of the moment.
The Camperdown Chronicle item is a useful genealogical
source — it confirms names, location, employment, the existence of family
connections, and the fact of the inquest. But it is also a reminder that
newspapers are shaped by convention, by space, and by the limits of what
witnesses choose or can say.
In this case, the paper got the broad facts right but the
time wrong, and smoothed over the complexity of a man who had been unwell all
day and chose not to say so. It presented the death as sudden and complete, which, in the public sense, it was. It had no access to the private interior of the
event: the chest pains at noon, the decision to go dancing anyway, the children
in the car, the long wait in the dark.
The most striking thing about reading this clipping
against the inquest documents and the family memoir is how much work the word
“sudden” is asked to do. “Sudden tragedy” is the headline register. But the
coroner’s record suggests Lincoln’s heart had been sending warnings all day.
The tragedy was sudden to everyone at the dance. Only Myrtle had seen the signs earlier in the day, though she did not understand what they meant.
Newspapers record the public surface of events. The
inquest records go a little deeper. The family memory goes deepest of all —
down to the level of a small girl running through a barn calling for her
father, looking everywhere she could see from where they stood.
Further reads:
For those interested in learning more about Lincoln James Todman see his profile on WikiTree.
Sources
The Argus, 14 June 1938, p. 3. ‘Died at Dance.’
The Age, 14 June 1938, p. 9. ‘Fell Dead at Dance.’ Also
family notices and funeral notice, p. 1.
The Telegraph (Brisbane), 13 June 1938, p. 11.
Advocate (Burnie), 14 June 1938, p. 7.
Victorian Death Certificate, District of Terang,
1938/1500, Lincoln James Todman.
Victorian Inquest Proceedings, District of Terang, 15
June 1938, Lincoln James Todman. Depositions of Myrtle May Todman and Dr S. I.
Weir; report of Senior Constable J. Casey.
Victorian Letters of Administration, VPRS 7591/P2, unit
1043, Lincoln James Todman.
Judith Williamson interview by Author, personal
interview, circa 2010, unpublished.
[i] Camperdown Chronicle, 14 June 1938, p. 2. ‘Sudden Death at
Brucknell Dance.’, viewed 26 Jul 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article30149806