The Story Behind a Newspaper Verdict
Selina Wheeler Crump Jones •
c.1834–1899
The
Clipping
The trail begins with a few column inches
of newsprint. Buried on page four of The Herald of 27 July 1899, under YARRA
VICTIMS, a short inquest report appeared:
“The
Inquest on Selina Jones was first held. John Crocker gave evidence as to having
seen the body floating down the river at Studley Park last Tuesday. Wm. Barton,
laborer, said that deceased was his mother-in-law. She was 64 years of age, and
at times was a little queer in her mind. She had been in the asylum. About a
year ago she was taken away from the bank of the river by the police. Dr Neil
deposed that death was due to drowning; there was a contusion on the temple.
Christina Barton said that she last saw her mother alive at half-past ten last
Monday evening, when she retired to her room. Next morning the front door was
open, and the deceased was missing. A verdict of found drowned was returned,
the jury adding that there was no evidence to show how she got into the water.”[i]
At first glance, this is a tragedy of its
era: an elderly woman, mentally fragile, slips from her family’s care and is
found dead in the Yarra. But the clipping is dense with suggestion. The same
river bank, a year earlier. The open front door. A contusion on the temple. A
woman discharged from an asylum just three months before. The newspaper tells
us what happened. What it cannot tell us is why.
The woman the Herald calls “Selina Jones” carried several names across her lifetime. She was born Selina Wheeler in Gloucestershire, England, around 1834, and emigrated with her family to Port Phillip on the Himalaya in 1841.[ii] At sixteen she married Thomas Crump, a widower twice her age, at the Melbourne Wesleyan Church.[iii] They had six children together. Thomas died in 1874,[iv] leaving Selina a widow at around forty, dependent on her eldest sons and later her daughter Christina and son-in-law William Barton.
On 23 August 1898, Selina was admitted to the Kew Asylum, brought in by police. The admission records describe her as suffering from Mania attributed to senility, and note she was displaying suicidal tendencies alongside hallucinations of both sight and hearing. She was discharged on 1 May 1899, deemed recovered.[v] She was dead within three months.
The coroner’s proceedings preserve what the newspaper did not print. Christina’s full statement reads:
“Deceased
has been peculiar for some time past. She threatened a year ago to take her
life. She had no injury to her head when she left home. She left 2 shillings
behind her but no letter or note.”[vi]
What Lies Behind It
Selina’s story sits at the intersection of several silences Victorian records maintain with great consistency: the silence around women’s mental illness, and the silence around suicide. Victorian coroners and juries were deeply reluctant to record a suicide verdict; the stigma was religious, social, and practical. “Found drowned” was a merciful ambiguity, a way of acknowledging a death without pronouncing on its meaning.
Placed alongside each other, the records reveal a woman whose mental health had been deteriorating for at least a year, who had been hospitalised, discharged, and returned to a working-class household with limited means to care for her. She had made at least one previous approach to this same river. On the night of 24 July 1899 she retired to her room. Sometime before morning she left the house and walked to Studley Park.
The police report noted she still wore her gold wedding ring. She had carried it across a lifetime — from the Wesleyan Church in 1850, through six children and two widowhoods, through the Kew Asylum and back out again, to the Yarra on a winter’s night in 1899. The Herald gave her four sentences. The records give her back her name.
Reflection
Newspaper inquest reports are invaluable to family historians, but they reward careful handling. The Herald’s account is not inaccurate, but it is shaped by convention and column inches. Comparing it with the fuller coroner’s record reveals what was left out — the prior threat, the two shillings, the missing note — details that change the texture of the story entirely.
Newspapers open doors. Behind each door, there are more records. And behind the records, if we look carefully enough, there is a person.
Selina Wheeler. Selina Crump. Selina Jones.
Born in Gloucestershire, buried in Victoria. Found drowned, 25 July 1899.
Further reads
For those interested in learning more about Selina Wheeler’s profile on WikiTree.
Sources:
[i] YARRA
VICTIMS. (1899, July 27). The Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861–1954), p. 4. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article241855444
[ii]
Ancestry, State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood New South
Wales, Australia; Persons on bounty ships arriving at Port Phillip (Agent's
Immigrant Lists); Series: 5318; Reel: 2144; Item: [4/4814] Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia,
Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828-1896 [database on-line]. Provo, UT,
USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Vessel:
Himalaya, for passengers Rueben & Elizabeth Wheeler & their two
children Selina & George.
[iii] Victoria,
Australia Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages.; Marriage Certificate of
Thomas Crump and Selina Wheeler, married 30 December 1850, Melbourne 2648/1848;
citing Wesleyan(Methodist) marriages solemnized in Victoria between the years
1844 and 1853, nos 3474-3808
[iv] Registry
of Birth, Death and Marriages, Victoria, Australia, Death Certificate Thomas
Crump (Year 1874, Reference #4922
[v] Kew Mental Hospital Case Book entry for Selina Jones
admitted 23 August 1898 discharged 1 May 1899 (recovered); Case Books of Female
Patients (VPRS7397) 27/10/1896 - 09/08/1899 Image 586 unstamped and Image 589
stamped as 267 [research note – digital
images are out of order relevant pages are Image 586 https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/A6E7714A-F4EE-11E9-AE98-7FEE6CC74622?image=586
& Image 589 https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/A6E7714A-F4EE-11E9-AE98-7FEE6CC74622?image=589
(of 894 images : accessed 9 July 2023))]
[vi] Selina
Jones: Inquest Deposition File VPRS 24/P0000, 1899/876 ( https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/4D4F7B46-F1C0-11E9-AE98-2946BBD176C8/content?image=1
[10 images] : accessed 9 July 2023)
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