Without a will and a way

is what I've called a crime of the heart. Because not all crimes are about bullets and blood poison or any of that sort of stuff. There are other sort of crime, and these are where acts of carelessness and cruelty and passion have lasting effects that can hang over families for generations until the day when the past reaches out.

And that's what we're talking about today. This is the strange case of an old block called George Thomas Watson, who might never have known the true story of his birth because he grew up in Melbourne with the lie that his mother had woven around his entire life. George died back in early twenty and eleven eighty one years old. He was an old, childless bachelor with no close relatives

at all. He had no first cousins, and he had no uncles and aunts, and his dear old mother, the one who's at the heart of this story, had died back in nineteen eighty five at a very great age, and like some people, George had not got around to making a will. Now, this wouldn't have matted much if he'd had nothing much to leave, and it wouldn't have mattered much if George's family affairs had been fairly conventional. But there were two differences. One is George did have

something to leave. George had been studious and clever enough to become an engineer. He actually owned the big, double story Victorian house that he lived in in Prince's Park otherwise known as North Carlton or Carlton North, and he had substantial assets as well. He had assets apart from the house, and I'm not sure if it was shares and money in the bank and other properties or what,

but he had quite a bit. And he'd put that together either from his own efforts entirely, which is possible, or possibly maybe because he'd had a silent benefactor a lifetime ago. Maybe he got a little leg up when he was young. We'll never really know that for sure. Probably doesn't matter, but it's intriguing now. George Watson's estate was estimated when he died in twenty eleven at two point three million. That's in twenty and eleven dollars, which are worth a lot less now when it comes to

real estate. But when his house at twenty Arnold Street sold late that year, it sold for far more than its estimated value. I think they estimated the value at one point three million, and they got one point five to five or something like that, So his estate was actually more by the end of that year, was more than the estimation. So I'm saying that it was probably even in the year he died, worth more like two and a half or more, two and a half million

or more. Now, this two and a half million, let's say, was held in trust by the state trustees, which is not unusual. When people die intestate, the state trustees look after the estate, pending distribution of that estate to the legitimate heirs, and normally that can be slow, but it follows a process and it all happens. Now it's routine when someone dies intestate, that is, without making a will, that the state trustees, in their wisdom, search for next

of kin to identify who should inherit. Now, this can be slow, and it can be costly for the estate, which of course bears all the costs. They just take it off the top. But it should be reasonably fair, or at least be equally unfair to everyone. Fairly fair, the state trustees, i understand, use their own in house genealogy people to check out who's related to whom. Now, if you die without leaving a will, then it's up for grabs who's related to you, So they look through

your birth certificate. Then they established backwards, just like all genealogists, who mom and dad were, who your grandparents were, who your siblings are, and all that stuff. But it's all got to be documented legally and properly. And it turns out with George Watson that they hit a bit of a glitch. They worked out that the person named as his mother on his birth certificate that she wasn't any

Watson has claimed she was in fact Annie McPherson. And they worked out that the man named as his father on the birth certificate same name, George Watson, same name as as the dead guy, that he hadn't actually existed, at least not in the way that he was portrayed

in these certificates, the certificates claimed. If you work back from the certificates, it was claimed that a young Australian nurse, claiming she was Scottish born and claiming her name was Annie Clark, had at some point traveled to Scotland, in this case allegedly home to Scotland, and there had married an Australian, a West Australian man called George Watson, in the city or town city of Dundee in nineteen twenty six.

Now that is what was on the paperwork, but it didn't take the genealogist many weeks or months to work out that this was bogus, a that there was no any Clark who became Annie Watson, that in fact it was this unmarried woman called Annie McPherson, and she hadn't been born in Scotland at all, She had been born in Victoria, and b she had not married anyone in nineteen twenty six, let alone a West Australian chef called

George Watson. He didn't exist and the marriage didn't exist. Now, this would a bit of a spanner in the works, to put it bluntly, because they had a dead guy within a state, but they couldn't really work out who his real father was. Now common sense would seem to suggest that in a case like this, that is so long ago. This is now eighty years back. In fact, speaking today in twenty twenty six, the events we're discussing go back one hundred years really, But even back in

twenty eleven this was old stuff. It was two generations old. No one involved would still be alive now. In a case like this, I am told on pretty good authority by an expert in the field, the state trustees can elect to use a legal device which has it as a name, and it's well known in probate law. This device allows them to make a ruling that the estate should be divided up among the legitimate is that present and so on and so forth. However, that is not

what happened here. I am told that what happened here was that the state trustees officials at the State Trustees Office decided in their wisdom to not do that, and they instead adopted an extremely conservative approach some would say an extremely pro government approach by placing the entire estate of two and a half million dollars plus in the state government coffers in treasury or state revenue or whatever

it's called. Now, you know, that's not unusual. That does happen with money, and it's sitting there, and when a legitimate person turns up, they will get their money eventually. However, in this case this has turned into a Charles Dickens scenario, like Jarndyce versus Charndace, where fourteen years later the legitimate heirs of poor old George Watson, the bachelor who died without a will, have not been able to get any of the money. Now there are ten of these people.

They're all quite old. They are, in fact the descendants of Ani McPherson's first cousins. These ones Ani McPherson, who's the mother of the dead man, had first cousins, and it is those cousins' descendants, those cousins' grandchildren, I think, who are now quite elderly people who lining up to share the estate, and so they should. Now there are ten of them, but I think there was eleven, but one died so already while this is dragging on for the last fourteen years. One of these people, one of

the McPherson's in fact, has died. Leading the ten plaintiffs in this case is a respected former Victorian magistrate called Ian Christopher Elger, and he was a magistrate for several years, well known around the traps. Mister Elger and two of his siblings and seven others just last week launched Supreme Court action to try to get their share of their

relatives money of George Watson's money. This will be interesting to see what happens, and it will be interesting because it's a case where the government has held the money for fourteen years. It's a case where the money has grown notionally at least from the original amount of say two and a half million to probably a million dollars

more than that. If you think of compound interest over fourteen years, even at low interest rates like you know, three and a half four percent, it does grow appreciably. And also those people will have the opportunity to demand or sue for compensation. They have not only missed out on the interest that they could have earned, they've missed out on opportunity. They have not been able to use that money to invest in other ways, and they could

legitimately claim, and I suspect they will that. You know, if they'd got the two and a half million back in the day fourteen years ago, they could have done quite a lot with it. And it might be that this squabble, this legal squabble, is ultimately about more like four or five million than about two and a half

and that makes it quite interesting. But buried underneath this modern court case, in our own time, in our own year of twenty twenty six, is a story of human frailty and passion and heartbreak and as I said, crimes of the heart that dates back a century to the nineteen twenties. And that is the story of George Watson's mother, the woman whose real name was Annie McPherson, the woman who was actually born in Victoria in eighteen ninety one, who grew up in I think the inner northern suburbs

of Melbourne, and she became a nurse. So she was hardworking, respectable person. In those days, young ladies as they were called, would tend to go towards nursing or teaching as a profession because so many other things were not open to them. Now, in those days, of course, a lot of women got married quite young. They would get married in their early twenties, and in those days, unlike now, women in their mid to late thirties were regarded and often called old maids

or spinsters. These are the strange, old cruel words that we used about people not that many decades ago. And there is no doubt looking back and interpreting Annie McPherson's life, that in her thirties as a nurse working in hospitals, that she for whatever reason, hadn't met anybody and married them. And it is clear, because she did have a child, that she did meet someone with whom she had a passionate affair, and she got pregnant in late nineteen twenty nine.

So what we've got here is the world's going to hell in a handbasket. Wall Street has collapsed in October of nineteen twenty nine. People are being laid off in factories all over the world, including in Melbourne. Big bank loans, international loans have been called in and suspended. Things are very tough, and in that period just before the Christmas of nineteen twenty nine, this nurse Annie McPherson, I think by then back in Melbourne having worked in Bendigo and

possibly Ballarat. I think she's back in Melbourne by then she falls pregnant. Now we don't know who the father was. This, of course, is the glitch or the obstacle that has prevented her illegitimate son's estate being divided among her distant relatives, because no one knows who daddy was. Now, if you were a novelist or a screenwriter, you'd dream up some scenario and you would say, let's get the DNA onto it, and you'd be able to sort of crack the case.

Possibly in the real world it's not that easy. But if you were a screenwriter or a novelist, let's look at the facts here, that few sketchy facts we can line up. Who would a nurse be likely to have an affair with in the late nineteen twenties, Well, I'm saying a doctor. Who would a nurse be unable to marry if she became pregnant as many people used to they get pregnant and then get married in those days, lots of them. Well that would be because the father

of her unborn child would be already married. That would be a big problem, a massive problem, a massive social problem, because not only would she be sort of ruined and lose a job and lose her reputation, etc. Etc. But the married father of the child would also in a respectable profession like medicine or the law, would also have those sort of problems. They probably would lose their livelihood and would end up in a VD clinic on the other side of the country doing something much less profitable

and much less pleasant. And if you were pursuing this theory, you would say, Okay, a doctor that she worked with or she met through medical work in working in hospitals, let's say at Bendigo, where she did work in the twenties. Now there's another clue to this. Annie McPherson called her child George Thomas Watson. Watson is the name Watson is the name that she allocated to this non existent father or husband, the one she said she married in Scotland.

She said that she or someone very like her married George Watson, forty two year old chef from Western Australia. She was very keen on this name Watson. Third thing, she said she'd gone back at Scotland, place she'd never been, that she'd gone back there and married in the city of Dundee in nineteen twenty six. That gives you a third triangulation. A man called Watson, probably a doctor or possibly a doctor, and he's Scottish and he has a

connection with the Dundee district. Okay, let's look at the possible people who could fit this profile. A quick look at the government gazettes of the late twenties suggests that there were four doctor Watson's registered to practice in Victoria in the late nineteen twenties, at around the time that nurse McPherson became pregnant. And there's this one, and there's that one. But there's only four of them. And one of those court would catch a novelist's eye or a

screenwriter's eye, because that one a recently eminent person. He's a tuberculosis expert, and he'd come to Australia from overseas, so he came with some sort of reputation. This man was called doctor Henry Watson. He was Scottish, tick Scottish. Not only is Scottish, he was educated initially at the University of Aberdeen in eastern Scotland. Aberdeen is a city rather close in social and commercial ties to the smaller

city of Dundee. In fact, Dundee and Aberdeen are very much linked in economically and socially because of the building of a railroad between the two back in the nineteenth century and the building of the rather famous tay Bridge tay Tay Bridge, which meant that people in both cities could travel up and down on the train, and that people from Dundee would go to Aberdeen to university, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera. A close link, and there's every chance that a young doctor who studied at the University of Aberdeen in fact may well have come from Dundee or from any of the districts between Dundee and Aberdeen, because otherwise, why if he came from somewhere else, why would he not go to Glasgow or to Edinburgh. It makes sense that if you're from Dundee, you would go to Aberdeen. And doctor Henry Watson was from Aberdeen. He's

quite a big shot. He'd made his name during World War One as a tuberculosis expert and he came to Australia and he married I think in the very early twenties. He married a widow an Australian widow called Marjorie Bush. And Marjorie Bush had two sons who were, you know, sort of semi grown. They were young adults, and I don't think either of them made old bones. I think one Patrick died at the age of twenty five and

the other one lived longer but didn't grow old. I don't think this would suggest that doctor Henry Watson, who was born in eighteen eighty, so he gets to Australia when he's about forty in about nineteen twenty, that he's married a woman of at least his own age. He's married a woman of early middle age who already has two semi adult sons. It turns out that Dr Morgan and his widow wife, the widow he married, did have a daughter in the early nineteen twenties, so they did

have a child between them. They then at some point worked in the region of Bendigo. There is a reference to Dr Morgan living at or practicing at the town of Talbot. Now Talbot is one of the old Gold Territories gold areas, and it's sort of between Bendigo and Ballarat. Very loosely speaking, that's out near Maryborough, but it's in that region, so a doctor from there could easily have

used Bendigo or Ballarat hospitals for more serious cases. He would probably travel to those to see certain patients and so on and so forth, and there he would naturally meet nurses who are on duty. Now we know that our nurse Annie McPherson was a nurse at Bendigo, and it's conceivable she also nursed at Ballarat. That gives us a putative connection between these people. This is strictly a circumstantial thing, circumstantial case that is interesting for a writer

creating a story. I doubt it would carry much weight in a legal sense because it is fairly flimsy. It is purely, purely circumstantial, and yet to me convincing. We have the name Watson, the name that nurse McPherson adopted for herself. Two years after her baby was born. She changed her name to Watson and used the name Watson for the rest of her life until she died at the age of ninety four back in nineteen eighty five. If you go to her grave and see her headstone,

it's got Annie Watson. Secondly, she claimed to have married a Manka Watson in Dundee. Why pick Dundee if she's making stuff up for a bogus birth certificate, why did she not say I met a man called Wilson from Wales, or I met a man called Kezale from Canada or whatever, or a man called Robertson from Rhodesia, But she didn't It was specifically a Scott called Watson from Dundee, the eastern part of Scotland. One of the things I've worked out over years of looking at criminal stuff is that

people tend to do similar things. Killers nearly always and police rely on this. Killers nearly always dump or berry bodies in an area they know, an area they have been to before. They do not go to some totally unmapped part of the state where they'd never been and dump a body. They go somewhere they know, somewhere where they camped once, or they went fishing, or they were taken there as kids on skill camps or something. The homicide squad regard that as a total fact in doing investigations.

Good tip if you're pulling a murder, take the body somewhere you've never been. It will help you in your defense. The second thing is that rational liars. We're not talking about lunatics here, who just rave on rational liars who want to be believed and who want their liars to stand up and to stand scrutiny. They don't make up complete fantasy. They just take the truth and twist it. They edit the truth. They start with the truth and

just tweak it. And they say, yes, I was driving a blue Commodore with mom bombs on the aerial, but it wasn't on the Tuesday, I drove it on the Wednesday. So they tell the truth about the car, but they alter the day or whatever it might be, just fiddle with the truth. It's very hard for ordinary, rational, logical people to completely make up a completely fantastic, completely bogus scenario.

We all of us, if we are sane and moderately sensible, we all rely on real things which we then tamper with. And in my view, Anny McPherson, when she was cooking up what was a lifelong lie, a lie that she wove around her newborn son, a lie that stayed with him for all of his eighty years, that she relied heavily on the truth, she just tampered with it. And if I were a novelist or a screenwriter, or perhaps

an enterprising lawyer. I'd be looking at the possibility that a doctor Henry Watson might have had his wicked way with Nurse McPherson. With that scenario, which is completely circumstantial, has any basis in truth, It could never be proven except with some sort of complex DNA analysis, and I doubt very much if there's any DNA available to do it.

So that is that Life and Crimes looks forward to the result of the Supreme Court action launched by the ten heirs of the estate of the late George Thomas Watson, who you'd have to say died a lucky old bastard. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australian. Our producer is Johnny bur For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news

dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description