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Hepburn, Arthur

2525 Private Arthur Hepburn - 43rd Battalion AIF

Arthur Hepburn was born in Middlesborough Yorkshire England in June 1874 to John and Isabella Hepburn. He was one of six siblings, with, John (1865), Isabella (1867), William (1870), Maude (1875) and Margueritte (1879). He initially resided and was educated in Middlesborough however the 1891 census lists Arthur and his family living at Redcar, Yorkshire England.

Arthur appears to have arrived in Western Australia circa 1898. He worked as a Lighthouse Keeper on Jarman Island at Cossack from 1898 to 1903. However, a few years later Arthur was working out of Onslow as a Pearler. Prior to the Great War Arthur became a mail contractor.

Arthur enlisted into the Australian Imperial Force on the 26th June 1916 in Perth. He was passed as fit for service with the medical examiner recording his physical attributes as;

Height - 5 feet 8 & 1/2 inches tall;

Weight - 160lbs;

Chest measurement - 38-41 inches;

Complexion - Fresh;

Eyes - Grey;

Hair - Dark Brown.

Upon his successful enlistment Arthur was sent to Blackboy Hill Camp where he was assigned to No.75 Training Depot. He was then transferred into the 5th Reinforcements to the 43rd Battalion. He trained with this group in WA for the next few months. On the 9th November 1916 Arthur and his group entrained for Fremantle Harbour where they boarded the transport ship HMAT Argyllshire on the 9th November 1916. After the long sea journey to England the ship arrived at Devonport Harbour on the 10th January 1917.

After being disembarked Arthur and his group were sent to the 11th training Battalion on the Salisbury Plains. He trained here for the next few months. On the 25th April 1917 Arthur was sent across to France and went into the 3rd Australian Division Base Depot.

Arthur joined the 43rd Battalion on the 1st May 1917. The 43rd Battalion were then in the vicinity of Ploegsteert Wood in southern Belgium. Arthur would serve with his unit at the Battle of Messines in June 1917 and at Warneton on the 31st July 1917.

The 43rd Battalion remained in the Messines sector till the end of August 1917. On the 6th September Arthur was sent to hospital with an injured right knee. He was sent to the 58th General Hospital at St Omer and was then transferred to the 2nd Canadian Stationary Hospital. It appears his knee was improving as he was transferred to the 7th Convalescent Camp at Boulogne on the 21st September 1917. He remained here for the next few weeks and on the 2nd October 1917 was transferred to the 3rd Australian Division Base Depot at Rouelles. However after another two weeks in the depot his knee issue recurred and Arthur was then sent to England.

On the 18th October 1917 Arthur was sent to No.2 Command Depot Camp at Weymouth. He would remain based at No.2 Command Depot Camp for the next fifteen months, until after the Armistice.

On the 27th February 1918 Arthur had married 30 year old Mary Florence Brown from New Moston.

On the 1st February 1919 Arthur was transferred to No.1 Command Depot Camp and was going to prepare for the journey home but instead he applied for some Non Military Employment. From 1st April to 1st July 1919 Arthur applied for further experience in boiler making. He was sent to Dornan, Long and Co. in Middlesbrough.

On the 25th September 1919 Arthur and his wife Mary boarded the transport ship Mahana and set sail for home, reaching Fremantle on the 3rd November 1919.

Arthur was discharged from the AIF on the 20th December 1919.

After their return the children born were, Jessie in 1920 and Florence in 1921.

Arthur remained in the Fremantle district and then took up pig farming at Bulls Creek Road in Melville (present day Leach Hwy) and then changed to poultry farming.

He remained farming here through to 1929 when an incident occurred that made news through the state.

Terrible Tragedy at Palmyra

DEMENTED MAN RUNS AMOK WITH A REVOLVER- FATALLY SHOOTS TWO MEN-INJURES SEVERAL PERSONS- AND COMMITS SUICIDE

Just when Western Australia was most jubilant over the celebration of its Centenary, Perth was faced with one of the most terrible crimes in its history. It was not the act of a regular criminal, but that of a madman.

He caused Death and Disaster but paid for his aberration of intellect temporary and otherwise, with his life.

Harry Hall the central figure of the dreadful happening, was a man about 45 years of age, and he was a native of Queensland. According to the man he knew best in this State he was married, but his married life was not happy and he was not living with his wife when he came to the West some five or, six years ago, and took over a piggery adjoining a poultry farm, kept by a man named Hepburn in the Bicton-Palmyra district. Hall lived alone in a grey weatherboard hut. His piggery did not turn out a success, and he lost Heavily during the years he conducted the place.

Hall's losses, together with the fact that he periodically suffered from malaria, which caused him dreadful headaches, resulted in hallucinations. He got the opinion that he had been badly treated by his neighbors. He is alleged to have told people that Hepburn and the others were making his life a misery, and were trying to make him leave the district. He blamed them for poisoning his pigs, and for flashing a spotlight on his home at night to make him think that the place was haunted.

This, brought about in him a feeling of terrible antagonism towards his neighbors, and about four months ago he could evidently stand it no longer and sold out. Since then he had been living in a room in Perth, though evidently he had not forgotten the scene of his Porcine Labors, for during the past few weeks he had been seen by various people walking down back roads in the neighborhood.

It should be mentioned that the district, the centre of which was the Bull's Creek-road, which, runs from the Canning Bridge-road to Fremantle to Bibra Lake, is a very lonely one. Something must have snapped in the

brain of the demented Hall on Monday for that night, armed with a revolver and plenty of ammunition, he set out to wipe his manifold enemies off the face of the earth. Hall first went to the home of the Hepburns. From a statement given by Arthur Hepburn (54), to the police, it appears that about 10 o'clock that night he was reading a newspaper in a front room of his home in Bull's Creek-road, with his wife sitting alongside him. Both heard a noise in the kitchen, and his wife went to investigate. Then he heard an explosion and simultaneously came a scream From His Wife. He at once ran to the kitchen door, when he saw Hall standing about three feet from the doorway. As Hepburn entered the room, Hall fired point blank at him, the bullet entering the lower part of his chest. Hepburn then made an attempt to get a weapon, to defend himself and his wife, but Hall fired several shots at him, four of them entering his body. Hepburn then heard his little daughter crying, but when he tried to go to her Hall dropped him with another shot. It subsequently transpired that while Hepburn had sustained Five Bullet Wounds, in the abdomen and groin, his wife Mary (42) had been wounded in the neck and shoulder, and his daughters, Florence Maude (8) had a bullet wound in the knee and Jessie (9) a bullet wound in the left leg. One would have thought that the demented man's lust for blood would have been satisfied by the damage he had done, but instead of that within half an hour he had intruded into the house of the Banks family, residing half a mile away. Mr. and Mrs. Banks and two of their children were asleep in the same room. Hall found his way in and out of furniture without making sufficient noise to wake any of the sleepers. Then there was an explosion and when Mrs. Banks procured a light she was horrified to find that her husband had been Shot Through the Temple. Banks was taken to the Fremantle Hospital, where he died soon after arrival. He did not speak after he was shot.

The wound showed that Hall must have walked to the top of the bed and held the revolver close to Banks' head before he fired. Robert Banks, the deceased, was 48 years of age, and one of the best-known taxi-drivers in the Fremantle district. He has left a widow and five children.

Though he did not shoot any others in the Banks' domicile, Hall was not yet satisfied, for some couple of hours after he had committed the Banks murder he waited for Harry Burton (35), a milk cart driver employed at Grove's dairy and Shot Him Through the Back at close quarters. That shooting took place about 1 a.m., and Burton's dead body was not discovered until 4.30 a.m., when another milkman made the gruesome discovery. Burton was found lying in his cart. He was particularly well known and highly esteemed in the Palmyra district and was the father of two children, one aged four and the other aged two.

As soon as news of the first tragedy reached the Fremantle police, Detective-Sergeant Frazer and Detective Blight set about making investigations. It was fated, however, that the pursuers would not come up with their quarry for several hours, by which time the police party by the addition of uniformed officers, more detectives and blacktrackers had been Increased to about 20 who were rushed to the scene in motor cars. After the shooting of Burton it is presumed that Hall spent the few hours subsequently in the bush.

About 7.30 a.m. on Tuesday a detective called at the house of James Charles Booth, a veterinary surgeon, who lives on the Preston Point-road which is in the locality of the tragedies. The detective told him of the shooting that had occurred on the previous night and also of the murder of the milkman. He explained that it was believed that the murderer was still in the locality, and that in order to put residents on their guard the police were giving everybody a warning. He asked him to warn the Lamb family, his next-door neighbors. Mr. Booth called Robert Lamb out to the back fence and told him what had happened, suggesting that he should fix up his rifle in case it was wanted. Mr. Lamb straight away went into his house to assemble his rifle. Immediately afterwards Mr. Booth was engaged in taking the clothing off his trotting mare when hearing a

Warning Cry From His Wife he turned and saw Hall, whom he had known for about five years and with whom he was on good terms, creeping along the wire fence at the side of his back yard. After in vain trying to distract Hall's attention. Mr. Booth, thought he would take a chance. He let the pony go, and turning his back on Hall, rushed across the yard, scrambled under the fence, and made off through the bush towards the Leopold Hotel.

Immediately afterwards he saw Hall walk out of his (Booth's) front gate, cross the roadway and disappear into the bush opposite. While Mr. Booth's experience with the murderer was somewhat hair-raising, that of Mr. Lamb was even, more extraordinary. When he came out of the house after going to to get a gun he saw a man whom, he thought, was a detective, standing at the junction of the two properties. The stranger took the cartridges out of the gun he was carrying and said, pointing in the direction of the police: "They're after him over there - they're out to get him." Mr. Lamb then asked the man why the milkman had been shot, and he replied that there had been ill feeling between Burton and Hall for a number of years. "They have been thieving from him for years past, and the man evidently could not stand it any longer," said the stranger. According to Mr. Lamb, the man's manner did not suggest that he was Mentally Deranged, but he looked tired, and under the impression that he was a detective Mr Lamb offered him a cup of tea. He went inside the house to get it, but when he returned he saw his visitor whom he subsequently learnt was Hall walking along the Preston Point-road. He proceeded in an easterly direction across Waddell-road. At this stage he had been seen by a party of the police who followed him into the bush. They picked up his trail and surrounded him in a gully about half a mile off the road. As Detective-Sergeant Frazer approached him Hall drew a revolver and started to load it. "Drop that gun- you're mad!" commanded the Sergeant, but the fugitive pointed the revolver at his pursuer and backed away as he did so. He went backwards for about 15 yards, and then, when temporarily obscured from view by a tree a shot rang out. The Detectives rushed to the spot to find that Hall had shot himself through the temple. The maniacal murderer was Stone Dead.

He had been at liberty for about 10 hours after he first set out on his career of blood. Not a great deal is known of the antecedents of Hall. Probably Mr. Booth knew more of him than anyone else in this State. According to him Hall was a big, well-built man, and from his conversation he appeared to have been well educated. He suffered at times from malaria which he (Hall) reckoned he had contracted while living in Queensland. When he left his farm at Palmyra about four months ago, Hall took a room in Adelaide-terrace, and when he moved in he had among his belongings a Large Brown Tin Trunk which had been removed from his lodgings about a fortnight prior to the tragedy. The detectives subsequently discovered that the trunk was sold in the Palmyra district and that it contained nothing which would throw any light on Hall's past history.

The Truth newspaper of 6th October 1929 printed another version with more information of the Hepburns.

He appeared in the Hepburn household at about a quarter to ten on Monday night, a spitting revolver in his hand, which riddled the house and its occupants and turned the place into a bloody shambles. The Hepburns knew Hall. He had not been friendly with them, never had, but they never dreamed that his seeming antipathy towards them would manifest itself in such a terrible manner.
The Hepburns' place, as "Truth" saw it on Tuesday looked a profitable enough poultry farm, a little homestead cut out of virgin country, and virgin country none too rich in promise at that. Not a pretty home, but a practical one, four small rooms built of timber and asbestos. There was a shed well stocked with chaff and other produce. There were crates of eggs ready for the market in the shed, and chained, with a narrow collar about its neck on top of the pile of chaff was a black cat, with great green eyes. It stretched and purred when approached and blinked its eyes sleepily. But black cat as it was, it brought no luck to that household. Back and front of the house were chained big yellow dogs. The place, despite its live stock, looked desolate and deserted. On Monday night, Mr. Hepburn, after the day's work, sat in an easy
chair by the fire in his front room, reading the paper. Near him sat his wife, also reading. In one of the back rooms in their little beds lay the two little daughters, Florrie and Jessie. At a quarter to ten Mrs. Hepburn laid her paper aside and rose to prepare for bed. Outside all was silence. There was not even the bark of the dogs. It was her intention to close up the back of the house as usual, give the children a look and retire, another uneventful day done. She went into the kitchen, winding a wristlet watch as she went and laid it on the kitchen table. Then she turned calmly towards the kitchen door. She gazed straight into the eyes of incipient death, and blazing madness, and stood, frozen with sudden terror. Hall stood there, his eyes glaring strangely behind his gold rimmed spectacles and in his hand gleamed the nickel plating of a revolver.

Mrs. Hepburn screamed. Hall fired and as she staggered stepped past her to the door of the front room where he met Mr. Hepburn coming to his wife's assistance. Without a word Hall fired point blank, and the .32 calibre bullet penetrated the lower part of Hepburn's chest. Hepburn made a move to try to get something to hit Hall with. The madman fired again, once, twice, taking Hepburn on the left side of the abdomen with one shot and on the other side with the next. Still Hepburn, miraculously did not fall and as he made a move to get away Hall shot him in the stomach for the fourth time. Hepburn, already desperately wounded, dashed out of the house towards the scrub, and thinking Hall was following him, tore off the white coat he was wearing and threw it away, for fear it might prove too good a target for the intending murderer. But then he heard his daughter scream in the house, and the sound of more shots, and rushed back again, to help if he could. Hall met him in the doorway and fired the fifth shot into Hepburn's stomach, and disappeared into the darkness.
Then followed a scene of concerted heroism which it is hard to imagine equalled. Dangerously wounded in the neck, Mrs. Hepburn's first thought was to attend to her little girls. Both were wounded. Florrie, the youngest had a bad wound where a bullet had torn its way from side to side through the back of her knee. Nine-year-old Jessie had been struck a grazing blow on the lower leg by another bullet.
Mrs. Hepburn was not in a position to know which of the two was the worst wounded and while she was attending to Jessie, Florrie, with fortitude quite remarkable in so young a girl, ran to the house of a neighbor named Grimfells, some quarter of a mile away for aid. In the meantime, Hepburn, shot to pieces as he was, was somehow making his way on the same errand. At the Grimfells' gate his frightful injuries overcame him and he collapsed. He was discovered, crawling, painfully, almost mechanically up the pathway from the gate to the front door of the house. The Grimfells wasted no time. The police were communicated with and a private car was secured in which Hepburn, his wife and the badly injured Florrie were raced to hospital. Eight-year-old Jessie had suffered merely a graze and was attended to at home.

On Tuesday she indicated the circumstances of that part of the shooting

of which she had personal experience. The girls' room is divided from the kitchen only by a partition, in which there is a doorway but no door. Jessie was awakened by the shots and the two girls sprang out of their beds. The man appeared in the doorway to the front room, which also commanded the doorway of their bedroom and stood looking in, the shiny revolver in his hand. As they screamed with terror he stepped inside their room. Florrie occupied the bed nearest the doorway. Both girls were standing at the foot of their beds rooted to the floor with fright, and screaming. Hall fired at Florrie first, according to Jessie, He then fired at the floor and finally fired a third shot at Jessie herself, and hit her in the leg. It was from that shot that she suffered the graze wound she carried on her leg. Then, according to Jessie, the man went away. It was Mr. Hall. She knew him.

On Tuesday the house looked as if it had been riddled by a fusillade from a machine gun. Everywhere there were bullet pits in the walls and floor and in several places the missiles had torn clean through the asbestos wall. In the girls' room near the wall was discovered, an empty cartridge case, of .32 calibre, indicating that Hall had actually reloaded his emptied gun while in the house. For the weapon he had was an old fashioned five chambered revolver. He must have reloaded it while Hepburn was outside the house, having shot Hepburn four times and Mrs. Hepburn once, and then have attacked the girls. The three shots that he fired at the girls and the fifth wound he inflicted on Hepburn would leave him with one live shell in the gun.

And that bullet was destined to carry death to a sleeping man three-quarters of a mile or so further up the road. For even while the Hepburns were being attended to and rushed to hospital, Hall was continuing his fiendish work at the little house of Robert Banks...

Miraculously Arthur recovered from his five bullet wounds though it necessitated a long stay in hospital. The Hepburns remained poultry farming in the district through to 1947. The family then moved to New South Wales, taking up residence at Point Frederick, Gosford NSW. The family remained here through the 1950's.

Arthur Hepburn died on the 22nd July 1959 at Gosford Robertson New South Wales aged 84.

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