Almanac Book Reviews: ‘The Night Was Bright Moonlight and I Could see a Man Quite Plain: An Edwardian Cricket Murder’ – Gideon Haigh

Respected Footy Almanac regular and academic Roy Hay reviews Gideon Haigh‘s new book, ‘The Night Was Bright Moonlight and I Could see a Man Quite Plain: An Edwardian Cricket Murder’. This review was recently published in The Australian newspaper, and their kind permission is given for the review to be published on our website.

 

 

The Night Was Bright Moonlight and I Could see a Man Quite Plain: An Edwardian Cricket Murder

 

Gideon Haigh

 

Archives Liberation Front

 

$45.00 (HB)

 

Gideon Haigh is a prolific writer. The breadth, depth and style of his oeuvre makes him impossible to categorise. Having written about a judge of the High Court last year, and about the future of the office before that, his latest book is historical true crime, with a cricket bat as the murder weapon.

 

Haigh works extraordinarily fast, without compromise of the soundness of his research and the breadth of his frame of reference. I say this because I think I have a reasonable grasp of nineteenth and early twentieth century sport, and the cultural history of this country and that of the United Kingdom, but in virtually every chapter of his new book, I learned something.

 

In this case, the murder weapon, a cricket bat, is wielded, allegedly, by the son of an England Ashes cricketer, George Frederick Vernon. Though he spent time in the goldfields of Western Australia, G. F. Vernon did not set himself up for life and eventually died in West Africa, still seeking riches. His son, George Valentine Jeffray Vernon, was born in Foulis Castle just south of Evanton in Ross-shire, Scotland. His mother was an Australian, Marion Jeffray, daughter of a prosperous Victorian stock and station agent, Robert Jeffray. After a chequered youth in and out of the navy and military, Vernon was a layabout who became a remittance man in rural Queensland.

 

Haigh’s portrait of the remittance man is partly drawn from the work of another hugely prolific Australian author, Ambrose Pratt. The black sheep of the family was sometimes sent to the colonies from the home country to sort himself out, often being grubstaked to help ensure that he did not return until he had done so.

 

The obverse of the remittance man was the ‘lad o’ pairts’ a bright young Scot who showed some initiative and was exported to the fringes of the empire to make a go of things and send the return on the investment in him to help retain the family croft or smallholding in the United Kingdom. These young men, and a few women, were sometimes the subjects of historians rather than novelists. Some of them were reprehensible, responsible for massacres of the Indigenous population; others, less well known, doing all they could to help the survivors cope with the consequences of the European invasion.

 

Of the first category, Angus Macmillan in Gippsland was one of the worst. Lauded as an explorer in his lifetime and after, he was involved in mass killings of Indigenous people and his name has recently been removed from a Victorian federal political constituency, to be replaced by that of the Australian military leader, Sir John Monash.

 

John Green was of the other stamp. He was appointed as Inspector of the Aborigines of Victoria and took on the management of Coranderrk Station, even though he was not paid for this additional responsibility. He assisted his charges to set up a hop-farming operation and the station was on the way to self-sufficiency before the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines of Victoria intervened, effectively forcing Green’s resignation. Despite their best efforts and a public inquiry the leadership of the Coranderrk Indigenous community was unable to have Green restored as manager.

 

George Vernon eventually found his way to Doondi in the Marinoa in outback Queensland. Life on the stations was often a bit like Hobbes’ view of human existence, ‘nasty, brutish and short’. One night a worker on the station was badly injured and later died from injuries inflicted with a cricket bat belonging to Vernon. Suspicion was directed at the owner and the core of the book follows the subsequent trial of Vernon and its shocking aftermath.

 

This book is published and distributed by the author, in part a reflection on the way the book industry is going in these straitened times. In this case Haigh made a conscious decision to retain control of the publication to ensure the quality of its design and printing. I’ve recently done the same with an Australian edition of one of mine. Haig’s is a beautiful production, though the author could not resist using a pen to correct a typo he discovered on the final proofs, just like the Japanese artists who add a fingerprint to their finished work as perfection is not given to human beings.

 

Whether as a present or an addition to your library this is a little inspirational gem from a writer at the height of his powers.

 

To purchase this book please contact Gideon directlyHere.

 

Roy Hay

 

Roy Hay is the author of Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century.

Reviews of Roy’s book and articles by him can be read Here.

 

 

To return to the www.footyalmanac.com.au  home page click HERE

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

 

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE
One-off financial contribution – CLICK HERE
Regular financial contribution (monthly EFT) – CLICK HERE