Professor Frederick McCoy was a highly respected academic at Melbourne University. He resided in the suburb of Brighton.
In 1883 he received a letter from a friend, Colonel Mair. The Colonel asked if it was true that McCoy’s adult son Frederick, who had been living and working in New Zealand for some years as a barrister, was in financial trouble. It certainly was not true, and when the Professor investigated he discovered that a very clever fraud was being perpetrated.
Someone pretending to be his daughter Emily had been writing letters to the family’s friends and acquaintances asking for money on behalf of Frederick Jnr. They were requested not to tell Professor McCoy, as the son was too proud to ask his father for help.
The police took up the case, and subsequently arrested a most unlikely suspect. She was Catherine Griffin, a sixteen year old girl, daughter of a respectable market gardener. The Griffins also lived in Brighton.
The only connection the Professor had with Catherine Griffin was that her older sister Margaret, known as ‘Sissie’ had previously been employed for a period of four years by the McCoy family.
Young Catherine had evidently gained knowledge of the McCoy family via her sister, although it doesn’t appear that Sissie was involved in the scam. For some reason, although she was present at the trial, Sissie Griffin was not called as a witness.
Armed with her intel, Catherine wrote a series of begging letters signed Emily McCoy. She requested that the money for poor Frederick be sent to the local post office. In a clever move she enlisted her eleven year old brother Joseph to go to the post office and collect the illegal ‘takings’.
SOURCE – FLICKR
Following her arrest Catherine was bailed out by her shocked father, but she faced what appeared to be a certain guilty verdict when the matter went to trial. There were three charges of forging and uttering.
Examples of the letters and Emily McCoy’s handwriting were compared. However, Emily’s writing was relatively easy to copy and in those days the handwriting experts we have today were not available. In addition, Catherine’s handwriting on a statement she provided to a detective was compared to that in the letters. There was no firm consensus among witnesses regarding any of the handwriting evidence. Strangely, the fact that young Joseph Griffin admitted picking up correspondence (and money) from the duped friends and passing it on to his sister did not seem to carry much weight.
In summing up, the Judge Quinlan told the jury that if they had no reasonable doubt that Griffin had written the begging letters then they must find her guilty. However he went on to say no-one had actually seen her write them. He also considered that the detective had more or less ‘tricked’ the defendant into writing a statement at the police station for secret comparison, rather than allow her to give a verbal account. He concluded as follows;
‘They [the jury] would remember that the prisoner was a young woman against whose character nothing else had ever been brought, and who did not belong to the criminal classes. The jury would ask themselves whether in a single bound she could have become the astute criminal the offence disclosed. These questions might lead to uncertainty, and uncertainty to doubt, and once doubt was fairy established in the mind of a jury, humanity, as well as the dictum of the British law, laid down that a prisoner was to get the benefit of that doubt. ‘ (Argus, July 11 1883)
It was an extraordinary statement, and one the jury apparently embraced with alacrity. After deliberating for just 15 minutes the young woman was acquitted on all counts. There was spontaneous applause in the courtroom until the judge warned that if it continued people would find themselves under arrest.
No-one really knew how much money had been obtained through the fraud. Just as with scams today, people did not want to admit they had been duped. However, it was believed to have been a considerable amount.
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