Down the archival rabbit hole

I found myself in the Public Record Office of Victoria (PROV) while researching a series of inter-generational tragedies that struck a Wonthaggi family over the 1940s and 1960s. Diving down the online archival rabbit hole I stumbled across a listing for a PROV record that might be relevant. Patrick John Brennan being a chief protagonist in my tragedy, PROV 1960/1596 “Patrick John Brennan versus Fredrick Albert Silvester / Supreme Court of Victoria” looked quite promising so I decided to head over to the North Melbourne archive for a look.

Having never engaged with the PROV archive, I had to sign up for an online user account which was eminently straightforward. I then booked a viewing of the record. Having never visited the PROV before, I entered via Macaulay Street, which is very much akin to entering a military bunker. From that side, the building is squat, functional and undistinguished. You walk down a long uninspired hallway (albeit punctuated with interesting records taken from the archives), which terminates at a concrete wall and an acute 90-degree turn.

It wasn’t until I made my way upstairs that I found myself in the main entry gallery, which is far more welcoming. Being my first visit, I had to ask for instructions, and the helpful woman at the front desk gave me the rundown. Security sure is tight – she checked the details of my booking on her computer, then issued an electronic visitor pass for entry.

It was also communicated that I wasn’t able to take my backpack into the reading room, so I had to book a (free) locker and store my bag there. Once I finally cleared security, I swiped myself in and made my way into the reading room, hesitantly making my way to the help desk I handed over my visitor pass. Matching the card to my request, the archivist went and collected my record and handed over a small sealed plastic document sleeve. I took it carefully and took a seat at the viewing table. The elaborate nature of the process certainly added a sense of anticipation, intoxicating mystery but also enforced a sense of value to the record I held in my hand.

Glancing around, I took note of the sign which read ’24hr surveillance in operation’ and my fellow punters a motley collection of bearded, bespectacled, tattooed history aficionados all pouring over piles of tattered and decaying papers. I took a breath and looked down to the package I had requested, slightly underwhelming in comparison but packaged elaborately enough to communicate significant gravitas. Carefully opening the plastic sleeve, I then removed the document from the second plastic sleeve.

In the Supreme Court
1960, No. 1596
Brennan
v.
Silvester
Nature of Document
Copy 5

Four A4 pages. I read their contents carefully. I put the document down and reflected. Completely unrelated to the Brennan’s of Wonthaggi but fascinating nevertheless, my journey down the rabbit hole had just taken an unexpected detour sharp to the left.

The document I had requested was a Writ of the Supreme Court of Victoria and the details it revealed were as follows. The document was issued to Fredrick Albert Silvester of the Gaming Branch, 43 Little Bourke Street, by the plaintiff Patrick James Brennan. It also detailed the following chain of events on 30 January 1960, Fred Silvester used a special warrant (under section 126) to seize £1,200 from Pat Brennan at 149 Dandenong Road, Windsor. Silvester subsequently (on 08/03/1960) applied to the Court of Petty Sessions of Prahran for the property to be forfeited to the state. The application was refused so Brennan demanded the cash be returned. A request which Silvester denied in writing first on 18/03/1960 and again on 22/04/1960. As such, Brennan obviously engaged Raymond Hudson Dunn, Solicitor of Law, to issue the writ which was then serviced by J.R. O’Shea.

I sat there staring at this document, this relic of the past, and imagined, trying to fill in the gaps. Speculating on what this related to and who these men were. It was obvious that the cop, Silvester, was working with the Gaming Branch, which led me to assume the plaintiff Brennan, was a SP bookie who had been raided for running an illegal betting racket. I imagined the raid, Silvester in a black suit, skinny tie and fedora hat busting into a smoke-filled room and seizing bags of cash. I was enthralled, and simultaneously amazed and perplexed at how much information was contained on those four sheets of A4 paper.

My interest sufficiently peaked I did some basic digging into the various actors within the story. It turns out Fred Silvester was quite a prominent figure in the Victorian Police. Known as ‘The Cat’ by both friend and foe, the English immigrant and WWII veteran worked his way up from the beat to become Head of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. During his time with VicPol he worked as a CIB Detective working with the fraud squad, licencing, gaming and vice squads. A member of a small but highly commentated squad known as the ‘Special Duties Gaming Branch’, he became known as an ‘untouchable’ because of his forceful pursuit of illegal gambling, prostitution and pornography. He retired in 1984 and passed away in 2002. An interesting aside is that he is also the father of John Silvester, a long-term Crime Writer at Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

Pat Brennan, on the other hand, was a small-time SP Bookmaker working in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. His exploits are mentioned in the fourth volume of the findings of the Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Painters and Dockers Union, which deals with SP Bookmaking activities. The report notes that Brennan had been convicted of ‘street betting’ in the 1950s and then was arrested in 1981 for operating an illegal telephone service SP bookmaking operation from Carnegie. He was found guilty and fined the maximum ($5,000) for a first offender.

My first experience of proper archival research provided a first-hand lesson in true crime noir. Pretty god damn cool. I sat there in wonder, there must be millions and millions of documents filed away in the collection. All a fragment of the past, a little clue as to past encounters, happenings, and incidents, all capable of revealing weird and enchanting stories. I imagine heaps of them are boring as bat shit, but no wonder people are so passionate about archival research.