From the loft

Jean McDonald, 26 June 1924, Central Police Station, Sydney. FP07_0104_004.

Jean McDonald was a fraudster and confidence trickster. She looks drab and resentful here but her sob stories were ambitious, florid and well-told. Through 1923-24 she methodically extracted money and favours from a gullible Randwick benefactress with tales of heroic war service, sick children and missing husbands. When she needed to up the narrative ante she started killing off the fictitious children (and asking the benefactress for funeral expenses). When eventaully hauled before the court, she claimed that her larcenous industry was conducted, at least in part, to support a layabout ex-policeman de facto husband, Sylvester Feld. Because she had acted “under the influence of a man” the judge suspended her twelve month sentence and put her instead on a good behaviour bond. Within a year though McDonald was arrested for swindling a suburban grocer, which triggered her call-up on the earlier conviction. She failed to show up for sentencing, at which point she drops out of the records. At least, that’s how I report it in Crooks like us, (pages 26-29). I based that claim on a fruitless search for her in the Police Gazette for the subsequent five years.

Photo Supplement to the Victoria Police Gazette, Thursday May 4, 1933, p5. Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Services.

Recently I came across Jean McDonald in the Victorian Police Gazette Photo Supplement of 1933 — she had apparently skipped out to Melbourne, where she continued her trickery. Listed there among her aliases is “Jean Doyle”. I’d turned up an archive mug shot of a “Jean Doyle” years ago, but never made the connection with Jean McDonald.

'Jean Doyle', 30 April 1930, Central Police Station, Sydney. FP07_0137_005.

It’s obviously the same woman (and I kick myself for not having spotted it). She’s put on a little heft, but the same flat, despairing look is there. This second portrait is dated 30 April 1930 and, like the 1924 one, was taken in the gloomy muster room at Central Police Station. We don’t know what led to her arrest then, as no new charges are recorded against her. My guess is that she had been busted running yet another scam, but police chose not to waste resources prosecuting, since she was up for automatic gaoling anyway over the 1924 business. A week later she was sent away to do her twelve months sentence. Her release is noted a year later, on 7 May 1931. No remission was granted.

Sydney clearly wasn’t working out for her. So on to Melbourne. A little over a year later, the Victorian Gazette records, she was convicted of fraud and sent to gaol for three months. What became of her after that, we don’t know.

You’ve got to wonder about crims like Jean: she was easily smart enough to charm the money out of a mug’s pocket, but not, apparently, able to elude police and the courts. How unspeakably tedious each arrest, trial and inevitable gaoling must have been. You can see it there in her portrait. My guess: Jean McDonald loved the very early stages of the scam — making up the story, improvising, embellishing, winning the mark’s sympathy, making a new friend. The golden period during which the inevitable consequences can be ignored. Like a drunk who’s fallen off the wagon, relishing those first few delicious, uncomplicated sips.