When we think about detective stories, a few names probably spring to mind: Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the formidable Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps Agatha Christie, whose Belgian detective Hercule Poirot encouraged readers to use their ‘little grey cells’. But have you heard of Mary Fortune? Or her pseudonym ‘Waif Wander’?

Masthead of The Australian Journal newspaper with black and white sketching of 3 women surrounded by items that illustrate learning, arts, culture, and history, such as an easel, harp and globe.
The Australian Journal, 7 October 1865

Mary Fortune was the author of the longest running 19th-century crime fiction series published in a periodical.1 She wrote more than 500 police procedural short stories published in The Australian Journal between 1868 and 1908 under the pseudonym ‘W.W.’, as well as poetry, romances and journalism under the names ‘Waif Wander’ and ‘M.H.F.’ from 1865.  It is for her serialised detective fiction that she can be considered a trailblazer2 and pioneer3 of Australian crime writing.

Screenshot from Australian Journal that says 'The Detective's Album' by W.W.
The Australian Journal, 1 December 1869, p 218

Written under the series title The Detective’s Album, her stories were told from the perspective of Mark Sinclair, a mounted trooper in the police force whose expertise were called on for cases across Victoria and New South Wales:

I don’t care to remember now how many years it is since I was a mounted trooper on the ‘Sydney side’, but it was long before any detective force had been established…4

Victoria got its first detectives in 1844 in recognition that the social conditions in the colony were conducive to crime, particularly in Melbourne, where detectives were needed to infiltrate the criminal world.5 This force was chiefly concerned with ‘detecting’ crime rather than ‘preventing’ crime and used methods such as informers and disguises to catch their criminals. By 1853 there was a detective force covering the whole of Victoria.6

Black and white engraving of eight mounted police troopers on horseback in their uniforms

The Victorian Mounted Police Force, 1875, Hugh George for Wilson and MacKinnon; A/S10/07/75/49.

Fortune’s detective was a likeable protagonist who recounted his adventures in a format similar to Watson recounting the cases of Sherlock Holmes. Like Sherlock, Sinclair’s talent for ferreting out the truth using logic and observation were sought, and he wasn’t above donning a disguise to blend in and catch the criminal.

One of the most striking aspects of Fortune’s stories was her knowledge of police procedure. For example, in her story ‘Death in the Pot’ (published in the The Australian Journal in 1868), a postmortem is conducted on the body of a victim and test samples are analysed to discover that she was poisoned with strychnine.

Black and white collage of photographs of the police first published in the Illustrated Australian News. Photos show Russell Street police barracks, police on duty and on parade, on the telephone switchboard, prisoners in court and a prison cell.
With the police, 1896, David Syme & Co; IAN01/07/96/8.

By delving into the life of the author, we can see that she wasn’t a stranger to interactions with the police. Articles from her memoir-style journalism show early exposure to criminal procedure. In ‘Kangaroo Flat’ she recounted her proximity to a murder case, and in ‘Buninyong’, she visited the police court to watch proceedings of a case causing a sensation in the district.7 Fortune was also at one point briefly (and bigamously) married to police constable Percy Rollo Brett, and in her later life she was arrested for drunkenness and vagrancy.8

Fortune’s second son, known as George Fortune, was what could be described as a ‘career criminal’, and his police charge sheet, which has been digitised by Public Records Office Victoria, gives a fascinating snippet of information about police knowledge of Mary’s literary talents. In it, it is noted that George’s mother, Mary Fortune is ‘a newspaper and journal writer living in Lillydale’.

Handwriting on police charge sheet which reads, "Single mother Mary Fortune a newspaper and journal writer living in Lillydale. Proper name, Eastbourne Vaudrey Fortune (information from mother 16/10/79)
Detail from Central Register for Male Prisoners 17005 – 17466 (1879), Public Records Office Victoria.

Fortune’s literary output shows that she was an extremely talented and intelligent woman, making a living from her writing under challenging circumstances. Author Lucy Sussex has been a champion of uncovering the facts of Fortune’s life, and it is through her research that we know something of the woman behind the writing: that she was born in Belfast around 1833; that she emigrated to Canada with her father after the death of her mother; at the age of 18 she married Joseph Fortune with whom she had a son; in 1855 she abandoned her husband and sailed to Melbourne with her young son9 to join her father on the goldfields;10 she had an illegitimate son in 1856; she died in the Benevolent Asylum in Melbourne in 1911, penniless and nearly blind.11

Black and white photograph of large Benevolent Asylum building with horse drawn carts in front and a group of children playing outside the front gates.

Benevolent Asylum, North Melbourne, Vic., [ca. 1890], D. McDonald; H2001.20/328.

Few other writers can claim such a long and illustrious output, especially in a genre that was still in its infancy. From the harsh camps of the goldfields, to the emerging thoroughfares of Melbourne, Fortune’s stories offer readers a snapshot of colonial Victoria. Her use of pseudonyms and her gender contributed to the reasons that she never received the accolades or notoriety that she deserved, and yet she was a pioneer of early Australian detective fiction.

Interested in reading stories from The Detective’s Album? You can view digitised copies of The Australian Journal from 1865-1898 through the database Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, available to access from home with a State Library membership.

References

  1. Spicer, CJ, 2012, Great Australian world firsts : the things we made, the things we did, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, p 3
  2. The Lucy Sussex Home Page, 2009, A Woman of Mystery: Mary Fortune, viewed 6 August 2024
  3. Fortune, M, 2009, Three murder mysteries, Mulini Press, Canberra, p 1
  4. W.W. (Mary Helena Fortune), 1868, ‘Death in the pot’, The Australian Journal, vol IV, issue 159, pp 41-45
  5. Victoria Police, 1997, ‘Detective story’, Journal of Police History, Autumn edition, pp 5-17
  6. Wilson, D & Finnane, M, 2006, ‘From sleuths to technicians? Changing images of the detective in Victoria’, in Emsley, C & Shpayer-Makov, H (eds.), Police detectives in history, 1750-1950, Ashgate, Aldershot, England, pp 136-7
  7. Sussex, L, (ed.), 1989, The fortunes of Mary Fortune, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria, p 23 & 51
  8. Sussex, L, 2005, Fortune, Mary Helena (1833–1911), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, viewed 23 July 2024
  9. Public Records Office Victoria, 1855, Inward overseas passenger lists, Oct-Dec 1855, British and Foreign Ports
  10. Sussex, L, (ed.), 1989, The fortunes of Mary Fortune, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria, pp xiv-xxiii
  11. Steger, J, (7 July 2016), ‘Solved! The case of Mary Fortune, the pioneering crime writer who vanished’, The Sydney Morning Herald, accessed 8 August 2024
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