IT WAS a mystery that rattled Sydneysiders. In 1923, a suitcase washed up on to a popular Harbour beach. Inside was a dead baby.

The following is an extract from a new book which examines the case, The Suitcase Baby by Tanya Bretherton.

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THE suitcase washed up on the North Shore in the early hours of Saturday morning, November 17, 1923. The tidal waters of Port Jackson pushed it onto the small and gentle curve of Athol Beach, Mosman, only a short distance across the harbour from Sydney’s busy metropolis. Greasy and stained from the seawater, the beaten-up case seemed out of place against the neatly clipped backdrop of Ashton Park. At around 9.45am, a large

Sunday school group from the northwest suburb of Gladesville began arriving at Athol.

Some of the children scattered across the beach, while others began playing in the bushland and gardens.

William Lodder, a young schoolboy from Drummoyne, was playing near the water when he spied the silhouette of an upright suitcase at the other end of the beach. The boy was drawn to it. Guided by the age-old childhood rule of finders keepers, he claimed the prize. He unfastened the clips on the case and swung its lid open. The odd dank smell intrigued him more.

Inside the case, an object shaped like a pork loin was wrapped in a towel and secured with a piece of string. Although seaweed and sand had been tossed about within the case, the parcel remained secure, chocked by a block of wood.

William lifted the parcel out of the case for closer inspection, holding it up by the piece of string. Pulled taut by the wet weight of the parcel, the string promptly snapped and the parcel dropped onto the sand. The thud made William feel more uneasy, and he later described to police an “unsettling smell”. He poked at the parcel with his toe. It felt strangely soft. His courage crumbled. Something seemed wrong. Reluctant to touch the parcel again and too timid to look at it more closely, William raced up the beach. He urged a group of boys to follow him, hoping he could lead a party back for a more forensic examination of the fascinating and mysterious object. But the boys ignored William’s boasting and dismissed the object as swimming trunks wrapped in a towel. He quickly forgot about it.

About an hour later, Eunice Clare, a 12-year-old schoolgirl also attending the church picnic, made her way down the beach flanked by a small posse of friends. Eunice was less hesitant than William: on sight of the parcel, she walked directly to it and commenced a systematic examination

She picked it up thinking it was ‘what appeared to be costumes rolled in a towel’. The parcel had now been exposed to the air for some time and the dank smell had dispersed a little. Eunice knelt on the soft sand. She began to unwrap the towelling, hoping some treasure might be inside — perhaps a forgotten piece of jewellery stashed carefully by a wealthy Mosman lady during a beach swim or, even better, money.

Within moments Eunice stumbled back in fright as a baby’s head flopped loose from the wrappings.

***

That morning, Sergeant O’Reilly had handled the suitcase baby gently, reacting with a protective instinct that he couldn’t explain. He placed the child’s body back in the suitcase and proceeded directly to Mosman Wharf to catch a ferry to the city morgue. Like an ancient ferryman carrying a soul to the underworld, O’Reilly solemnly crossed the harbour.

A police sergeant carrying a well-beaten port in his hand as if on holiday, but in full uniform, must have been a curious sight for his fellow travellers. He disembarked at Circular Quay and walked the short distance to the city morgue, located right near the water’s edge on George St, where the metropolis of Sydney empties into the harbour.

Sergeant O’Reilly and Charles Broomfield, keeper of the morgue, began preparations for the formal medical examination. Both men were highly experienced and not likely to be shaken by the grim undertaking before them. O’Reilly was an officer of long standing, having risen to a senior supervisory position on the North Shore. Charles Broomfield was a second-generation morgue keeper, closely apprenticed by his father, with over 20 years’ experience in the job. O’Reilly placed the child’s body face up on the examination table. He freed the legs and lower body from the towel. It was a baby girl. Her size indicated that she could be newborn. Both men suspected her body had spent a good deal of time floating in the harbour, given the quantity of seaweed and sand inside the case. It had definitely emerged from the water and had not been abandoned by someone trudging along the beach.

This fact added another level of strangeness to the discovery. Sydney Harbour beaches are rough, hazardous, and known for their aggressive and destructive rips that typically smash anything washed ashore. And the harbour is deep, capable of safely accommodating large-scale steamships and cargo vessels with the biggest hulls ever created. Should a parcel successfully sink, it is unlikely to surface again. The harbour does not usually surrender its captives so easily. To this day, its floor is a junkyard of wrecked vessels, motor vehicle bodies and industrial debris from 200 years of European settlement.

Yet the harbour had somehow been kind to this child’s body, and the mysterious suitcase raft had proved to be a more-than-adequate vessel. The body’s exposure to the sea had also afforded it a level of preservation and protection from the insect infestations commonly found in bodies left exposed on land, especially in the warmer months of a Sydney spring. There was no evidence of adipocere: the crumbly white particles, known as grave wax, that form through saponification — the same process used to make soap — when a body is stored in moisture-rich environments that lack oxygen. Against all odds, the unusual coffin had drifted atop the water and safely landed on a stretch of sand less than 100m long, located on one of the least hazardous beaches in all of Sydney Harbour.

***

Sheldon estimated the baby to have been between three and four weeks old. On the umbilicus there remained a small amount of ‘dry epithelial string’. This meant the umbilical cord stump had healed, but only recently, because new tissue was visible. Sheldon repositioned the baby’s body on the slab, elevating the torso to ensure the chest and abdomen could be sliced open cleanly and the ribs sawn through neatly.

An internal examination found all of the organs to be healthy. The heart showed no signs of a common and potentially serious vulnerability such as a hole. The foramen ovale, a hole between the two halves of the heart which remains open before birth, had closed, as it should, shortly after birth. Sheldon was looking down on the body of what had been, at one time at least, a perfectly healthy baby.

While the general condition of the body indicated that the baby had been fed and cared for, the stomach was empty at the time of death. The baby had been dead when the suitcase was put in Port Jackson as there was no evidence of water in the lungs — a hallmark of drowning.

Using a magnifying glass and drawing the lamp as close to the body as possible, Sheldon leaned in to examine the lungs. In his final sworn statement, lodged with the Central Criminal Court, he said that he had found unequivocal evidence of death due to suffocation.

Petechial haemorrhages were dappled on the tissue of the lungs; these red marks appear when blood leaks from ruptured vessels. Sheldon was methodical, noting the significance of this observation by drawing on other contextual evidence. As petechial haemorrhages can also occur as a result of cardiac arrest, Sheldon examined the heart closely to see if it exhibited signs of rupturing. It was unspotted and perfectly formed. Sheldon’s conclusion: death had occurred as a result of strangulation, with the airways purposefully obstructed by some external source. The string was still tied so tightly around the neck that it told a story of the force and determination in the perpetrator’s mind. A white muslin handkerchief, decorated with the mauve stitching, was stuffed deeply into the mouth. It was as if the baby was frozen in time, trapped in a silent theatre of her last struggles for breath.

Sheldon’s summary of the post-mortem evidence concluded: “Either the string around the neck or the handkerchief in its mouth would have been sufficient to cause death.” The murderer had not hesitated and had fully committed to the undertaking. There was no doubt the suitcase baby had suffered a horrible death. Not only had her body been discovered twice, but in a manner of speaking she had also died twice.

The Suitcase Baby by Tanya Bretherton ($32.99), published by Hachette Australia is available now.