Asakusa Sanja Matsuri. Tokyo. 2007.
FOLLOWING:
SoundCloudAsakusa Sanja Matsuri. Tokyo. 2007.
Krautrock Documentary from BBC 4.
Donald Richie on Nagisa Oshima. Pt1.
Film historian Richie discusses the work of the Japanese director.
John Cale - I’ve Got a Secret.
Cale appears on a quiz show in 1963 and then plays Satie.
Mug shot of Frederick Edward Davies, 14 July 1921, probably Central Police Station, Sydney.
The handwritten inscription on this unnumbered Special Photograph reads ‘Frederick Edward Davies stealing in picture shows and theatres Dets Surridge Clark and Breen Central 14-7-21’. Police held sneak thieves in particularly low regard, which may account for the decision to photograph Davies in front of the police station’s toilet stalls.
This picture is one of a series of around 2500 “special photographs” taken by New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930. These “special photographs” were mostly taken in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney and are, as curator Peter Doyle explains, of “men and women recently plucked from the street, often still animated by the dramas surrounding their apprehension”. Doyle suggests that, compared with the subjects of prison mug shots, “the subjects of the Special Photographs seem to have been allowed - perhaps invited - to position and compose themselves for the camera as they liked. Their photographic identity thus seems constructed out of a potent alchemy of inborn disposition, personal history, learned habits and idiosyncrasies, chosen personal style (haircut, clothing, accessories) and physical characteristics.”
Mug shot of Ellen Kreigher, 13 July 1923, Central Police Station, Sydney.
Described by the press as the “Coogee Trunk Mystery” (referring to the trunk in which the corpse was allegedly removed from the flat). Alfred Heaydon, Frank Taylor, a man named Edward Riley (a trade union official and one time Labor senate candidate) and Ellen Kreigher, who had shared the flat with Nurse Taylor, were all eventually arrested and charged with murder, accessory to murder, concealment and with having illegally disposed of the body. (Nurse Taylor herself had died in the interim). With press interest running high - one paper offered a 1000 pounds reward for information - an intensive search was made for Mrs Heaydon’s remains. In early August human bones were found under the flagstones of a garage in Westmoreland Lane, Glebe.
Special Photograph no. 965. Ellen (“Nellie”) Kreigher was one of four people arrested and charged over the murder of Gertrude Mabel Heaydon. In October the previous year Gertrude Heaydon had been taken to the Coogee flat of a woman known as “Nurse Taylor” to procure an illegal abortion. She died there in the flat. Police later claimed she was murdered by Nurse Taylor, at the behest of Heaydon’s husband, Alfred. A team of low-lifes was eventaully assembled by Taylor’s husband Frank to remove the putrefying remains in a horse and cart, and their somewhat farcical progress across Sydney was later recounted by numerous witnesses. Police became involved the following year after Gertrude Heaydon’s relatives in England became suspicious. The case became known as the “Glebe Bones Mystery”. After a long inquest the coroner concluded that Gertrude Heaydon had been feloniously and maliciously murdered by the late Nurse Taylor, and that the eleven bones found in the Glebe garage were in fact Gertrude Heaydon’s remains. Alfred Heaydon, Taylor, Riley and Kreigher were committed for trial, but a month later the police prosecutor announced that the Crown would bring no evidence against the four, and the charges were dropped.