Freda Marnie Nicholls - The amazing Mrs Livesey : the remarkable story of Australia’s greatest imposter

By the same author

Love, Sweat and Tears

Back of Beyond

First published in 2016

Copyright Freda Marnie Nicholls 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Australia

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Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia

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ISBN 978 1 76029 014 6

eISBN 9781952533280

Internal design by Lisa White

Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Dedicated to Frank George Bolan

CONTENTS

My name is Luita Aichinger, and I am the granddaughter of Florence Elizabeth Ethel Livesey, or The Amazing Mrs Livesey as she became known in newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s.

Unfortunately I never met my grandmother, but I feel I have a reasonably good insight into her life, as my father, Frank, left me a number of precious audiotapes, describing his journey throughout these years, with and without her. It was a journey of heartache, sorrow and an unlikely upbringing.

My father passed away in 2005, at the age of 82. He always said he would not have traded his life for quids, and lived by the saying Dont Fence Me In, a song we played at his funeral at his request. We had many talks around the kitchen table over the years, him sitting there with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, telling me about his younger years and his younger brother, Basil. My fathers chats always intrigued me.

My father lost contact with his brother Basil. It was only about ten years before my father died that they found each other again, two old men by thenhow sad, I thought, that these two brothers had lost so much of their time together. My father had a tough exterior, but beneath it all was a man who had felt hurt and rejected by a mother who was absent from his life at a time when a young boy was in need of a mothers love.

Dad led an adventurous life, with my mother by his side and eight children at foot, me being number five. He managed to teach himself the art of signwriting, and passed down his trade to three of my brothers and his grandsons, who to this day are still signwriters. My father told me I had a beautiful hand, and persuaded me to take up this art, and at nineteen I came second in the state as an accomplished ticketwriter.

For many years my father held an understandable degree of bitterness towards his mother Ethel, stating he never wanted to see her again. But, years later he needed to find his birth certificate to find out more about himself, something he tried to do right up until he died. Sadly, his death certificate is only half complete; his birth details were unknown.

My sister June and I first became interested in finding out more about our family after June visited a dentist over eighteen years ago. He told June she had particularly dark gums and asked about her family history, but she had no answer to give him on our fathers side. So she started to delve a little deeper into dads past, writing to the Department for Child Welfare in South Australia.

My own research into my grandmothers activities started not long after, when the Child Welfare Department replied to Junes letter. An astonishingly large amount of paperwork followed, which June handed over to me.

In 2011, my research took me to the State Library of New South Wales, where I punched my grandmothers name into their search engine, and spent most of the day printing out a trail of newspaper clippings, all on the Amazing Mrs Livesey. I was absolutely astounded, and excited, to finally start putting some answers together. My daughter Jessica also found a video of my grandmother speaking of her innocence on a British Path newsreel. I was so excited to hear her speakthis was my fathers mother, at last.

In 2013, when I caught up with an old friend, author Freda Nicholls, I told her what Id learnt about my grandmother, and mentioned that we still couldnt find my fathers birth certificate. Freda became as caught up as I was in researching this remarkable woman, and two long years later, she finally found dads birth certificate, uncovering along the way many other incredible facts.

Ethel Liveseys crime sheet is hard to defend, given the number of cases made against her, and an unbelievable list of aliases she invented for herself over a 30-year period. But this all has to be taken into context. The world in the 1930s was in the midst of a global Depression, and many people, including my grandmother, resorted to desperate measures in order to make ends meet. Being a single mother with two young boys would have compounded this. My grandmother made some bad choices in men throughout her life, and I cant justify her leaving her children while she lived the high life, but I was not in her shoes at the time, so I cannot judge.

Her life seemed to be one that was deceitful, as she fed off other peoples generosity and trustfulness. How could anyone do this and have a conscience? I will never know the answer.

Our family line continues in Australia through her two sons and their descendants, and I am grateful that I had a father who loved and cared for all of his children, and for the life and adventures he gave us. Thankfully the saying The apples dont fall far from the tree didnt apply here.

Luita Aichinger

My mother was quite a woman.

The day after Ethel got out of going to gaol, she sat us down, my brother Basil and me, and told us a few things. She would have been in her late forties about then, and was looking knackered after months of scrutiny by the cops, the media and the courts.

Over a couple of hot, dry, stifling summer days in 1946, we sat in my brothers house in Adelaide while his wife fussed over us; both Basil and me had plenty of questions for our mother. She told us her version of events, trying to justify herself I reckon, but you never knew whether to believe her or not. She never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Years later I decided to do a bit of digging, not like you can on computers like now. I wrote letters, lots of letters. I had to find out about my family, and I needed to find my birth certificate. I found all sorts of weird and wonderful things about her instead, facts she wouldnt have been able to dispute even if she was still here.

This is her story.

Florence Elizabeth Ethel Swindells was born in Manchester on 24 September 1897, that much is true.

The Swindells were originally farmers from Lancashire, but it was two brothers, Francis and Martin, who in the early 1800s branched out into milling cotton. They must have been a game lot, and tough. The family story goes that Francis ran away from home and his very strict father when he was about sixteen. He made it down to London and went into service, as they called it back then, as a groom to a gentleman.

Late one night Francis was sitting up next to the coachman taking his masters family home over Hounslow Heath, a hangout of bandits and footpads (robbers on foot), when two highwaymen bailed them up.