A night to remember

A MID-August Saturday night in 1932 saw Heathcote’s customary calm upended when two separate events resulted in gunfire, assault and a 50-mile car chase down the Northern Highway.

A week earlier, Horne’s Beehive Stores had been burgled and £40 worth of silks, tobacco and blankets was stolen.

Most of these goods were later found stashed in “a dark and obscure corner of the dairy produce storeroom,” presumably to be collected at a later date.

According to the McIvor Times, Heathcote’s First Constable Delaney had “entered on a week’s unceasing vigil, sleeping on the premises at night.

“Saturday night was a sensational one in Heathcote,” it wrote on 17 August.

“A further attempt to unlawfully enter Horne’s Beehive Stores was prevented and in an exciting chase which followed, a young man was arrested after being fired at; a few hours later First-Constable Delaney apprehended the occupants of a motor car in suspicious circumstances; he was viciously attacked and felled, but fired several shots at his attackers as they escaped in the car; then followed a motor-car chase halfway to Melbourne; and it was finally discovered that the garage of Elsbury Motors had been broken in to.”

At 10pm on the Saturday, two of Horne’s employees, Drake and McSweeney, heard a noise in the yard and discovered a man forcing the back door.

The would-be robber, 19-year old Stanley Hudson, scaled a gate and set off with Drake in hot pursuit.

After Drake fired shots in his direction, Hudson took cover in the blacksmith’s outbuilding where he was apprehended and charged.

Separately to this, Delaney had noticed an unknown car on several occasions throughout the course of the evening.

At 3am he went to investigate when it was parked in the High Street.

While he was speaking to the car’s female occupant, Alma Newton, aged 36, a man, Leslie Newton, aged 39, approached carrying car curtains which he had stolen from Elsbury’s garage.

When Delaney turned to question him, Alma Newton hit the police officer with a heavy object.

Delaney then fired several shots, two of which struck Leslie Newton.

Newton was, however, not seriously wounded and he drove off towards Melbourne, with Delaney, in Mrs Horne’s car, in hot pursuit.

A Melbourne police car took over the chase at Donnybrook, but lost sight of the vehicle.

The Newtons were arrested in Riversdale Road, Auburn, the following day, initially on vagrancy charges.

Along with Stanley Hudson, the pair faced the Heathcote Court in late August on a number of counts.

Hudson was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment on a felony charge, and Leslie and Alma Newton received sentences of three and one months respectively for loitering with intent to commit a felony.

Alma Newton was also charged with assaulting Delaney, but this was later dropped.

Leslie Newton was committed to trial at Bendigo Sessions for having robbed George Elsbury of car curtains valued at £3.

Both the Newtons had several previous convictions, some under the aliases of Lizar and Medhurst.

No evidence of any link between Hudson and the Newtons was in the court reports and it appears it was sheer coincidence that the two events occurred on the same night.