SHOT BY BROTHER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 303, 22 December 1932, Page 11

SHOT BY BROTHER.

AUSTRALIAN MINER.

DARK TRAGEDY REVEALED.

LIKE A RUSSIAN NOVEL (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 1(5. On August 27, in the village of Culeen Bullen, a young miner, Fred Hogansen, was shot dead by his brother Jolin, who was duly charged with murder. The accused man made a statement to the Court, which evidently produced a deep impression upon the judre and jury, and the evidence called in his defence fully bore out what he had to say in explanation, though not in justification, of his offence. The testimony as reported reads more like a page out of a Russian novel than a sober record of events in a modern colonial town. For surely neither Gogol nor Dostoiewsky nor Gorki ever succeeded in suggesting with more painful force the idea of impenetrable gloom and abject fear and an inevitable evil fate this dreadful story discloses. Culeen Bullen is a little mining town 011 the Mudgee railway line about 120 miles from Sydney. Fred Hogansen, 2(5 years old, was the younger brother, and by all accounts he was endowed with more than a fair share of what old theologians term original -sin. A powerfully-built man, ferocious in temper and always prone to violence, more especially when drunk, he seems to have been the terror of this little community. The heart-broken old mother, pleading in Court for her son s life, told how Fred has been his father's pride, how he had won gold medals for his strength and skill—but he was a tyrant and a bully, and he had vented his' cruelty chiefly on his unfortunate brother. John Hogansen, though five years older than Fred, has lived in terror of him; and it is curious to see how completely lie had imposed his reign of brutality upon those around him.

Fists His Weapons. A nurse living in the township testified that she had several times treated patients for injuries inflicted by Fred Hogansen; and the old mother told the Court how Fred, charged with brutally "bashing" three men, and asked by the magistrate what weapons ho had used, held up his clenched fists and triumphantly answered, "These." The little corner of the village in which he lived was nicknamed Potte Point in token of the feudal ascendancy that he maintained there by his brutal violence. But it was against John Hogansen that this ferocious brute seems to have directed all that was most evil and vindictive in his nature.

John, according to the mother, had always been comparatively weak and delicate, and Fred had taken suc-li complete advantage of his helplessness that the elder brother lived in abject fear of him, and even trembled when he spoke of him. Mother and nurse both bore witness that once Fred had broken a rifle over John's head, and that the unfortunate victim was "silly and dazed for weeks after." Some years ago Fred struck John in the face, and broke his jaw. The poor old mother remonstrated and Fred retorted that it was "good enough for him," and added that he "would do for him" sooner or later. Sure enough, a little later he broke John's jaw again, and the terrible sequel was told by John himself when 011 trial for his life. Shots in the Street. It may seem almost incredible that such things should pass almost unnoticed at the time, but in these remote and secluded country towns "the King's law" does not always in the antique phrase "run" as speedily and effectively as might be desired. Several witnesses at this trial spoke of shots fired- and weapons displayed and used as if they were casual events of • everyday life. "Oh, yes," sad one of the witnesses in a surprised tone, when asked if he had ever heard gains going off in the streets there. But John himself, in hie speech from the dock, told the truth about "the reign of law" in Culeen Bullen in a few pathetic words. "I could not go to law with him," he said, "I coukl not appeal to the law for justice, because in our class of life appeals to law mean still more bashings." And so, terrorised and reduced to a pitiable, state of nervous collapse, unable to leave the village because of his poverty, crushed to the earth by a sense of impotence and fear—if ever Freud's famous "inferiority complex" lieeded illustration he might find it here —John Hoganscn endured his fate as best he could. The end came suddenly; another brutal blow —apparently Fred Hogansen used this form of salutation quite frequently, even outside the limits of his family— and John's endurance and self-control gave way. A shotgun borrowed from a neighbour, on the pretext that a dog was to be killed —110 attempt at concealing or evading the consequences of the deed—a wife swooning with horror as she hears the tale of death —and then the trial.

"Something Not Human." The will that John Hogansen made before he was charged and when he knew that punishment was inevitable is a most painfully arresting human document in its pathos, its hopeless fatalism and its. protestation of love for mother and children and wife—"the staunchest and 'bravest little thing that lias ever been .born." But even more pathetic and impressive was the statement which he made - in Court, admitting that he had killed his -"brother, but protesting that he had no conscious intention of committing murder—that he loved his wife and children far too much to think of rushing upon his own destruction. Whether the crime was deliberate'and premeditated or not, there can be no doubt that the provocation had been long-continued and extreme —more so than even the bare recital of facts would suggest. "There are times," said John Hogansen, "when you meet something that is not human. My brother mutilated my body and he shattered my nerves and brain." Only 31 years of age and yet *'a total mental and physical wreck —at his hands." But there was something even worse than this— John Hogansen's fatal secret that he had 1 never; before revealed. Twice the bones of his face frad been crushed and fractured—they are decaying—th# necrosis is spreading, '.beyond the power of medical and surgical skill—and when he sought hie brother, gun in hand, on that fateful evening, he was impelled not by the desire for vengeance for that last cowardly blow, but by the knowledge that "a life and death of torture" was his own irrevocable doom.

It is indeed a terriblcs story, and one feels tliat with the help of a little sym-" pathetic imagiaatioa justica-might. baygj

been satisfied without imposing any heavy burden upon this hapless victim of an evil destiny. But the judge carefully instructed the jury on the various definitions of murder and homicide. The jury, after 21 hours' deliberation, returned a verdict of manslaughter, and the judge, reminding the Court and the general public that no man, no matter how keen his sense of injury, can be permitted to take the law into his own hands, sentenced John Hogansen to four years' imprisonment. The prisoner thanked the judge and the jury for their fairness. Old Mother's Appeal. The final element of path'os was supplied by the appeal of the old mother on her John's, behalf. Not one half of his sufferings had been told, she said. He had been forbearing and forgiving; he had never retaliated; he had been a good son, husband and father. When all hope was gone, she hurried from the Court to buy some tobacco /or John before she was separated from him, and with her last words to him, she prayed that she might be still alive when he is released. She can still care for Fred — "I've got his body—in the Northern Suburbs—l brought it there —the grave is railed, and I will put up a tablet even if it costs me £40. They were my two boys." But it is to John that her heart naturally turns —"Poor Jack—so fond of his children, and his poor little wife —he has a heart of gold." And already she is planning what she can do'to help Jack start in life again when he is free once* more and the dreadful past may be forgotten. One fears that some of this may be not inappropriately described as "sob stuff," but there is real pathos and real tragedy in this, story. It impresses me even more strongly with a sense of dramatic intensity—such as one seldom realises in actual life. Many years ago, Marcus Clarke—himself the author of one of the darkest tragedies that Australia has yet produced—found in the gloom of the Australian 'bush, the depressing vastness of the continent's open spaces and the remote seclusion of its far-flung settlements a reason for the tragic pessimism that clouds the poetry of Kendall and much of our best imaginative work. I wonder how far the limited and sordid conditions of life and the oppressive circumstances of existence in such an isolated village as Cullen Bllllen may be judged responsible for the inhuman hardness, the fatalism and the unrelieved gloom that this tragic story has revealed.