Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 270
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[Page 270]
4.
met Tom in Melbourne, & reported the find to his people here. Tom is alleged to be suffering from shock, & to have lost his memory, & altogether the business is most mysterious. If he ever went bathing at Manly at all, he certainly didn't go from there to Sydney Railway Station, & from there to Melbourne without any clothes on, so that the suit left at the dressing shed at Manly must have been a spare one. Poor old Ernest Macartney de Burgh, his father, is putting up the theory of a blow on the head, suffered perhaps in the surf, to account for Tom finding himself in Melbourne without being able to explain how he got there. I confess I can't make head or tail of the whole business, because the blow on the head theory seems to me to break down over the second suit of clothes. On Saturday last when it seemed perfectly certain that Tom had been drowned, we sent telegrams of sympathy both to Mrs. de Burgh, & to Mrs Tom. In the course of the afternoon a telephone message came from Mr. de Burgh that Judge Street had just telegraphed from Melbourne to say he had found Tom. Today a very grateful note has come from poor Jeanie de Burgh, who thought she had been left a widow with a young child till Street's telegram came. Tom was always a funny sort of fellow, & perhaps a bit eccentric, but one is slow to believe that be really planned the whole business, as a part from the cruelty to his young wife, & his father & mother, there seems no motive for so extraordinary a performance. One would like to believe