I know the title injects some whimsy into what is ultimately a sad and tragic tale but it’s such a banging track that I couldn’t resist.
The story is incredible and as it will soon be be brought to life in the form of a play ‘Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun’ at Government House this September, I thought it time to revisit the subject.
Below is the opening paragraph of Perth’s Mirror Newspaper from Saturday 29th of August 1925:
“Perth’s greatest ballroom shone brilliant with light and gaiety on Wednesday night when hundreds of glad hearted boys and girls and their elders danced and made merry to aid the benevolence of the hospital of St John of God. They had chased the glowing hours with flying feet and the grand ball was drawing to a happy close, the night had passed into early morn. It was one of those scenes on which the high Gods seemed to smile. Then a shot, hushed chatter, little startled cries, a scatter of dancers, a girl with a revolver and a young man with a blood smeared face dying on the floor. The High Gods had deserted their chosen. Terror was upon the gay hall. Mirth fled away into the shadows. The Glory of the lights and the gaiety of the colours and the music and the laughter gave way to the awe that beckoned the presence of the Dreadful great. King Death had entered in….’
The article recounted the story of two days prior, during the St John of God charity ball at Perth’s Government House, where, in front of hundreds of witnesses, a young man, Mr Cyril Gidley, was shot in the chest at point blank range and died.
The killer was his 20 year old former fiancé Audrey Jacob. She stood, holding a pistol and according to witnesses, said “I did it”, before being led away by police. What should’ve been an open and shut case became a legal and media sensation and led to Jacob’s acquittal for murder.
The trial was held at the Perth Courthouse on the 8th October 1925 where before Justice Northmore, Jacob plead not guilty to the charge of wilful murder. The story told in the papers, came largely from the argument presented by the defendant, her mother and her defence lawyer Arthur Haynes who by all accounts was the Johnny Cochrane or Jackie Chiles of his day.
Their version was that the victim Cyril Gidley, was not the victim at all, but had been a violent and emotionally abusive man. A man that seduced Jacob then callously ended their engagement breaking her heart. Furthermore the shooting was an accident!
The story presented to the court was Jacob attended the annual St John of God Ball in Perth with a friend, Miss Annie Humphreys. She encountered her ex-fiancee on the ballroom floor, wickedly dancing with another woman. There was an altercation during which she pleaded with him to take her back which he refused.
She then returned home distraught, to kill herself. She took a revolver, (we’ll leave aside the issue of what this respectable 20 year old woman is doing with a revolver) but she takes said revolver and walks to the river to take her own life. She then has a change of heart and walks to a nearby church, says a Rosary and then returns to the ballroom to see if her prayers will be answered and make one last effort at reconciliation. But she is scorned once again. Overcome with grief, she gets a headache, and having forgotten she was still carrying the gun in a white handkerchief, puts her hand to her head and the revolver accidentally goes off.
This is a series of events which proved compelling to a jury despite a number discrepancies such as when asked by the prosecution to replicate wrapping the gun in a white handkerchief, she couldn’t do it, and furthermore no handkerchief was found at the scene.
Spoiler alert, the next day Audrey Jacob was acquitted of the murder of Cyril Gidley. What was extremely powerful in shaping the narrative was the role of the media in pushing the evil man, woman scorned story. Jacobs lawyers notes have been examined in detail by Caroline Ingram, a PhD candidate in history at the University of Western Australia. It seems that Arthur Haynes worked very hard to ensure the ‘right’ story was in the newspaper reports and the right story was to show Jacob as a respectable, demur and innocent woman.
Audrey Jacob would’ve been only about 18 when she met Cyril Gidley, who was five years older than her. Her father was the clerk of the courts at Fremantle and she was one of eight children. They lived in a cramped worker’s cottage and struggled to make ends meet.
Her father seemed to be a bit of a cad. It was reported that he would regularly flirt and make advances towards women coming into the court seeking divorce. There at least one case of an irate husband taking umbrage and physically assaulting him. In 1924 Ms Jacob’s mother Jessie took out a court order against her husband for cruelty and he was ejected from the family home for a period. These family details didn’t serve the wholesome narrative and was suppressed during the inquest and the trial.
The dead man Cyril Gidley served as an engineer on the WA State Ship ‘Kangaroo’ (sister ship to the ‘Koolama’) he had only been in WA for about two years and was originally from the UK. He had no family and few friends here, which was significant to the case as there was no one to push a counter-narrative and defend him in the public eye. At the inquest a few weeks after the murder, Jacob’s mother, gave evidence, which was reported in The Sunday Times on the 6th of September that Gidley was abusive and cruel towards her daughter and had threatened the life of her husband.
Evidence given at trial further pushed the narrative of Gidley as a rake and serial jilter of women with a collection of engagement rings, and a number of alleged violent incidents to his name including a suggestion that he had sexually assaulted Jacob. Most of these assertions came from Jacob and her mother.
The defence lawyer Arthur Haynes appeared to have spent a considerable amount of time cultivating The Mirror newspaper where he was not only a friend of the owner, but also regularly employed by them. It’s suggested that he helped craft many of the negative articles about the deceased.
The family of Cyril Gidley’s, lived a world away in the town of Grimsby on England’s north-east coast. They did not attend the trial and little evidence emerged to defend his character. There were people who owned lodging houses where Cyril had stayed, and they described him as being a gentleman and were surprised at what was stated in the trial.
There was evidence, not presented at the trial or published in the media that his life might’ve previously been threatened by Jacob. Two weeks before the murder, Gidley wrote a note stating that Jacobs had visited him on his ship at Fremantle and “threatened me with my life if I didn’t make her my friend again”. He had also written a will a few months earlier. It’s considered that the threats began when he first broke off their engagement in early 1925.
In addition to attacking the character of Gidley, Haynes’s final legal tactic, used at the end of the trial, was to bring up a concept known as the “unwritten law”. The judge reminded the court that it was NOT a law but it was a powerful cultural concept at the time.
The ‘Unwritten Law’ was basically an understanding that a respectable woman who had been seduced and abandoned or jilted by their fiancé or lover had the right to take revenge. The ‘unwritten law’ had never achieved a full acquittal in Australia before. This was the first and possibly the only time that it was used successfully in a defence.
So the story in summary is, poor innocent, respectable girl, defends herself and takes revenge on the cruel, callous, cad that cast her aside and ruined her. The jury was convinced and the verdict…….not guilty. When the verdict was read out, the newspapers reported there was applause and cheers from the public gallery.
After her acquittal, Jacob left WA, travelled to Melbourne and met a wealthy American whom she married and left Australia disappearing from public view. According to Senior Archivist at the State Records office of Western Australia Damien Hassan, they had a daughter who subsequently went to work for US intelligence during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
You can find out more, see details, images and exhibits from the trial, including the bullet which killed Cyril Gidley at the Old Courthouse Law Museum in Perth. Or you can see the story performed on stage! The play ‘Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun’ will be performed at the very Government House where the heinous act took place from September 11-13, 2025.
(Image copyrights TROVE, The Old Courthouse Law Museum and James De Leo)
