The Fire Bug
When I was studying to be a Minister of the Gospel my student churches were two adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years, during the 1950’s and 1960’s, the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
Many of the people lived in the small wooden workmen’s houses that dotted the streets around Newmarket. Most of the houses were extremely narrow with only a three foot wide side‑way running between the walls of two adjoining houses. There was not even a fence between the two houses but the wall of one house was the dividing line between it and the next.
The houses were mainly dilapidated and damp, and because it was known for many years that area of Newmarket would be demolished under a slum reclamation scheme, landlords had not spent any money in maintenance or renovations. Broken windows, peeling paint, and leaking gutters were the features of every house.
During the chill Melbourne winters the heating in the houses was always inadequate. A number of houses had an open fire in the one lounge room built half‑way down the house and a wood stove in the kitchen. Between these two fires the house was kept reasonably warm, except in the bedrooms.
It was usual, when calling upon a house on a winter’s day, to find the inhabitants seated around the kitchen stove or around the fireplace in the lounge. A cup of afternoon tea in a cracked and stained mug was often accompanied by some fresh toast that was cooked on the end of a twisted wire toasting fork in front of the glowing coals.
Some houses had slow combustion coke stoves that burnt night and day and which only needed a good rattle of the grating early in the morning to start the coals glowing. Little children would get dressed in front of these slow combustion coke stoves. Beside the fire was often a box of coke or a pile of dried wood, or else a bucket for taking out ashes each morning.
Some of the houses had a Cannon gas fire, which was set into the fireplace, with twelve little windows in the front made of thin, translucent sheets of mica. The mica always looked as if it was peeling and more than one window would be burnt black from where a piece of burning wood had fallen against it. Often there would be holes in the little mica window which would be blocked up with some silver foil taken from somebody’s cigarette packet which would keep the smoke inside and not catch fire.
The only other form of heating in the house would be the wood chip heater in the bathroom lit by a spindle of paper and fuelled from a box of dry kindling that was kept at the end of the bath.
People were always fascinated by fire. Often when I would call into the homes on a winter’s day people would be sitting in front of the fire grate or the slow combustion stove with its door open playing with a poker, poking at the wood as it burnt, often heating the poker red hot and using it to drill smoking holes in a burning log.
One of the men who was fascinated by fire was Johnno Thomas. Johnno had lived for years in Newmarket with his wife and he loved playing with the fire and emptying a bottle of whisky each night. Late at night he would be glowing, both inside and out, and ready for an argument.
One night Johnno came knocking at my door late. I had never met him before. He had been told to report to me as Parole Officer, and he stood there at the door in the cold night air indicating that he had only just been released from Pentridge Gaol, Coburg, earlier that day. Without sufficient money for transport he had walked from the gaol to my house. All of his possessions were rolled up in a paper bag he held in his hand.
He had not eaten that day and had nowhere to stay that night. He had been in gaol for several years but his nose and cheekbones still had the high red glow common among alcoholics. He called me Padre and said “I will be honest with you, Padre. I do not own anything in this world. I have got no family, no job and no prospects. I have had nothing to eat and I have got nowhere to sleep. You are the only person I know, Padre, and I want you to help me.”
Johnno continued with his story as I invited him into my little front study. “I will be honest with you. I have been a bad boy in my time. I got on the slops and I used to do things what I should not. Whenever I got the whisky into me I used to behave bad, real bad. One night I was full of whisky sitting in front of the fire and my wife annoyed me. I do not know why I did it but I hit her, then killed her. I then got some petrol and poured it all over the fire in the lounge and ran throughout the house with it burning. I burnt the house down and her in it.”
“I have done me time in gaol and I’ve learnt me lesson. Can I sleep in your house tonight?”
I looked at Johnno standing there with his nose red and I realized he was telling me the truth. The man who had burnt down his own house and his wife in it, who had murdered her and then burnt everything he owned because of alcohol was asking me if he could stay in my house.
It so happened that night there was no room in my house for another single person. But I did decide to take Johnno at his word and to make up a bed for him in the little church next door to our house. There was a room just behind the platform which had a carpet in it and it certainly was warmer than outside on that cold winder’s night.
My young wife, Beverley, quickly provided blankets, something to do as a mattress, some hot soup and an evening meal for Johnno as he sat round our table and told me the rest of his story.
“It was a very lonely time in gaol both before I got sentenced and afterwards. Because of what I had done none of the family will have anything to do with me and I do not have any other relatives in the world. I have heard of you and that you would give a bloke like me another chance. I want to tell you, if you give me a chance I promise you that I will never, ever let you down.”
There was something about the honesty in the roughness of Johnno’s face. I believed him. But then again I was only a young minister and I could be taken in by con men.
But Johnno looked fair dinkum to me and so I made up a bed for him in the back room of the church and after a good feed settled him down for the night. I then realised that the little wooden church would burn down so easily, and that once it was alight, nothing could stop the fire.
That night my wife and I tossed and turned. I kept getting up to have a look. I expected to see the back of the church on fire.
As the Melbourne winter sun brought some warmth into the cold wintry city, Johnno came out of the church and knocked on my back door. He had rolled up his blankets and mattress and had everything neat and tidy. I fixed him up with a hot wash and a shave, and my wife prepared him some breakfast.
Now the tough part of the assignment came. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to stay, no clothing, no food, no job, no prospects. This was the time when I really needed to have faith in that man. We talked for a while and at the end of that time I was more convinced than ever that Johnno’s time in gaol had taught him a lesson, that he was off the grog, and that he would go straight if given a chance.
I took him with me down to a hardware store where a friend of mine was the proprietor. I thought it was possible that he might need someone helping stack the shelves or working out in the back among the supplies. Even in those days I had learnt that it was always best to be absolutely honest with people who would employ someone I brought to them. So I told my friend Johnno’s background and his story and let Johnno do some talking for himself. My friend looked him up and down, and said he believed his story, and that as a Christian he was prepared to give him a second chance. He put Johnno on to the staff then and there.
Immediately afterwards I went house hunting and visited a widow, a member of my church whom I knew had a lock‑up sleep‑out at the back of her house. I told her Johnno’s story, that he had murdered his wife and burnt her body in his own house.
I must admit she was not too excited about the prospect of taking him as a boarder but I convinced her that I trusted him. She, full of the goodness of a gracious heart, offered her home to this former prisoner just released after serving a sentence for murder and arson.
So Johnno came into the life of our church. He boarded with Mrs. T. and she soon came to find that he was a treasure. Having been inside all of that time, he had missed gardening more than anything. Very soon her garden, front and rear, was a picture of neatness and tidiness.
He never had to be asked to mow the lawns and when he came home from work on payday, he laid out his board for her in advance. He was proud of his suit, his clothing and his bearing. She took over the washing and ironing for him, and he took over the outside chores around the house.
I would often see him early in the morning walking down the street to the hardware shop or coming home after closing time. There was a spring about his step and a brightness about his countenance. He was a healthy, fit looking man. He would wave to me and say “Good evening, Padre. It’s a great night isn’t it?” and march on towards his widow’s house. Although he was off the whisky, his nose still shone brightly.
That was over thirty‑five years ago. Johnno retired from the hardware shop when he reached 65 years of age but he still calls back there every now and then to give them a hand on Saturday mornings and at the busy time of the year. The old widow is still living in the house and Johnno keeps a good eye on her. And every Christmas there is a Christmas card which is signed simply “To Reverend Moyes, with appreciation, from your mate Johnno”.
But I must admit that I wondered what on earth I would do with the man with the bright red nose who stood on the doorstep of our little manse that cold winter’s night and told me he had murdered his wife and burnt down their house and asked if he could spend the night with my wife and myself.
But he was just another person I met in those early days when I would walk out into the heavy air with the wind blowing from the abattoirs and start my motor bike and head towards the College of The Bible to train as a young minister thinking of my meeting with some of God’s children in Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
