Outrageous Fortunes by Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex

Who knows the identity of the first female author of a detective series, years before Conan Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’? It is an Australian woman, Mary Helena Fortune, author of The Detective’s Album, in 1871. As was the case with many female authors of those times, she wrote under her initials or pseudonyms such as Waif Wander, Nessuno (nobody), or Nemia. And it is only through the extensive detective work of the two researchers, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex, that the full extent of her prolific writing output has been uncovered.

As the onetime wife of a policeman, then as the mother of a young criminal, and perhaps even as an informer herself, Mary Fortune had insight into the criminal underworld, a world that would become a mine of stories to be told in her detective series and her newspaper articles. She dared to write stories of murder, rape, assault and armed robbery, in published serial chapters, short stories and articles, which captured the attention of colonial-era Australia. In her ‘Ladies Column’ for 'The Herald', she dared to describe her visit to Pentridge prison, disguising the fact she was visiting her own son, for George had led a life of recidivism, from one crime to another. Mary Fortune herself led a colourful life, as bigamist, flaneuse, and drunkard, an independent woman who crafted stories, often autobiographical, that captured the attention of her readership.

If it were not for the persistent research of Brown and Sussex, Mary Fortune’s life and that of her son George, the other outrageous Fortune, would have disappeared from memory. The extracts from Mary’s writing that are included in this book, reveal a competent and entertaining writer, that readers might like to discover further. Happily some of her stories have been collected in a NewSouth publication Nothing but murders and bloodshed and hanging (2025) also collated by Brown and Sussex.

Themes: Non-Fiction, History, Biography, Melbourne, Detectives, Crime.

Helen Eddy