SIMON PETER van KASPELEN (1849 – 1893)

PORTRAIT ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE AND LADY KILLER

by Don Wotton

In the course of ancestral research I discovered my maternal great grandfather, who settled in Port Augusta, S.A. in the late 1870’s, had his portrait drawn by renowned colonial artist Semon Petrus van Kaspelen (aka Simon Peter van Kaspelen). Curiosity set me off on a tangent to learn more of van Kaspelen’s background. In the process I discovered van Kaspelen was not only an accomplished crayon artist but also quite a lady killer.

Simon Peter van Kaspelen was an industrious Dutch-born draughtsman from Amsterdam who specialised in making life-size French crayon portraits from photographs. He was a well educated man fluent in 4 languages. Simon was active in Australia from 1879 – 1893 having previously established a name for himself as a portrait artist in London and New York. He gained popularity in Australia while working as a portrait artist in Launceston, Tasmania in 1880. Simon later settled in Mount Gambier, South Australia before relocating to Adelaide via Millicent and Robe. By 1882 Simon had opened a studio on Commercial Road, Port Augusta and was regularly seeking commissions for portrait drawings in the South Australian Advertiser.

Simon married Edith Marion Woodham, an artiste, from London, England at St. Luke’s Church, Adelaide on 19 February 1883. Edith was 10 years his junior. Over the next 18 months Simon travelled widely throughout South Australia, completing commissioned portraits in Clare, Kadina and Moonta; and entering artworks in numerous regional shows e.g. the Yorketown Industrial Exhibition of January 1885, where he obtained further commissions.

Ahead of moving to Sydney in late 1885 Simon and Edith auctioned their household furnishings and personal effects including a Belle Epoque & Gilt Over-mantle, Artists’ Easel, Parian Figures, a Ring Parrot, Austrian Arm Chairs, Zither Harp and a Hammock. Unencumbered by chattels Simon and Edith moved through rural NSW spending time in Bathurst (1887-1888) and Grafton (1889), completing portraits of leading politicians and members of high society, before returning to Sydney where they rented a suite of rooms in a two-storey Georgian boarding house at 195 Bourke Street in the bohemian suburb of Woolloomooloo. Also resident at this address were a Joseph Wilson, a French-polisher, his wife Annie Godlington Wilson and her brother George Edwards, a collector for Citizens Life Assurance.

In Sydney, Simon was employed in the studio of prominent Dutch born art dealer Diedrich Wilhelm Edvard Aldenhoven of 74 Hunter Street. Despite his artistic credentials, Simon was a heavy drinker with a penchant for Queensland rum and a known violent psychopath when intoxicated.  In late 1892 Simon  quarrelled with Aldenhoven, seizing him by the throat with such fury that he would have killed him had Aldenhoven’s workmen not come to his rescue. Aldenhoven thereafter forbade Simon from his gallery-studio and sent his commissions to his Bourke Street address where he and Edith had been living for the past seven months.

In December 1892 Edith left Simon, due to his intemperance and increasingly violent behaviour, and moved to nearby 639 Bourke Street. Edith remained on friendly terms with Annie Wilson who managed the boarding house during the owners’ absence. Edith and Annie bore an uncanny resemblance to each other and could be easily mistaken from a distance.

After losing his wife, Simon drank even more heavily, oscillating between melancholy and rage when Edith visited, begging her forgiveness one moment and threatening to shoot her the next. Despite these threats Edith remained a regular visitor to 195 Bourke Street, lunching with Annie most days. While Edith’s visits to Annie didn’t go unnoticed by Simon, her new address was kept secret from him. On 12 January 1893, Simon, anticipating a visit from Edith at 195 Bourke Street, arrived home around 1:00pm to discover Annie preparing dinner in the kitchen.

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About 1:30pm that very afternoon George Edwards went to the house and found Edith at the street door, who told him she had been there about five minutes knocking but no one had come to open it. Edwards had a key and on opening the door he and Edith entered together. Edwards, seeing no one in the front room, opened the kitchen door and found his sister lying in a pool of blood with a bullet hole in her head above the right eye. She was still breathing. A doctor was immediately sent for, but by the time he arrived life was extinct. The police were quickly on the scene and took charge of the house. A hard felt hat, with a bullet hole through the crown, and a pipe, which Edwards identified as belonging to Simon was found on the floor of the kitchen. As it was evident that the murder had been committed by Simon the police hurried upstairs to his bedroom. Upon bursting open the locked door they found Simon sprawled dead on his blood soaked bed, with a bullet-hole through his forehead and a scalp wound on the right temple. His cold hands were clenching a pistol.

Following an inquest at the Burdekin Hotel, Woolloomooloo on 13 January 1893, which returned a verdict stating that Simon killed Annie in a drunken rage, mistaking her for his wife, and then committed suicide, the incident quickly became a national sensation. It seemed improbable that Simon should deliberately shoot another woman in broad daylight, mistaking her for his wife. A review of more information uncovered by the inquest ultimately shed further light on what occurred. Newspapers reported Simon complained his wife had “entertained a high and unusually affectionate regard” for the 26-year-old Annie and that Annie was “too intimate with Edith,” alluding to what was rumoured to be accurate yet forbidden to be discussed due to the social taboos of the Victorian era.

The probability is Simon sought revenge for his wife’s infidelity. To put it plainly, Edith and Annie were engaged in a scandalous lesbian affair which had been covered up by other household members. While the incident was quickly forgotten the case is accepted as one of the earliest public records depicting a same-sex relationship in colonial Australia.

The widowed Edith next married Frederick Hardy, a furniture broker whose business  operated from 17 Pelican Street, Woolloomooloo. Edith had met Hardy just three months before the wedding, at Pyrmont in July 1897, when she had asked him to buy some furniture for her. Edith believed Hardy was a religious man who would make her happy. The marriage however was short-lived with Hardy deserting Edith just twelve months later telling her that it was as much as he could do to support himself let alone two others.

As it so happened Hardy was recently divorced and had been served documents for the maintenance of his former wife, with whom he shared a child. A decree nisi was granted and by March 1902 Edith’s marriage to Hardy had been dissolved. Edith went on to marry John G. Lancaster at St Leonards in 1912 and produced three children.

In January 1915 the family of the late Hon.Thomas English MLA gifted Adelaide City Council with a crayon portrait of their forebear drawn some thirty five years earlier by Simon. The gift was graciously received by Council as a record of one of its colonial mayors.

After this date both Simon and his former wife, Edith Lancaster, disappear into obscurity.

195 Bourke Street still stands and looks almost the same as it did in 1893. It has been renovated and restructured internally and is a stunning home but one can only imagine what tragic ghosts must haunt the premise