In much of her work – The Secret River, The Lieutenant and later A Room Made of Leaves and Restless Dolly Maunder – Kate Grenville has turned to historical archives as source material. But when she chanced upon a furious letter about a schoolteacher in northern New South Wales, she wasn’t sure there would be enough there. But Joseph Connor, a rural educator in the 1880s, had been accused of viciously beating and maltreating children in the town where her grandmother grew up – and the story wouldn’t let her go. “Powerful emotion of any kind is irresistible to a novelist,” she explained in a recent interview.
So she kept reading. In 1884, just a few years after public schooling was made law, Connor was appointed the sole teacher at the school in Currabubula, a tiny town on Gomeroi country (also spelled Kamilaroi or Gamilaraay). Through letters, reports and transcripts from the archives, Grenville pieces together a hazy picture of the decade that follows: as he fathered more and more children of his own, there were anonymous complaints, petty feuds, and arguments with parents over fees. Then there were accusations that Connor had seriously beaten and “marked” several children; one lost a finger. There were inquiries and court hearings, but nothing was really proved. After 11 pregnancies, Connor’s exhausted wife died; a few years later, so did he.
