A young, attractive girl in a job with socially prominent connections, disappears under suspicious circumstances. Marjorie Rose Norval, aged 30, was a Public Service typist who assisted the wife of then Queensland Premier William Forgan-Smith with arranging social functions. She disappeared on the evening of 11 November 1938 and was last seen walking up the steps of Brisbane’s Central Station. She told friends that she was going to Bundaberg for three days. In fact, no Bundaberg train was due to depart until hours after she was dropped off at Central Station. She told other friends conflicting stories about where she was going.
By the end of November the Government offered a reward of £500 but there were still no definite leads. All sorts of rumours about Marjory were spread not the least of which were that she was pregnant by a prominent politician and was killed to prevent a scandal and that her body was thrown into the bay. None of these have proven to be true. The search for Marjorie was massive with more than 1,000 people interviewed. Police checked every motor boat in the Brisbane River, combed the bush within 100 kilometres of Brisbane and dug up suspicious looking patches of ground. But the only bodies unearthed belonged to dead horses, cows, dogs and cats.
Abortionists and suspected abortionists were closely watched. The water police were called upon to help and a plane was used to search islands and inlets from Jumpinpin and north. Tragedy struck on November 28, 1938 when an RAAF amphibian aircraft carrying four men including Constable George Young, crashed at Alberton Ferry, near Beenleigh, during the search for the missing woman, all on board were killed.
An inquiry held in 1943 further investigated Ms Norval’s disappearance, at the end which, Magistrate Mr Leahy said he believed that Marjorie had undergone an operation from which she had not emerged alive, an operation which can be assumed to be an abortion.
PLANE CRASH KILLS CONSTABLE GEORGE YOUNG, NOVEMBER 28, 1938
George Robert Young was born on 15 November 1895, in Leopold Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane and then the family moved to a diary farm owned by a Mr Fountain at the Burpengary North Coast Line. When he was fourteen George and his parents moved to Paddington in Brisbane. A few years later he was employed by Finney Isles and Coy, in the capacity of electrician, the duties being to look after the firm’s electricity lighting plant. In 1916 at the age of 21, George joined the A.I.F. and then returned from Active Service in July 1919. He was then employed by the Military Department at the Enoggera Military Hospital, as electrician in charge of the electrical lighting plant. In November 1920 the hospital was disbanded and George received his discharge from the Army.
George joined the Queensland Police and was sworn in as Constable 2555 on 1 September 1921 at the age of 25 years and 9 months. He married Alice Rush Knights at Toowoomba on 26 February 1924 and they had one child, a daughter. He was stationed at Roma Street and Woolloongabba Police Station before being transferred into the Brisbane Water Police on 11 November 1922.
As Constable Young was considered to be an expert on the bay foreshores and the Albert River, it was decided he would be a police observer on board an RAAF Amphibian aircraft. The aircraft took off about midday on 28 November, but whilst it was travelling low over the Albert River in the vicinity of the Alberton Ferry, the plane hit a 5000 volt cable and crashed killing all on board. The death of Constable Young was a very sad loss. He was described by Senior Sergeant Tuesley, OIC Brisbane Water Police as, “a most efficient and courteous officer” and by the then Police Commissioner Mr Carroll as “a man with a long and honourable record whose knowledge of the bay and near coast was of great value to the Police Department”.
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This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available at the time of writing.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“The death of Constable George Young, 1938” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode