GUEST POST: Tim Reeves on The Death of Dr Duncan

Tim Reeves’ The Death of Dr Duncan is the first account in 50 years to examine in detail Dr Duncan the man, his killing and its investigation, and the gay law reform it precipitated. In this guest post, Tim describes a chance finding which shed new light on Dr Duncan’s personality.

Read on below.

In 1994 there was an unusual discovery in the basement of the South Australian Coroner’s Court.

It was a battered leather suitcase, split at the sides and with a broken handle. It bore the name of G.I.O. Duncan, the University of Adelaide law lecturer whose 1972 drowning in the River Torrens at a homosexual beat was still an unsolved murder.
I was then writing the entry on Duncan for Volume 14 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography but, frustratingly, was living in Canberra. An Adelaide colleague investigated the find.
The suitcase contained Dr Duncan’s personal papers, including three letters from a woman called Dorothy Glover. I slowly pieced together that she and Duncan had met while he was in Britain and formed a close attachment. So close that Dorothy, while aware of his homosexuality, had fallen in love with Duncan and proposed marriage. But she had been firmly rebuffed.

In one letter she acknowledged she had hurt his feelings, and implored:

Do you remember many years ago in Dorchester when we found it necessary to apologise to each other, we managed to forgive immediately? … I only wish we could go back to that Tuesday, when the sun shone, the atmosphere was perfect, and the fields were full of bluebells, God was in His heaven and all was well with the world. Kyrie Eleison.

Duncan drafted a letter in response to her entreaties. It is not known whether it was sent as it was undated:

There is a hint in your very obscure letter that you now realise that marriage is out of the question and you blandly imagine that we can both go back to the position we occupied before you began your extraordinary misconduct …
Your letter also implies that you feel that all you have done is to ‘hurt my feelings’ as you put it. You must be very unperceptive if you imagine that that is all that your wanton behaviour has done. Disgust and revulsion are words by no means too strong to describe my reaction to your improprieties and but for my firm conviction that you are not in your right mind I should express myself in language much more emphatic.
Do, please, understand that you are ill (perhaps seriously ill) and that you should be in the hands of a doctor.

Below: Dorothy Glover

The letter was heartbreakingly cruel. One could imagine a devastated Dorothy reading it. From further research I found out that Duncan had had a difficult upbringing. A nurse who cared for him when he contracted tuberculosis said of his childhood that ‘Dickens would not have imagined worse’. This had carried through into adulthood. He was intensely shy, extremely private and restrained to the point of taciturnity.

As painful as they were to read, the letters – thankfully – were transcribed.

In 2015, with an upcoming exhibition commemorating 40 years of gay law reform in South Australia (Duncan’s killing having been a trigger), a formal request was made for the suitcase to be included. I was shocked to discover that it had been destroyed, a decision that had been made by SA Police. And without consulting the outgoing coroner, who said he would not have agreed to it.
It was extraordinary action to take when, even after so many decades, the odour of possible police involvement in Duncan’s death was still pungent. The 50th anniversary of that senseless act occurs on 10 May this year. His killers remain unconvicted.

The Death of Dr Duncan
is now available for purchase.

The drowning of Dr Duncan in the River Torrens in 1972 remains one of Australia's most notorious unsolved murders. His death shocked the local community and still reverberates 50 years later.
Tim Reeves is an award-winning author and the acknowledged authority on the Duncan case. He pulls together the complex strands of a police investigation, coroner's inquest, New Scotland Yard enquiry and trial. He also examines the attempts at gay law reform in the state that were triggered by Duncan's killing.
This meticulously researched and tautly written book tells a story that is disturbing yet captivating, distressing yet ultimately uplifting.

Tim Reeves is an Adelaide-based historian and author.

He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class Honours at the University of Adelaide, with a thesis on the impact of Duncan's death on gay law reform in South Australia. He has since published widely on the topic including for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Wakefield Companion to South Australian History and the international Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History. He also designed Adelaide City Council's interpretive sign about the Duncan case which was unveiled near the University footbridge in 2020. Tim has produced a range of academic work as well as journalism and poetry. His fourth book, Adelaide Modernism: 101 Houses, is forthcoming and also from Wakefield Press.