GLADYS LILIAN HOSKING

In May 1942, while riding a tram home from work, Bill Hosking read the newspaper. In those pages, he first learned that his daughter, Gladys Lillian Hosking, was dead.

Gladys was born in 1900 in Perth to William Hosking and Lillian Imray. She grew up in Perth and attended the Perth Girls School. Gladys loved to perform and dance and wrote letters to 'Auntie Nell' of The Daily News expressing a desire to become an actress. She worked as a clerk and was also an active member of the Perth Concert Artists.

Choosing to focus on her career, she moved to Melbourne in the late 1920s and was the secretary for Fintona College in Camberwell, Victoria. By the early 1940s, she worked as a secretary-librarian for the chemistry department of Melbourne University. While she was there, she introduced the latest filing systems to the library.

One of her last letters home to her father was sent in April. She described the brown-out (low lighting during wartime) and said that a tract of land near where she was living was made into a military camp. She expressed that she was nervous about going out at night.

On 18 May 1942, Gladys's partially undressed body was found 350 metres from her Parkville home, a mere ten-minute walk from her workplace. She was the third woman killed in Melbourne in 15 days in what later became known as the brown-out murders.

American soldier Edward Leonski later confessed to all three murders and the trial was conducted under American military law. He was found guilty and hanged at Pentridge Prison on 9 November 1942.

The Daily News; 20 May 1942; Page 1.

Mirror; 23 May 1942; Page 4.