The mystery in the Warwick cemetery has remained for eighty-five years. Just who is John Bright? I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

In 1939, an elderly man dropped dead in front of the old Church of Christ (pictured above) in Margaret Street, Toowoomba, Queensland. Police found on him bank books and bonds to the value of £3,846 as well as £2,000 worth of company shares. That’s around $2.2 million in today’s money. But even today, no one is entirely certain who the man was.

Most of his bank accounts and shares were in the name of John Bright, but some were in the name of Jacob Poole. Other shares were in the name of Wilbur M. Merze. Among his possessions was a suitcase that was held shut with a thick leather strap and secured with a large padlock.

The man had been a frequent visitor to Toowoomba for the previous two and a half years. There he spent most of his time sitting on a stone seat between trees in Queens Park in front of the Toowoomba Technical College. Locals found that it was impossible to draw him into conversation.

It was the same at Warwick where he was well known since arriving to live in Percy Street seven years earlier. He was a worshipper at the Methodist Church in the same street in which he lived and gave freely to church organisations and charities. Nobody knew anything more about him except that he apparently had insufficient money to get himself the medicine that a doctor had prescribed. He was buried at Warwick, following the request made in his will.

Even though buried under the name of John Bright and with a death certificate to match, police were not altogether certain that the man was actually John Bright. 

There were bank accounts in Armidale and Tamworth. Police suspected that me may have been in business as a tentmaker and ironmonger in Sydney. Rumours circulated that he was the brother-in-law of a member of parliament in Victoria. It was even thought that he had two daughters living in South Melbourne whose names no one knew. The police found no papers in his possession that could throw any light on their identity.

He left a will in which he bequeathed all of his wealth to the Queensland Society for Crippled Children. That was a charity established in 1933 the year after he arrived in Warwick. It was in response to a polio epidemic. Today it’s called Montrose Therapy & Respite Services and operates as a care provider for people with physical disabilities.

After a very handsome memorial was erected in the Warwick cemetery, the endowment was expected to give the society £200 a year. And as best I can tell, the society is benefits from the unknown man today.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Church of Christ, 133 Margaret Street, Toowoomba, 2020 – posted on Waymarking by CADS11.
Toowoomba Technical College, 124 Margaret Street, Toowoomba – Colliers Toowoomba real estate.
Former Warwick Methodist Church, 2023 – Australia’s Christian Heritage, John Huth.
John Bright memorial, Warwick cemetery – posted to Find a Grave by Richie Wright 2018.