On Christmas morning 1932, a mysterious death claimed a Queensland rugby league star which remains unsolved to this day. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.

Norman Richard Johnson was born at Tivoli in Ipswich in 1895, the son of a coal miner. Like many of the young men around him he joined the railways, he became a locomotive fireman at Ipswich, and also a rugby league star for both Ipswich and Queensland. Between 1919 and 1923 Johnson played representative matches against Great Britian, New Zealand, and of course New South Wales.

In 1927, Johnson married Miss Esther Minniette Smith in a Brisbane methodist church. The couple then went to Ipswich, where for the first six months they lived with Norman’s mother at Tivoli. After that they bought a little place of their own next to Norman’s mother-in-law.

However, when the mother-in-law left Ipswich for Brisbane, Johnson’s wife Esther moved to Brisbane with her. A year later Esther returned to Ipswich when she and Norman tried once more to make a go of it.

Then came the Depression and work became hard to get.  The couple decided that the best thing to do was for Esther to return to her mother in Brisbane, Ieaving the Norman with his own mother at Ipswich close to his work.

Norman’s earnings averaged £3 per week, £2 of which he gave to his wife, and the balance to his mother for board. He also got 15 shillings rent for their home, but Norman was in dire financial straits. He was forced to sell twelve of his football medals. Eleven of them were gold medals and one silver, so they sustained the family for a while.

Every week Norman sent Esther money for her and their two children, and every weekend that he was not on duty, Norman went to see her at his mother-in-law’s place in Kedron, Brisbane, where he and his wife would spend a few days together.

This routine continued and on Christmas eve 1932, after 11 o’clock that night the couple prepared Christmas stockings for the kiddies. Esther then went out to the kitchen to mix a dose of salts, which Esther and Norman had been taking together for years as a laxative.

On Christmas morning, as the Johnson children excitedly opened their presents, Norman and Esther took the salts that Esther had prepared, but this time not with the normal expected result. Norman swallowed and began writhing in pain, while Esther ran outside to vomit it back up. Twenty minutes later Norman was dead, as were the neighbour’s chooks in the yard that had pecked at Esther’s vomit. They had all died of strychnine poisoning.

An inquest into Norman’s death followed, and Esther spent an extraordinary one-and-a-half days in the witness box trying to explain how strychnine came to be in the salts that she had prepared.

Esther said that she and Norman always took salts on Sunday mornings. When asked why she vomited up the poison, but Norman didn’t, Esther said that her vomiting was completely normal. In fact, she used to vomit a couple of times a week and sometimes every day.

Esther advanced a theory that Norman was sick and tired of life, and so had put strychnine in the salts himself, intending to kill both himself and Esther.

The magistrate and coroner didn’t believe evidence given by Esther’s family, noting that they were recalling a lot of irrelevant details, but nothing about essential information.

The inquest finished behind closed doors, and no charges over the Christmas day strychnine poisoning were ever laid. However, sometimes the truth is revealed after death.

Norman was buried at the Ipswich cemetery alongside both of his parents, with a space left on his headstone where his loving wife’s name would eventually appear.

Esther outlived Norman by nearly fifty years but wasn’t buried with her husband where she was supposed to be. But instead, she was buried with her own parents some distance away, remaining distant from her poisoned husband into eternity.

So maybe Ipswich’s Christmas strychnine widow was leaving an admission of guilt from the grave.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
Representation of Norman Johnson with his mother, wife and brother-in-law prior to his 1932 Christmas poisoning – ChatGPT Image.
Norman Richard Johnson whose mysterious death was the subject of an inquiry – Truth, Brisbane, 30th July 1933, page 13.
Principal figures in the death drama, mother of the dead man Mrs Maria Johnson – Truth, Brisbane, 30th July 1933, page 13.
Principal figures in the death drama, Mrs Esther Johnson and her brother Mr Cyril Smith – Truth, Brisbane, 30th July 1933, page 13.
Mr J.J. Leahey – Truth, Brisbane, 17th September 1933, page 13.
Norman Richard Johnson, Ipswich General Cemetery – Anne here lies 2018 via Find a Grave website.