Elsie Mavis Stephens

  General Notes:

Elsie Mavis STEPHENS.
Elsie was the ninth child in a family of seven boys and three girls. She was born the year her parents and siblings swapped the Burwood Post Office for a hundred acre farm at Ruby.
She attended school at Ruby not long after she turned four. A few families had moved away from the area and the school was short on the numbers to keep a teacher. There were only seven attending and the minimum number required was eight. It was a long day having to walk the mile and a half down the railway line each morning and back up again in the afternoon.
On New Year's Day, 1935 at Inverloch a 12 year old girl went missing. The following day her body was found nearby in bush-land. She had been strangled and gagged. From the clues left behind, the police established that this was the work of a serial killer who had previously killed two teenage girls in Melbourne five years before.
Inverloch is about 23 miles from Ruby. This was a scary time for the young girls in the surrounding district. Elsie was fifteen and her older brothers looked after her when they went out.
It was almost a year later, on 1st December 1935, when a six year old girl disappeared while walking home from a park in Leongatha. A man riding a push-bike had been seen in the area. The body was found the following day a bit over one mile from her home. The serial killer had struck again. Leongatha is only three and a quarter miles from Ruby.
This was a terrifying time everyone in the district, but fortunately the killer was caught a short time later. The man was Arnold Sodeman, who was a member of a road gang working in the area. At morning tea, a work mate teased Sodeman "Wasn't it you I saw riding your push-bike near there that day". Sodeman exploded uncharacteristically. "No you bloody well didn't" and strode off. The work-mates thought this was strange behaviour from their usually quiet fellow worker. One of them reported the incident to the police. The detectives rushed to the site and Sodeman was arrested and taken into custody, where he confessed. He was hung at Pentridge Goal, Melbourne on the 1st June 1936.
With his arrest the nightmare was over for the everyone in the district and Elsie was able to relax and enjoy life once again.
She grew up during the big depression of the 1930's and life was hard for most families. After she left school jobs were difficult to get, so Elsie mainly stayed at home helping her mother. She did go out to do some housekeeping to earn money to buy a pony which she rode into Ruby each week day to collect the mail.
Elsie played tennis and basketball. She had joined a group of local girls, forming a basketball team for Kardella. The first year they didn't win one game. However, after a few years with plenty of practice and perseverance, they won the premiership.
She was married at age 20 to Arthur Frank Hiscock in 1940 and moved into the farm at Foster North. She always helped Arthur with the outside work as well as doing all the housework. With five children born into the family, she was kept very busy.
Elsie was good at sewing and knitting, making most of the family's clothing. She also embroidered and crocheted. She loved reading and gardening, creating a colourful surrounding to the houses the family lived in.
After Arthur died, she rented a flat at Dandenong so that Ray could finish his apprenticeship at G. M.H. as a fitter and turner, coming back to the house at Healesville for the weekends. She got a job in a chicken farm sorting eggs, then later in a flower farm picking flowers.
It was whilst coming back to Dandenong from Healesville so that she could start a day earlier, as the following Sunday was Mothers Day, she died in a car accident. Ray was driving and the other driver hit head on almost in the gutter as Ray kept moving to the left to avoid him. The driver was from Canada, used to the right hand driving, and had only driven on the Australian roads for a few days. The lady passenger in his car also died.

  Noted events in her life were:

• Education: Ruby State School.

Elsie married Arthur Frank Hiscock, son of Frank Hiscock and Emily Eliza Wallis, on 10 Feb 1940 in Leongatha, South Gippsland, Victoria Australia. (Arthur Frank Hiscock was born on 4 Mar 1907 in Netherby, Victoria Australia, died on 13 Nov 1970 in Healesville, Victoria Australia and was buried on 17 Nov 1970 in Springvale Crematorium, Victoria Australia Bolingbroke Lawn - Lawn Grave, Row E Grave B.)