My purchase of a collection of photographic negatives unearthed a melancholy tale of alleged fraud, a premature death and legal argument over a sizeable bequest.
Around 2020, in an antique shop near Tamworth, NSW, I bought a collection of photographic negatives. It was an interesting and quite large collection, with some glass plates and some film negatives, as well as some magic lantern slides and prints.
The antique dealer told me the collection had belonged to a man named Bevis Platt, who had been a British officer serving in World War 1 and then later a science teacher at Tamworth High School. Platt had married the widowed mother of noted Tamworth local historian Lyall Green, and the couple had moved to England after Platt retired. I was told that Green inherited Platt’s belongings and when Green died in a Tamworth nursing home in 2016, aged 100, the estate was dispersed.
The negatives I bought included a handful from postwar Europe. Platt seems to have been stationed in Bonn straight after the war, and then to have toured some of the European capitals.
Once in Australia, it seems he visited the Great Barrier Reef in the 1920s and made some extensive rail tours in the early 1930s, taking photos of towns and cities across the nation. He also apparently toured some Pacific Island destinations and made a collection of artifacts. I was later to discover that this collection was quite renowned among collectors in the field.
As I scanned the photographic collection I’d bought I found myself wanting to learn more about Bevis Platt, and I scoured the internet for the scant information that was available. Just as I made up my mind to write a blog post about him, I received two emails from England.
Surprise emails from England
Because I had loaded some of Bevis Platt’s photos to our website, search engines started bringing up our site when his name was typed in. Hence the emails to us from the Rev Dr Adrian Burdon of the Shaw and Royton Circuit of the Methodist Church, and from Alan Heywood, of Washbrook Methodist church, Chadderton. Dr Burdon and Mr Heywood wanted to know about Bevis Platt because their churches had recently received word that they were to get cash legacies in Platt’s name, but nobody seemed to know how this had come about.
It was a curious mystery, since Platt had died in England in 1979, aged 90.
I wrote what I knew about Bevis Platt, hoping that others would read the post and tell me more.
Bevis Platt was born on January 23, 1889, the son of Edwin Platt – a grocer of Ivy Cottage, Eaves Lane, Hollinwood. His mother’s name was Jane. He attended Oldham Hulme Grammar School from 1902 to 1906 and received a Master of Science degree from Manchester University in 1911.
He served in WW1 as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and in 1919 was attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery.
Royal Garrison Artillery
He moved to Australia in the 1920s and was teaching in Queensland until 1929 when he quit a job as teacher of electrical subjects at Brisbane’s Central Technical College. In 1939 he married Margaret Mary Green, the widowed mother of noted Tamworth schoolteacher and local historian Lyall Green.
Margaret’s nephew, former NSW Upper House parliamentarian Bob Scott, recalled meeting his “step-uncle” a number of times as a child. “He was an unusual person,” Bob said. “Winter or summer he took a cold bath every day. He was very focused on physics and chemistry. When he and my aunty went to England later in life Bevis would write to my mother on thin aerogram envelopes. He’d fill the page with writing in one direction then turn it 90 degrees and fill it with writing running in the other direction. All to save postage.”
Bob said Bevis had met Margaret at Maitland when her son, Lyall, was teaching special classes at Maitland High School. In the 1940s they all moved to Tamworth, where both Bevis and Lyall worked as teachers.
When Bevis Platt retired he and Margaret moved to England. Margaret died in 1964 and Bevis passed away on March 27, 1979 – aged 90. He left his estate to Lyall, who died in February 2016, aged 100.
Platt’s (very substantial) cash legacies were made to Shore Edge church, Oldham and to Washbrook Methodist church, Chadderton.
Next, I was contacted by Paris-based dealer in Oceanic art, Anthony Meyer, who wrote the following:
“Bevis Platt is well-known in the Oceanic Art circles for having gone to New Britain in the 1920s and spent time there. I own an artwork collected by him as he put together a collection of New Britain tribal art at the time. Most importantly he was an avid photographer and there is a collection of glass slides still in Australia to my knowledge that were made in New Britain. I only have one image which pertains to the piece I own.”
Controversy over an estate
A question in my mind was why it had taken so long after Bevis Platt’s death in 1979 for his bequest to take effect? I now have a copy of Platt’s will and attached codicils which show that he left his substantial estate (which included a high-quality portfolio of Australian blue-chip shares and his prized collection of Pacific artifacts) in trust with his step-son, Lyall Green. Green was entitled to the earnings from Platt’s estate during his lifetime, but on his death the estate was to be split four ways, with equal shares going to the two churches in England, the Dr Barnardo’s Homes charity and the University of Manchester.
Lyall Green never married. According to his cousin Bob Scott, Lyall devoted his life to local history, to the Uniting Church and to the Masonic nursing home into which he eventually moved. “We were very close to Lyall,” Bob said. “He used to spend every Christmas with us until he moved into care.”
Unfortunately, it appears that as Lyall Green aged some unfortunate events occurred that resulted in the Platt estate being greatly diminished. It appears that Lyall Green inadvertently intermingled his own substantial finances with those of the Platt estate. According to Bob Scott and to another well-informed source, a person in a position of trust prevailed on Green to sign a series of blank cheques which that person used for his own purposes – allegedly to cover his gambling debts. Again according to my sources, that person was confronted by his employer with the discovery of the theft in 2010 and advised to return the missing funds. This did not happen, however, and the person alleged to have misappropriated the money died in an accident shortly after having been accused. My sources relate that the alleged crime was never publicly revealed (though evidence – now in my possession – appears to establish it quite clearly).
According to Bob Scott, he only learned of the missing funds while visiting Lyall in the nursing home. “One of the nurses took me aside and said how terrible it was about the theft,” he said. “It was news to me. I was amazed. What was incredible was that nobody had told Lyall about it. He didn’t find out until I told him.” Bob said he wasted a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of the matter but eventually had to give up and stand aside.
I presume that the missing funds were replaced from another source – possibly an insurance policy – enabling the directions in Bevis Platt’s will to eventually be followed. Hence the emails from the two English churches. I also confirmed that the University of Manchester received its share of the Platt bequest. My source tells me that the Platt estate was probably worth between $1.6 million and $2.2 million at the time of Green’s death. Green’s own estate was said to have been divided, according to his own wishes, between the Masonic aged care organisation and a Tamworth church.
Thank you for the info on Bevis Platt. He also left a legacy to Washbrook Methodist church, Chadderton, the church amalgamated in 1966 with two other churches to form South Chadderton Methodist church. Details of the church can be found on the website http://www.mymethodisthistory.org.UK go to chapels and then Greater Manchester where you will find a short history of the amalgamation churches.