❤️HER NAME IS: JEAN MORRIS!❤️
Part of my work documenting femicides includes ensuring the stories of women killed from all eras are included.
Jean Morris is one of the first women I listed on my projects back in 2015.
She was murdered in She was murdered on October 3, 1932, in Ayr, Queensland. She was only 19.
Some say Jean is an assumed name and she is Anna Philomena Morgan, a young woman who disappeared in 1932 from NSW.
Jean was born in Sydney. Abandoned by her mum, she grew up in a boarding house there.
It’s believed her father was a musician and also a teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
She had a brother but little is known about him.
In 1931, Jean left Sydney to work in far north Queensland.
She was persuaded to do so by a pimp, who offered her riches and protection in return for sex work. Her clientele were to be cashed-up sugarcane cutters.
Australia was in the midst of the Great Depression and sex work was a lifeline for women across the country.
In Queensland, she met Vincenzo D’Agostino, the leader of a notorious gang called the Black Hand.
He tried to get her to have a relationship with him – but she refused.
Fearing he would kill her, she moved to Ayr where she rented a small two-bedroom shack.
She arrived in Ayr on September 29, 1932.
Four days later, a male broke into her home and stabbed her 43 times with a dagger.
She was found the next day by an electricity worker.
In the wake of her death, journalists labeled her ‘Stiletto Jean’ because it was said she carried a knife in the shape of a stiletto heel.
Victim-blaming was rife, with journalists, cops and gossipers saying if she had not rejected D’Agostino’s advances she might have lived.
The NT News wrote at the time: “Jean Morris made the mistake of rejecting advances by D’Agostino. His reaction was to order her murder by one of his underlings who stole into the cottage and stabbed her to death. D’Agostino merely announced to the gang that Jean Morris was a danger because she knew too much about Mafia activities.”
D’Agostino was killed in an explosion in 1938.
He was never charged for ordering the killing of Jean.
The man police believe carried out the murder fled to Italy where he was executed on an unrelated charge.
Jean’s murder remains an open case.
No one came to claim Jean’s body. So she was buried in an unmarked grave in the Ayr cemetery.
Locals Paula Dowson and Henry Petersen have been raising funds to ensure her final home has a memorial stone.
“She’s a human being,” Paula told a media outlet. “She is one of us and she was hurt in our town, so I think the town should get behind it.”
Henry says: “She was a human being. No one deserves to be brutally murdered like that. She should be remembered and people should be able to go and visit her gravesite.”
Jean’s new headstone will be unveiled in Ayr on Tuesday (May 27).
JEAN MORRIS MATTERS! ❤️
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