Aaron Sherritt and the Blue Blankets [Sharon Hollingsworth]

 I have always read about how hardy Aaron Sherritt was and that he seemed to never have worn a coat or used a blanket, even when sleeping out of doors in the coldest weather.


In the Royal Commission, Inspector Hare said this of Aaron Sherritt:

"He would be under a tree without a particle of blanket of any sort in his shirt sleeves whilst my men were all lying wrapt up in furs in the middle of winter....I saw a white thing lying under a tree, and there was Aaron without his coat. The men were covered with all kinds of coats and furs, and waterproof coatings, and everything else, and this man was lying on the ground uncovered. I said, "You are mad, Aaron, lying there" and he said "I do not care about coats."


But further reading in the Royal Commission shows that once in a while Aaron did use blankets in the bush, a pair of them to be exact.

In testimony by Mrs. Sherritt (Senior), Aaron's mother, this was said:

"Wallace used to come to the place and used to tell my son he was
writing a book, and for my son to give him all that he knew - the
particulars of what the police were doing  - and that when he sold
this book, if he got good sale for it, that Aaron should have half the
profits. And one night in particular he came, and my son had been out
and had a pair of blue blankets - he used to take them in the bush
with him. He laid them down on the hearth, and Wallace came about two
o'clock in the morning. Then I heard he told Mrs. Byrne he could not
make out what the Sherritts were doing, as he found Aaron in the ash
corner. But he was not there, he was lying on the hearth. He was
trying to make little of my son, I suppose."


Elsewhere in the RC, Constable John Kelly told of camping out in the rain and how "the rest of the men had a small blue blanket each - I had none." Could those blue blankets have been police issue? If so, could we extrapolate and say that maybe Aaron's pair of blue blankets might have also been police issue? Possible, as it seems that even the clothing he was wearing on the night he died had been given to him by Detective Ward.

It all reminds me of another contradiction in the story, concerning the Board of Education inspector  G. Wilson Brown. In Corfield there is a quote from David Holloway's "The Inspectors" which said:  "it was reported of G W Brown that he did not like horses and would not ride. For fourteen years he conducted all his inspectional visits on foot, claiming he could walk ten miles a day." Yet, in Jones's "Fatal Friendship" it tells of Brown arriving at the school at the Woolshed on horseback and tethering his horse at the door. However, at the time there were "flooded creeks and roads turned to quagmires by spring rain" so maybe this one time a horse was needed?

Goes to show one should never say never!