Haunting photos before Treasury Gardens murder were “message to Melbourne”

Two men hold hands in one staged photo, and point guns at each other’s hearts in the next. What happened next was a bizarre case that saw one man dead and the other on trial for murder.

Edward Feeney (left) and Charles Marks posed for bizarre studio photos before an apparent suicide pact went wrong. Picture: State Library Victoria.

The last photos of Edward Feeney and Charles Marks showed them holding hands and pointing guns at each other.

What happened next was a bizarre case that saw one man dead and the other on trial for murder.

The story is told in the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, with historian Michael Adams, host of the Forgotten Australia podcast:

In 1872, Feeney and Marks walked into a photographic studio in Melbourne and posed for these haunting portraits.

“In the first photograph, the men stand facing each other and they put the muzzle of each gun against the other one’s heart, so it’s a death pose to some extent,” Mr Adams says.

“In the next photograph, the two men stare into each other’s eyes, and they hold hands with no guns at all.

“So these photographs are extraordinary, and they weren’t actually meant for the men.

“They knew they were never going to go and pick those photos up.

“They weren’t for them. They were for us. They were for posterity.

“They were basically an indication of what they were about to do just an hour later.”

Edward Feeney (left) and Charles Marks posing in a Melbourne photographic studio. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Edward Feeney (left) and Charles Marks pose in a second photograph in a Melbourne studio. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Feeney and Marks, already slightly drunk, walked next to a Bourke St wine bar, wrote final letters to family and friends, then headed to the Treasury Gardens.

A gun shot rang out, and a police constable ran to the scene, where gardeners had also gathered.

“They found two men lying about six feet apart,” Mr Adams says.

“Between them was an unfired pistol, and one of the men had his chest blown open.

“His clothing was actually smoking – part of it was still on fire. He was dying.

The other man was lying back smoking a cigar. And the constable said to the guy who was still alive and seemingly fine, ‘what happened here?’

“And he said, ‘we were meant to shoot each other, but he couldn’t.’”

Letters between the pair, who worked together at Melbourne Hospital, suggested they were gay, at a time when sodomy was a serious crime.

“Everybody believed they were homosexual,” Mr Adams says.

“And that was what made this an absolute scandal.”

Mr Adams believes the two photos – showing the two men holding hands and pointing pistols at each other’s hearts – were a “message to Melbourne”.

“I don’t know that there’s any other way you can possibly interpret it than a declaration of love followed by a suicide photograph,” he says.

Feeney was hanged for murder at Melbourne Gaol.

If you or anyone you know needs help: Lifeline: 13 11 14.

To learn more, listen to the interview in the free In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper every Friday for more stories and photos from the past.