Those That Know

Those That Know is a fiction based on a true story. It's a story dating back to the early 1900s. When Cissy fell in love with the local priest, little did she know he would abandon her when she became pregnant. Coming from a strict catholic upbringing, she felt she had only one alternative to surviving as a single mother, and that was to disappear. Her story will haunt you, leaving you turning pages well into the night. She fell into the darker side of Sydney's notorious gang lands, becoming involved with the razor gangs. The story ends in tragedy, where Cissy is accused of horrendous crimes. My story tells another side to her life that questions her guilt. It leaves the readers questioning everything the authorities said. Cissy wanted to be a nun when she was young, but that choice was taken from her when she became romantically involved with the local priest. He abandoned her, leaving her no choice but to leave her hometown, where she had lived all her life. She knew her family would not accept her child. She felt she had no other choice but to leave everything behind. Her oldest sister, Dorothy, was her closest companion and was left devastated when Cissy disappeared. She searched for answers days and weeks after her disappearance. Only one person knew Cissy's secret: Jack, a young man in Cissy's life who loved her and offered to marry her, to raise the child as his own. Cissy rejected him. Cissy, whose birth name was Johanna Hite, went on to forge a new life in the bustling streets of Sydney. As a single mother, the only way to keep her illegitimate child was to lie about her name and the child's father. When desolate and nowhere to turn to survive, she fell into the underbelly of the Razor gangs. Kate Leigh offered her a job that was too good to be true. She began to run the illegal grog trade and became involved in the importation of Australia's first drug trade. When she upset important and dangerous men, she had to run for her life again, taking her young son with her. She thought she was safe in the little seaside town of Woy Woy, where she worked incognito as the housekeeper to the director of the local flour mill. George Allssop falls in love with her. The estranged wife becomes aware of the affair and demands that the housekeeper be sacked. This tips Cissy over the edge, and when she finds a gun, she shoots Mr Allssop. Then, out of desperation in her crazed state of mind, she shoots her three-year-old son and turns the gun on herself. Her family refused to travel to Sydney to identify the bodies or to claim her. Dorothy, her elder sister, refused the authorities' side of the tragedy and spent her whole life trying to have someone to listen to her theories on what happened that fateful day. As the author and granddaughter of Dorothy, I wrote this book to raise questions about whether the authorities did get it right. I will have you questioning whether she was innocent. Did someone from her past have something to do with that fateful day? I think they did. You, as the reader, will decide.