Braham Dabscheck review of John Davis, Harry Hodgetts: The Flawed Broker behind Don Bradman’s Move to Adelaide

(Wakefield Press, 2024), 167 pp., PB $29.95, ISBN 9781923042261

Henry Warburton (Harry) Hodgetts Jr (1882–1949) was a prominent member of the Adelaide establishment. He was one of Adelaide’s leading stockbrokers before he experienced a spectacular fall from grace. In 1945 he was sentenced to five years gaol for fraudulent conversion of clients’ monies and false pretences by the Supreme Court of South Australia. Hodgetts’s financial problems stemmed from speculating in wheat futures and other investments that did not work out. From approximately 1940, he started dipping into the funds of his clients and made false pretences to banks and other investors. As treasurer of the Royal Institute of the Blind, he transferred £5,000 of its funds to help pay off his debts. His wife subsequently paid back these funds, plus interest, to the Blind Institute.

Harry Hodgetts was a white-collar criminal. Is an account of his life of such importance that it warrants the writing of a biography? It could be argued that all of us deserve (if that is the right word) to have our histories written—of how we cope, or do not cope, with the vicissitudes of life. Other than for being a prominent member of society who disgraced himself, was there anything in his life that was out of the ordinary, anything that helps us with understanding the human condition? Well, for John Davis, there was at least one aspect of Hodgetts’s life that warrants special attention, which he uses as a hook to reel in potential readers.

Hodgetts was instrumental in bringing champion cricketer Don Bradman (1908–2001) to Adelaide in 1934. A long-time participant in both the playing and administration of sport, he had two major passions: cricket and lacrosse. He was prominent as a committee member in club cricket, the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA), and, from 1926 to 1945, one of South Australia’s delegates on the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket. He met Bradman on several occasions and enticed him to play cricket in Adelaide and take up employment in his stock broking firm. Bradman would receive £700 a year for playing cricket in Adelaide, with only £500 when on tour.¹ According to Davis, SACA paid £500 of this amount, Hodgetts £200 (p. 47).

In his introduction, Davis reports that the National Library of Australia identifies 211 items for ‘Don Bradman’, while Harry Hodgetts has none. He goes on to argue that, while ‘Hodgetts deserved his fate … he warrants greater attention than being consigned to Trotsky’s infamous “dustbin of history”’ (pp. 2–3). His book attempts to redress this oversight and thus hangs off the coat-tails of Don Bradman.

Davis provides an essentially fact-based descriptive account of events associated with Harry Hodgetts’s life. Information is presented on the background of Hodgetts’s family and that of his wife Mary Edith Gordon Hodgetts, nee Gwynne (1878–1953); his time as a member of the Adelaide Stock Exchange; his achievements as a player and as a sports administrator; his work as a philanthropist; his role in convincing Bradman to move to Adelaide; his bad trades and financial woes; his malfeasance, criminal prosecution and conviction; and his death in prison in 1949.

It is not clear, however, that Davis’s account of the life and times of Harry Hodgetts, sans Bradman, informs us of anything noteworthy. It is little more than a parade of facts concerning a particular individual’s life. At best it provides insight into the lifestyle of the upper crust of Adelaide society in the quarter century after the conclusion of World War I. Harry Hodgetts includes 38 inserts or photographs of homes and buildings, persons (there are three of Jessie Bradman [1909–1997], but none of Hodgetts’s wife or their five children), and newspaper reports associated with Hodgetts, which serve to enhance the overall appeal of the book.

Davis portrays Hodgetts as an ambitious man about town who was part of the grand parade of Adelaide society. While he professed a noblesse oblige, was an active participant in various organisations and subscribed to the principle of serving without reward (p. 52), Hodgetts, according to Davis, was a man on the make, a ‘status seeker’ (p. 70). Indeed, Davis speculates that Hodgetts’s need to maintain appearances and his station in life induced him to defraud his clients and commit criminal acts (p. 12).

Davis mainly relies on newspaper sources and legal reports associated with Hodgetts life, as well as books and articles concerning Adelaide and especially cricket, or, more correctly, Don Bradman. It could be said that the book as a whole relies on the internet for its primary sources. There does not appear to have been any attempt to examine archival sources associated with Hodgetts’s life—his school; the Adelaide Stock Exchange; his committee work in lacrosse and cricket, especially SACA; the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket; and his charity work.

Such archival research may have unearthed reports prepared by Hodgetts or speeches he delivered in responding to issues and problems experienced by such organisations. Hodgetts involvement in some of these organisations lasted over two decades. An examination of the evolution of these organisations, the problems they experienced, how they responded and the role that Hodgetts played (or did not play) may have provided a more detailed and nuanced understanding of Hodgetts’s ‘broader contributions’ to society, potentially counterbalancing his criminality. Because Davis did not undertake such research, his broader reflections concerning Harry Hodgetts, which are little more than exercises in low-level induction, seem tendentious, little more than guesses.

In the final analysis, Harry Hodgetts is a minor figure in the history of Adelaide. He is little more than another white-collar criminal who suffered the ignominy of being caught. There is very little in Ian Davis’s descriptive account of the major events in Hodgetts’s life that is worthy of note, and the book tells us little about Adelaide and Australia that is not already in the public domain.

1. 1 In 1934, the weekly basic wage determined by the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration was set at £3 5 shillings. Bradman also had a deal to act as the Adelaide representative of his former employer, the menswear store F. J. Palmer and Sons (p. 41).