14/01/2026
Burial Sale Cemetery 1936. Unmarked Graves Plan 5 Section D, Allotment 43.
In August 1936 a death and burial took place in Sale that was the second in a chain of events, 3 deaths including a su***de, withdrawn murder charges and trials abandoned, an attempted su***de and another near-death followed by a trial and a retrial.
The unmarked graves belong to Walter and Kathleen Armstrong (nee Field), both aged 40 years who married in 1920 and three sons were born to the family in 1921, 1923 and 1925. In 1927 Walter commenced employment with the Victorian Railways as a repairer (ganger) and Kathleen ‘s family were also a railway family.
In August 1936 a pregnant Kathleen Armstrong who had been quite unwell, bought a train ticket from Sale to Rosedale but told her family that she was going to stay with her sister in Moe for a few days. After getting off the train at Rosedale, Mrs Armstrong attended a doctor’s consulting rooms, where a medical procedure was carried out on the kitchen table.
Mrs. Armstrong’s condition rapidly deteriorated and the doctor contacted Dr Hagenauer of Sale for assistance, He travelled to Rosedale to examine the sick patient and found her very unwell, suffering a lot of pain and recommended her immediate removal to the Sale Hospital for surgery due to internal haemorrhaging. Surgery was planned for an hour after admittance, but the patient died before the surgery could take place.
The coroner requested Dr Hagenauer to carry out an autopsy on Mrs. Armstrong but later the same day, he again received a call from the Rosedale police to attend the same doctor’s consulting rooms where he discovered the doctor unconscious after having injected himself with a hypodermic syringe containing drugs. The syringe, drugs and the recently used injecting equipment, were found nearby and Dr Hagenauer requested the immediate removal of the patient to the Sale Hospital where he recovered after a couple of days.
A couple of weeks later the coronial inquest into the death of Kathleen Armstrong took place and her husband Walter was expected to be a witness but on the same morning, their 15-year-old son found his father dead from a self-inflicted gunshot. At a subsequent inquest, Walter Armstrong’s sister reported that her brother had been quite depressed following the death of his wife.
Following the Kathleen Armstrong inquest the Rosedale doctor was committed for trial on the charge of murder and placed in custody in Melbourne to await the trial. About a month later and for unknown reasons, the charges against the doctor were withdrawn.
This wasn’t the first time this doctor had been charged with murder as In March 1934, two years earlier, the doctor had been committed for trial for the murder of a woman who died at his Rosedale consulting rooms. The autopsy stated that she died from internal and external haemorrhaging because of a medical procedure causing a tear in one of her organs. The Bairnsdale woman was thought to be pregnant too and had bought a train ticket from Bairnsdale to Rosedale after telling family that she was travelling to Melbourne. At the inquest witnesses stated that after the woman’s death, the doctor was seen worse for wear and appeared to be drunk. For some reason, the charges against the doctor were also withdrawn.
In 1949, 13 years after the Armstrong deaths, a young, engaged couple from Yallourn travelled to Rosedale to the same doctor’s rooms as the young lady was pregnant. The patient nearly died from the treatment and when she wasn’t expected to live, a dying deposition was taken by police. The doctor and his assistant were then charged with allegedly using an instrument to procure a certain event.
Fortunately, the young lady recovered, and the deposition was used as evidence at the subsequent trial in Sale. After a two-day trial, the jury retired to consider their verdict but after six hours of deliberation, they informed the Judge that they couldn’t agree so the judge ordered a re-trial.
The retrial also took two days, and the new jury retired to consider their verdict then after four hours, the jury returned to court and advised the judge that they had found the two accused not guilty of the charges.
The doctor retired to Rosedale then died in Melbourne in 1963 aged 81 years.
Reference – Trove on-line Gippsland Times and Rosedale Courier Newspaper articles (Hardcopy) - Rosedale and District Historical Society. "Find A Grave" website.
