Cirrus@Austlit

At four years of age Shirley Painter was so badly injured by her stepfather that she was pronounced dead and was placed in the morgue, but she survived. Painter completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Melbourne in the 1930s and for many years was a teacher at the prestigious St Catherine's School, Toorak. On the basis of analysis in her forties, Painter claimed her stepfather sexually abused her and her sister, killed her half-brother and that he was a serial killer who murdered four people. Her memoir, The Bean Patch (2002), won the Nita May Dobbie Award for life writing with Debra Adealaide, one of the judges, arguing the truth or otherwise of parts of the memoir was immaterial.