Was K.G. Murray A Spy? An Australian Publishing Mystery
Was the pioneer Australian publisher Kenneth 'K.G.' Murray a spy for
the Germans during World War II? That
was the question that the intelligence branches of Australia
had to answer in the early 1940s, thanks to an anonymous tip-off, supplied due
to an Australian wider call asking for people to turn in those who they
suspected had links or sympathies towards the enemy – in this case, Germany, Italy
or Japan. On the surface Ken Murray fit two of those
criteria – his wife had links to the Japanese – she even spoke fluent Japanese
- and the pair had visited both Germany
and Austria
immediately prior to the outbreak of World War II. Even worse, he knew Germans; actual, real
Germans with names like ‘Siemens’. And
he had money, money that ‘suddenly’ appeared.
Where did it come from and was Ken Murray, the founder of K.G. Murray, a
spy?
The letter that the
Australian Intelligence Section received was damning, if not loaded with
inaccurate assumptions. Murray
had visited Germany, he had
married a woman who worked in a Japanese run and funded store and he had
amassed a small fortune in a relatively small period of time, but it all could
be explained easily enough, as Murray
and his associates did. Murray had previously worked for Gordon &
Gotch and had decided to get out of the distribution business and into
publishing, electing to start with the lowest common denominator – smut – in
the form of MAN Magazine. MAN was
soft-porn at best, racy for the times, and is well known for featuring some
classic comic strips. Murray would have been privy to sales figures
while working at Gordon & Gotch and thus would have known that girlie
magazines, pulps and comic books sold exceptionally well, mainly due to import
restrictions that were then in place, thus higher quality American magazines
were effectively banned from the country.
There would have been a need and Murray
was the right man in the right place at the right time. Once war broke out Murray was well placed to cash in on the
import restrictions, simply by copying the formats of banned American publications
and, in the case of comic books, simply purchasing the rights to reprint
American content in the country.
The Intelligence Section was
duty bound to investigate all leads that were put before them. Most of the leads went nowhere, as they still
do today, especially those from anonymous sources. The only detrimental comment that anyone
could find Murray has having made was about Winston Churchill, not surprising
from a man who had seen the beauty of pre-WWII Germany and Austria and being
fully aware of the destruction that was taking place. Other suspicious activities that Murray
displayed was a tendency to rise early in the morning and take photographs of
ships in Sydney Harbour, but this was later dismissed, as was the bulk of the
accusations, as being mere hearsay – it seemed that people knew and suspected
Ken Murray of something, but nobody actually had any proof of any
wrongdoing. Even Murray’s
bank was questioned, they gave him a glowing reference and pointed out the
obvious – a publisher working at a time when import restrictions were firmly in
place was always going to do well, as Murray
was.
When the final report on Murray was prepared and submitted it showed that Ken
Murray wasn’t a spy for either Germany
or Japan. It revealed that his success had come from
being an astute businessman who had studied hard at his previous job, had moved
into publishing and had head-hunted the right people to assist him, both as
employees and business partners/investors.
The worst thing that was said about Murray at the time was that he was “…without
scruples and would use any means to attain his ends”, not a surprising
description for a man who published smut.
However had Murray been officially labelled a spy, locked up and his
publishing empire dismantled, then the face of Australian publishing, and, in
particular the comic book scene in Australia, would have been vasty different
indeed.
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