Porchy, George E.

main character in one of those baffling and inconsequent nursery rhymes with which Strine parents have for so long brainwashed their unfortunate children. Giorgio Eduardo Porchy was the only son of Allegro and Lucrezia Borgia, who migrated from Italy to this country in 1852 where they changed their name to Porchy and established a small poisoning anf garroting shop in a prosperous goldmining town near Bendigo. Giorgio, a bright boy with a happy nature, took to poisoning effortlessly. When he was twelve both his parents died suddenly in rather mysterious circumstances, and he immediately took over the shop, which he built up into a thriving business. For a while he had a little trouble wuth the authorities, who tended to be rather conservative in their ways. Fortunately, however, the police sergeant and the local magistrate were both women - the handsome Durberville sisters, daughters of the local dairyman. Anyway, the likeable young George soon won their hearts and married them. He soon inherited the dairy from their father, who had passed away unexpectedly an hour or so after the wedding breakfast, and he successfully combined the two businesses. Eventually he became mayor, then local member, and finally a senator, and was for many years one of the most popular figures in the district. After his murder the local citizens, whose number had by this time dwindled to about twenty-five, erected a monument to his memory in the form of a bronze statue holding aloft a smoking test-tube, and surrounded by a group of happy little girls waving arsenical lipsticks.