Rose: The unauthorised biography of Rose Hancock Porteous

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In her 1992 authorised memoir "A Rose By Any Other Name", Rose Porteous devotes two short paragraphs to her marriage to her first husband, "Jay" Teodoro. Teodoro was in fact a rich and powerful man with corrupt friends; he originally kidnapped and raped Rose, with whom he was infatuated. By the time Jay's first wife had been murdered under mysterious and controversial circumstances, Rose was four months pregnant to him. Her daughter Johanna was the product of this union. In Rose's book she ultimately leaves Jay and then lives in Manila's notorious red-light district. But she claims to have amassed a small fortune solely from selling shirts to nearby Clark Air Base. Robert Wainwright, through painstaking research, has pieced together an alternative picture of those lost years. "Rose" is the rise and fall of a woman driven by a life-long fantasy that she belongs to the feudal aristocracy. It is the story of her tenacious love for her only child and her fierce desire to achieve material security. Her triumph in marrying Lang Hancock ultimately destroys her: she has now become a recluse as eccentric and tragic as the iron-ore tycoon she took advantage of in 1983. Was Rose a gold-digger, or was she a woman misunderstood by the values of two vastly different cultures This is the story of a woman who began life as a small town girl but became one of Australia's wealthiest and most eccentric socialites.

Author Bio

Robert Wainwright is a senior political journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald.