In the gunyah were a Government revolver, stolen from the police, loaded and capped; a double-barrelled gun, hanging from the ridge pole, loaded ready for use; and a loaded pistol lying close beside the sleeping bushranger. There were also a box of slugs, a powder flask, two boxes of caps not quite full, a carpet-bag full of clothes, and a saddle and bridle. The bed was a very comfortable one, with a good supply of blankets.
The police informed Power that they had been out in the ranges for more than a week and were starving. They had not had a mouthful of food for more than twenty-four hours, and were anxious to get back to town. "There's plenty of tucker here," said Power. "Where?" asked the police. "In that tree," replied Power. They went to the tree and saw a bag hung up among the branches, as is common in the bush. In this "bush safe" they found part of a large home-baked loaf, some potatoes, tea and sugar, and a piece of fresh beef. "Golly, what a—— feed we'll have," cried Donald, the black, when he saw the food. The police cut the beef into steaks and fried them and had a good meal. In their search they found £15 4S. 6d. in bank notes and money.
They mounted Power on the horse ridden by the black tracker, while Donald mounted behind Sergeant Montford, and left the camp. They reached Wangaratta at seven p.m. on Sunday, June 5th, 1870, eleven days after the death of Captain Thunderbolt in New South Wales. The news of the capture had already been noised abroad in the district, and numbers of people, who were out for their Sunday evening ramble, crowded the streets of Wangaratta to see the noted bushranger. Power waved his hand in response to their cheers, and cried "They've caught poor Harry Power, but they caught him asleep."
On Tuesday, the 7th, Power was removed to Beechworth gaol, and a number of men and women in carriages, buggies, spring carts, and other vehicles, or on horseback, went along the road to meet him and escort him into the town. The procession as it passed over Newtown Bridge was quite an imposing one, and there were collected the majority of the residents who had neither horse nor vehicle. Power was sitting in a police cart, and bowing right and left to the crowd as if he had been some high potentate. He wished the people "Good morning," and continually repeated his formula about having been captured asleep. On his arrival at the gaol he greeted Mr. Stewart as an old friend, and hoped they would never fall out. He made a short speech, in which he publicly thanked the police for the kind and considerate manner in which he had been treated since his arrest.
The Ovens Spectator at this time said: "Henry Power, alias Johnson, is a hale, hearty-looking man, although past the meridian of life, with grisly hair and beard, and certainly not of such an appearance as one would expect a bushranger to have."
On October 2nd Henry Power was tried on four charges of highway robbery. On May 7th, 1869, he bailed up Arthur Woodside, a squatter at Happy Valley, as he was riding towards Bright. The robber took a horse, saddle, bridle, and spurs, giving in exchange a knocked-up horse, a broken saddle, a bridle tied up with string, and one rusty spur. While Mr. Woodside was giving his evidence Power exclaimed, "Speak up, young man. You spoke different to that when I met you on the road." The mail coach from Beechworth was bailed up at the same time. Power asked the driver, Edward Coady, to throw out the gold. Coady replied, "There is none." "I was told there was," exclaimed Power. "Any parcels?" Coady threw down two, which Power opened. There was only one passenger, a Chinaman, and Power asked him for the key of his carpet bag. At first the Chinaman said "No savvy," but, on the revolver being pointed at his head, he handed over the key. Power searched the bag, but took nothing out. This was the first case.
On August 28th, the same mail was bailed up. At that time there were three passengers—Mr. Hazleton, Ellen Hart (a servant), and Mrs. Li Goon. A boy also got on to the coach at Boyd's for a ride down the hill. The coach had just passed the gap when the driver had to put the the break on and pull up, because the roadway was blocked with logs and saplings. Mr. Hazleton exclaimed "Who did this?" when Power stepped out from behind a tree and replied "I did. Put up your hands." The passengers were made to alight and turn out their pockets. Hazleton made a step forward to hand his watch and chain to the robber, but Power cried out "Stand back," and raised his revolver. He then told Hazleton to put the watch on the ground and retire, and when this had been done Power went forward and picked it up. Mrs. Li Goon said she had no money, but when Power threatened to shoot her she gave him fourteen shillings. "It's all I've got and I'll want a cup of coffee," she said. "All right," returned the bushranger, "take this," and he gave her back one shilling. The robber took £2 13s. 6d. out of Coady's pocket-book. There was also a threepenny-piece in it, and Power told the coachman to give it to the boy. Mrs. Boyd came down the hill on horseback, and was bailed up. She said she had no money. "I don't see how ladies can go riding round with handsome dresses and fine saddles and bridles without money," cried Power. "Here, give me your horse." Mrs. Boyd said if he would allow her to ride home she would bring him some money, but he refused to trust to her promise, and took the horse. He stuck up several Chinamen and a white man, and took their money from them. He said to them "It's a cold day, but I've got a nice fire down there, go and sit by it;" and he pointed down the hill. He was in a good temper and gave the boy a shilling. The little fellow immediately offered to give him the shilling and the threepenny-piece for his sister's horse. Power laughed and gave the horse to the boy to lead to where his sister was sitting. This was the second case.
The third charge was the robbing of John Whorouly. Power said "I don't like robbing a poor man, but I must have money." The fourth charge was the sticking up of Thomas Oliver Thomas, on the Buckland Road. When called on to bail up, Thomas wheeled his horse round, and Power shouted "If you run away I'll fire. My gun will carry three hundred yards." Power asked for his money, and Thomas replied "I've got none." "That's a lie," cried Power, "turn it out." Power repeatedly threatened Thomas with his revolver.
Power was found guilty on each of the four counts, and was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.
Power served out his full sentence. At about the time of his discharge the Victorian Government sold the hulk Success, the President and the other hulks purchased to supply the want of prison accommodation in "the roaring fifties" having been sold years before. The Success had been utilised as a training ship, and had been kept. In the case of the other hulks, it had been stipulated in the terms of sale that they were to be broken up, but this clause was omitted in the case of the Success. Consequently she was purchased by some speculators, and fitted up as a representative convict hulk for exhibition purposes, and Harry Power was engaged to add interest to the show. The ship was exhibited in Melbourne, and was then taken round to Sydney. She was visited by a number of people during the two or three weeks when she was berthed at Circular Quay, and she was then taken down the harbour to be fitted for a voyage to London. Here she sank at her moorings. With the appliances in Sydney so small a vessel was soon raised, but her immersion had damaged the wax figures intended to represent the prisoners who had once been confined in her, and the other exhibits. While these were being replaced or cleaned, Harry Power was sent into the country districts for the benefit of his health. He was fishing in the Murray River near Swan Hill, on November 7th, 1891, when he fell in and was drowned. At the inquest held on his body, a verdict of accidental death was returned. The Success shortly after left Australia for England without any living representative of the bushranging times on board of her.
Bushranging in New Zealand; Alleged fears of the Escort being robbed; The First Bushranger, Henry Beresford Garrett; The Maungapatau Murders; Arrest of Sullivan, Kelly, Burgess, and Levy in Nelson; Sullivan's Confession; The Discovery of the Bodies; Sullivan's Release.
The reports of extensive and rich discoveries of gold in the Otago Province, New Zealand, in 1861, naturally attracted the floating population of Australia to that quarter. In September the escort brought down to Dunedin for shipment a smaller amount of "the precious metal" than had been obtained in any previous month since the goldfield was first proclaimed. Several reasons were given to account for this falling off. One was that the weather had been abnormally cold, and the freezing of the rivers had for a time put a stop to sluicing. Another was that the gold buyers declined to pay more than £3 10s. per ounce, and the majority of the diggers, having come from Ballarat and Bendigo where £4 and £3 18s. 6d. per ounce were paid respectively, refused to send their gold down and were keeping it for an anticipated rise in the price. The Southern Cross, however, said that the principal reason why the diggers were not sending their gold forward was the fear of bushrangers. The guard sent with the escort was wholly inadequate in the mountains through which it had to pass, and therefore the diggers declined to entrust their earnings to its care. The Otago Witness pooh-poohed this assertion and declared that there had never yet been a case of bushranging in the colony, and that if a fair price was offered for it by the banks and other gold buyers the gold retained on the diggings would speedily be placed on the market. The bank authorities, on being questioned, said that the New Zealand gold contained a larger proportion of silver than either the Ballarat or Bendigo gold, and was therefore of less value than the gold won on those diggings.
The boast of the Otago Witness that there were no bushrangers in New Zealand did not hold good for very long. Henry Beresford Garrett, who was arrested in London on the charge of robbing the Bank of Victoria at Ballarat as already related, and who was convicted in August, 1855, and sentenced to ten years' hard labour, was liberated from the Pentridge Gaol, Melbourne, in August, 1861, on a ticket-of-leave, after having served six years. Early in 1862 he made his appearance as the first bushranger on record in New Zealand. The scene he chose for his operations was the country between the Otago Goldfields and Dunedin. In one day he is reported to have stuck up and robbed no less than twenty-three persons near Gabriel's Gully, now known as the town of Lawrence. His career, however, was short if lively, for he was captured before the end of the year and sent to gaol for eight years.
In May, 1865, footpads were said to be becoming numerous about Auckland. The New Zealand Herald reported the story of a man being bailed up while walking along Beach Street towards Mechanic's Bay. A soldier, however, chanced to come along at the time and the robber bolted. These petty offenders, however, appear to have been speedily dealt with, and nothing more was heard about bushranging until the public was startled by the reports of "the horrible Maungapatau murders," as they were called.
It appears that Thomas Kelly, alias Noon, Richard H. Burgess, alias Miller, and Philip Levy went to the new rush known as the West Coast Diggings, early in 1866, and committed several robberies there. They were shortly afterwards joined by John Joseph Sullivan, a recent arrival from Victoria. On June 14th, Stephen Owens, landlord of the Mitre Hotel, Nelson, went to the wharf to meet the coastal steamer Wallaby, as she arrived from the west coast, and saw four men on board. They were very shabbily dressed, but he gave one of his cards to Levy and told him that he and his mates could obtain accommodation at the hotel. On the following day, Sullivan and Kelly came to the hotel in new clothes. Sullivan gave the landlord two bank notes for twenty pounds each, and one ten pound note, and asked him to take care of them for him. There was nothing remarkable in this. Diggers were frequently very shabby when they returned from the diggings, and until they had time to buy new clothes. Sullivan and Kelly appeared to have plenty of money with them, as they spent it freely. They each ordered a pair of trousers and a velvet vest from Charles Flood, tailor, paying £4 each for them. They also spent £3 17s. 6d. for clothing at Merrington's draper's shop, and Kelly paid besides £3 5s. for a dress for a woman. He afterwards bought a bonnet, a mantle, and other articles of feminine wear.
Levy and Burgess went to lodge at an oyster shop kept by Francis Porcelli. They were covered with mud when they went there first, but bought new clothes at J.M. Richardson's and other places in the town.
On June 21st, the four men were arrested and charged with the murder of Felix Mathieu. They were remanded while the police made enquiries. Sullivan turned Queen's evidence, and the tale he told may be summarised as follows.
Sullivan landed at the Grey River from Victoria in 1865 with the intention of digging. He was unlucky, and, chancing to make the acquaintance of Kelly, Levy, and Burgess, who had been sticking up people on the roads about the diggings for several months, he joined them. One day they informed him that Mr. E.B. Fox, a gold buyer, of Maori Gully, was expected to pass along the road, and they intended to bail him up, as he was sure to have some gold or money on him. Kelly, Levy, and Burgess hid themselves in some bushes beside the road, while Sullivan was stationed on the road with a long-handled shovel, so that those who passed along might take him for a road repairer. Owing to this disguise he could keep watch without exciting suspicion. He had not been long on watch when a man named George Dobson came along, and asked how far it was to the coal pits. Sullivan replied "About half a mile," and the man thanked him and walked on. When he was opposite where the other bushrangers were hidden they fired and killed him under the belief that he was Fox. When they discovered their mistake they dragged the body off the road and buried it, and as it began to rain heavily they all went to their tent. A day or two later they went to the road again, and took up positions as before, Levy giving orders that not a man should be allowed to pass without being searched. Sullivan again appeared as a road-repairer, and was pretending to be at work when an old man named James Battle, commonly known in the district as "Old Jamie," came along with a sluicing shovel on his shoulder. Sullivan said "Good day, mate. Where are you bound for?" Old Jamie replied that he was going to "look for a ship," as the diggings were "played out." Sullivan went to the ambush and reported that the man was an old whaler and not worth robbing, but Levy said he must be brought back. Sullivan, therefore, followed him and brought him back without difficulty, as he had no suspicion. Kelly and Burgess seized him, tied his hands behind him, and led him away into the bush. When they returned they said he would not trouble them any more. They divided £3 15s., which they had taken from the old man. He had informed them that he had not done well at the diggings, and had, therefore, taken a job of cutting flax to earn sufficient money to enable him to get away.
Shortly after Old Jamie had been thus disposed of, Felix Mathieu, John Kempthorne, James Dudley, and James de Pontius, store-keepers and gold buyers from the Deep Creek Diggings, passed along the road on their way from Nelson to Canvas Town. Two of the bushrangers stepped out from their ambush and confronted them, calling upon them to stand. They wheeled their horses, intending to gallop away, but found the other two bushrangers facing them, revolvers in hand. The four travellers then surrendered and allowed their hands to be tied behind them. Levy, Burgess, and Kelly led them away into the bush, while Sullivan followed the pack horse which had been let go, and which galloped a short distance along the road and then stopped and began to feed. Sullivan very soon caught it, and led it off the road. He took the gold and other valuables out of the portmanteau, which was strapped on the saddle, and shot the horse. Then he went to the camp to meet his mates.
The four bodies were discovered by William Flett, when he was out looking for horses in the bush. They were lying less than half-a-mile from the roadway on the Nelson side of the third creek from Franklyn's Flat. Mathieu's body was lying in the loose ground broken up by the uprooting of a large tree by the wind. It was on its back, the hands tied behind, and the feet tied together at the ankles. It was sheltered and partially hidden by the upturned roots of the fallen tree. Dudley's body was about eighteen yards away with a handkerchief tied tightly round the throat. Kempthorne's body was some twenty yards further, lying on its back, untied. The body of De Pontius was lying some thirty yards further along with a number of stones piled loosely around it, suggesting the idea that they had been thrown at it from a short distance. Dr. Vickerman said that Kempthorne had been shot in the head behind the ear. The bullet and some paper were found in the wound, showing that the shot had been fired at close range. Mathieu had been shot in the stomach, and then stabbed. The wound was under the fifth rib, and had apparently been made with a large knife. De Pontius had a bullet-wound in the back of the head, and the right side of the face was smashed, as if from the blows of rocks or stones. It was supposed that the bullet had not killed him at once, and he was therefore stoned to death. Dudley had been strangled.
A revolver was found in the gorse hedge at Toitoi by Constable Peter Levy. A gun, identified by James Street as one which had been stolen from his place on the Kamieri River, near Hokitiki, in the January previous, was also found by the constable not far away.
Mrs. Mathieu identified Levy as a man who had frequently visited her husband's store at Deep Creek, and exclaimed when she saw him in the court, "Oh, Levy, Levy, how could you be such a villain?"
The police ascertained that Sullivan had sold to the banks in Nelson gold to the value of £106 7s. 6d. Kelly had sold gold to the value of £76 and a few shillings, and Levy had sold another lot. These, with three nuggets which were sold together for £5 3s. 4d., made a total of about £230 disposed of by the robbers since the murders had been committed. It was, of course, impossible to say what proportion had been stolen from each of the four victims, or whether the whole of it had been taken from them.
George Jervis, a publican at Canvas Town, said that he gave the prisoners permission to camp in an unoccupied hut not far from his hotel. When they were leaving Burgess said "Good-bye, old boy; we're going away from this—— country. There's nothing to be done here." The publican had no suspicion as to the characters of the men, but thought that they had not been very lucky recently.
Old Jamie left the diggings a short time before, and crossed the river. The old man was well-known in the district. His body was discovered by George James Baker, of Nelson, one of the volunteers who accompanied Sergeant Major Shallcross and the police who started out to search for the missing men when the murders were first reported. There was some freshly-turned up earth near a fern root which attracted Mr. Baker's attention. A log had been rolled across the place, and on this being rolled aside and the earth scraped away, a portion of the clothing was seen. The body was buried in a shallow hole, lying on its back, and only just covered with loose earth. The trousers had been torn off, but the other clothing remained.
The trial lasted for three days, Kelly, Levy, and Burgess being found guilty and sentenced to death on September 17th, 1866. Sullivan was tried separately on the 19th for the murder of Old Jamie, and a verdict of guilty was recorded against him. He, however, received a pardon in accordance with the terms of the Governor's proclamation.
Felix Mathieu was well-known in Australia. He was a native of Marseilles, about forty years of age at the time of his death, and had been in the colonies about twelve years. On his first arrival he was employed as barman at the Union Hotel, Beechworth, after which he opened a baker's shop at Spring Creek. When the rush took place to the Snowy River in New South Wales he went there and opened a store, and later on he kept a store at the Lambing Flat (Burrangong) and another at the Lachlan (Forbes). From there he went to the west coast, New Zealand, where he met his death as recorded.
Levy had been tried at Castlemaine, Victoria, about six years before, on the charge of murdering a woman with whom he was living, but was acquitted for want of confirmatory evidence.
Sullivan had been transported to Van Diemen's Land, from whence he went to Victoria in 1853. He opened a butcher's shop at Ironbark Gully, Bendigo, where he was well known. He removed and opened the Half-way Inn on the road between Bendigo and Inglewood. At the time that he sailed to New Zealand he left his wife in charge of a store at Mount Korong and sold an allotment of land at Wedderburn to raise money to pay for his trip. He was certainly not driven to crime through want or poverty, and if, as he said, he was unlucky on the New Zealand diggings, he could without much difficulty or delay have obtained remittances from Victoria which would at least have been sufficient to enable him to return home.
After his companions in crime had been executed, Sullivan was kept in gaol for some months, popular feeling being so strong that it was deemed inexpedient to release him at once. It was during this time that he made some further revelations about his late companions. Soon after he joined Burgess, Kelly, and Levy, he said he saw a young man sitting propped up against the butt of a tree. He was dead. Sullivan asked whether the body was to be buried? Kelly replied "No, better leave it where it is. It will make people think he died from exhaustion. I've put many a man away like that." It was supposed that he referred to the wild times immediately following the discovery of gold in Victoria. The young man in question had been strangled, and the robbers had taken from his body a silver watch, a gold chain, a compass, a few shillings in money, and a deposit receipt for £32, which they burned, to prevent it from turning up in evidence against them.
Soon after his release he returned to Victoria, but was recognised at Bendigo and other places and boycotted. People refused to sell him food or to have any dealings with him whatever. The Government was urged to put the Criminals' Influx Prevention Act (18 Vict., No. 3) in force against him, but his case did not come under the provisions of that Act, as he had not been sentenced to penal servitude since his departure from Victoria. He drifted from town to town, and finally made his way to Sydney, from whence, it was said, he went to South America and was lost to sight.
The story of bushranging in New Zealand further illustrates the intimate relationship between the colonies to which I have already referred. Garrett, the first New Zealand bushranger, was an old Victorian criminal, and the Maungapatau murderers, with whom the record terminates, also went to the islands from the same colony, some of them, if not all, having been previously transported from Great Britain to Van Diemen's Land.
It may be advisable here, perhaps, to say a few words with regard to Sullivan's evidence. The point in it to which I wish to draw the attention of the reader is the partial exculpation of himself. Substantially, the confession was no doubt correct, but we have only Sullivan's own word to prove that the murders were committed by his companions and that he himself only shot a horse. We notice a similar effort on the part of Daniel Charters and others who have turned Queen's evidence to minimise the share they took in the outrages with which they were charged. Charters, indeed, went rather further than the majority of informers and stated that he was sent away to take care of the horses while the escort was robbed, because he was too frightened to "risk his—— skin." He thus openly admitted his cowardice in order apparently to justify himself, to himself, for turning informer. Of course, his evidence may have been true in this particular, but the constancy of this principle in informers generally of claiming that they merely took a very secondary share in the crimes which they are the means of bringing home to their fellows, tends to raise a suspicion that they do, as a rule, consciously or unconsciously, endeavour to excuse themselves to the public, and perhaps also to themselves, as a sort of relief perhaps to their own conscience, for turning informer. Their action in this respect contrasts strongly with that of men like Pierce, the cannibal, or John Lynch, in making confessions after they have been convicted. In these and other cases which might be cited the condemned man appears to be anxious to let the public know how very bad their actions have been. I do not say that they exaggerate their crimes, but merely that they are particular that even the smallest facts shall be made public. At the same time, they endeavour to satisfy their own consciences in some way or other for what they have done. Pierce, for instance, excused himself by saying that he must either have killed and eaten his companions or starved, although this is not borne out by the facts as far as they are known of his last act of cannibalism. Lynch, on the other hand, endeavoured to prove that he was the instrument of divine vengeance, that he had a mission. But, whatever the excuse put forward may be, the fact remains that they take care that their crimes shall be known to the very smallest particulars. This point is I think worthy of the investigation of the criminologist.
Bushranging in Queensland; Some Bushrangers from Over the Southern Border; A Bogus Ben Hall; The Wild Scotchman; Queensland's Only Bushranger; A Man of Many Aliases; He goes to Fight a Duel with Sir Frederick Pottinger; He Escapes from the Steamer; Recaptured and Tried.
There was still another of the Australian colonies which was affected by the evil influence of the bushranging mania inaugurated by Frank Gardiner. This colony was Queensland. In May, 1864, Harry, the mail-man, was travelling along the road between Bodumba and Leyburn, when he was stopped by an old man and a boy, one of whom asked him, civilly enough, which was the road to Warwick. Harry, very obligingly, pulled up to tell them where to turn off, when the old man drew a pistol and ordered him to dismount. Harry protested against this outrage, and said he was a Government employé, but this only produced a reiteration of the order with a threat to blow out his brains if he did not obey. He then dismounted, and was tied very tightly, the robbers paying no attention whatever to his complaints that the rope was cutting his wrists. The robbers went through the bags, which they left on the ground, and, when they had finished, the old man mounted Harry's horse, while the boy climbed on to the packhorse, and rode away. Harry, who was left lying on the ground, rolled himself over and over to where there were some jagged rocks by the side of the road. Selecting the one with the sharpest edge, he wriggled about until he got the rope across it, and then moved his body backwards and forwards until the strands of the rope which bound his hands together behind his back parted. Having freed his hands, he soon untied the rope round his legs and walked to Goondiwindi, where he reported the robbery to the police. The Brisbane Courier in reporting this robbery said it was the first case of bushranging that had taken place in Queensland, and hoped that that colony was not about to have its peace disturbed as that of the southern colonies had recently been by bushrangers. The Courier, of course, did not consider the convicts who escaped into the bush when Moreton Bay was a penal settlement as bushrangers in the modern acceptation of the term. Some of the more notorious of these have already been dealt with in Chapter XV., but if we accept the new meaning of the term "bushranger," the Courier was, no doubt, correct in its assertion that this was the first case that had occurred in the colony. Of course a rumour was raised that the perpetrator was Gilbert and some of his gang, but the description given of the robbers shows that this rumour was absurd.
About a month later a bushranger named Wright stuck up and robbed a number of people in the Rockhampton district. He was speedily followed by the police and some black trackers, and was shot, early in July, at Wipend, on the Mackenzie River, a few miles off of the Peak Downs Road. He was riding a racehorse which he had stolen from Mr. Cranston, a squatter of that district.
In September a man entered the bar of the Shearers' Arms Inn at Knebsworth, and cried out "Bail up! I'm Ben Hall!" The proprietor, Mr. Philip Hardy, took a revolver out of a drawer under the counter. The bushranger, seeing him do this, fired, and missed. Mr. Hardy returned the fire, and wounded the bushranger. The landlord ran round from behind the bar, collared his assailant, and after a struggle thrust him into a back room. Having locked the door and made his prisoner secure, as he thought, Mr. Hardy ran to the police station to report. He returned in a few minutes accompanied by a constable, but the bird had flown. The window of the room in which he had been shut was wide open, so that the bushranger had merely to step out and walk away. It is probable therefore that he was making his way to the bush at the back of the house almost as soon as the door was locked. He lost his horse, however, as the animal was hitched to the verandah post in front, and was taken away by the constable.
One or two other cases occurred, but they were all of a paltry character, until the Celtic blood of Alpin Macpherson, alias John Bruce, alias Mar, alias Kerr, alias Scotia or Scotchie, generally known as the Wild Scotchman, was stirred to emulate the heroic deeds of Hall, Gilbert and Co. Macpherson was born in Scotland and was taken to Queensland when very young by his father. The elder Macpherson worked for Mr. McConnell at Cressbrook and was generally respected by those who knew him. His son Alpin was sent to school in the town and was a favourite with his teachers on account of his diligence. When old enough he was apprenticed to Mr. Petrie, a stonemason in Brisbane, and was again well-liked by his master and the members of his family. Alpin was a diligent reader and a fluent speaker. He became a prominent member of the Debating Class in the Brisbane Mechanics' School of Arts. When Mr. Lilley, afterwards Attorney-General, was attacked at a political meeting at the Valley, with mud, over-ripe tomatoes, and other missiles, on account of his Militia Bill, which was strongly opposed, young Macpherson defended him bravely, receiving some bruises. Soon afterwards, without any apparent reason, he ran away from his apprenticeship and took to the roads. He began his bushranging career by sticking up Wills's Hotel on the Houghton River, after the manner popular with the Hall and Gilbert gang. From thence he went to New South Wales to "fight a duel with Sir Frederick Pottinger," the head of the police force in that colony. This determination he announced himself. The records of this portion of his career are somewhat obscure. It is known that he did exchange shots with Sir Frederick Pottinger and some troopers, and that he received a slight wound, but it is doubtful whether he ever joined Hall and Gilbert, and committed robberies in their company, as he said he did. However, he did not remain in New South Wales very long. He returned to Queensland and robbed the mails, stuck up travellers, stole racehorses, and otherwise endeavoured to work up to the standard ideal of the real Australian bushranger.
He had been thus employed for some months when Mr. W. Nott, manager of the Manduran station, saw him in a paddock belonging to the station, and recognised him. Believing that he was there with the intention of stealing some of the horses, Mr. Nott hastily collected a party and started in pursuit. The party consisted of Messrs. Nott, Curry, Gadsden, and J. Walsh. They came in sight of their quarry about five miles away, as he was travelling along the Port Curtis Road. He was riding slowly when first seen, but, on observing the pursuers closing upon him, Macpherson let go his packhorse, wheeled off the road, and galloped down the side of a steep range. His pursuers followed. When he reached the level ground at the foot of the range, the Wild Scotchman pulled up, and began to unstrap the double-barrelled gun which he carried across the pommel of his saddle. Before he could succeed, however, Mr. Nott came close up and cried "Put up your hands or I'll fire." The rifle barrel was only a few feet away, and as the other men came up at once with arms ready for use the Wild Scotchman yielded. "All right," he said, "I give up." "I knew you were not policemen," he said later, "by the way you came down that ridge, but you wouldn't have caught me if my horse had not been done up." They took away his arms, and then returned to the station, two of the captors riding with the bushranger between them, while the other two rode close behind. In the pack on the horse which he abandoned was found a beautifully-fitted case of surgical instruments, with lint and other necessaries for treating wounds. He also carried a pocket compass, an American axe, and some other useful articles. The axe was required for cutting fences or for making temporary stockyards to catch horses in.
A warrant had been issued for his arrest for his attack on Sir Frederick Pottinger and the police in New South Wales, and the Wild Scotchman was therefore extradited to stand his trial in New South Wales on a charge of shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm. His arrival in Sydney was coincident with the resignation of that officer as already related. Sir Frederick, however, was summoned to appear against him, and it was on his journey to Sydney for this purpose that the accident happened which put an end to Sir Frederick's life and the prosecution against the Wild Scotchman at the same time.
The Wild Scotchman was returned to Queensland in charge of the police. He was sent from Brisbane to Port Denison, and was there committed for trial and remanded to Rockhampton, the nearest assize town, for that purpose. He was shipped on board the steamer Diamantina in charge of Constable Maher. He was accommodated with leg irons, his hands being so small that he could easily slip them through any ordinary handcuffs. In fact he boasted freely that the handcuffs to hold him "had not yet been made." When the steamer reached Mackay he was seated reading near the galley, but he had behaved so quietly all through the earlier part of the passage that the constable did not think it necessary to disturb him by taking him below. There was, of course, the usual bustle while the steamer was at the wharf, and Constable Maher appears to have lost sight of his prisoner, and did not miss him until the vessel had been an hour at sea. Then a search was instituted, but no Wild Scotchman could be found, and as the Maryborough Chronicle remarked, "Constable Maher reached Rockhampton minus his prisoner."
How he got ashore and removed his leg-irons was a mystery which was not solved for some time. However, his escape did not profit him much. He went to a paddock on the Kolongo station with the intention of stealing a horse to enable him to stick up the mail coach, and "make a rise." But a party was organised by Mr. Hall, and he was recaptured without attaining his purpose. This time greater care was exercised by the police to whom he was handed over, and he reached Rockhampton, where he was tried on several charges of highway robbery and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude.
There can be no doubt that young Macpherson, like many other high-spirited young men, was led away by the glamour which gathered round the bushrangers Hall, Gilbert, and their young associates; and which appears to have appealed so strongly to the youth of certain temperaments as to blind them to the enormity of the crimes committed by these bushrangers. The quiet bush life in Australia afforded them no escape valve by which their desire for excitement might be worked off. They did not pause to realise that their fight against society was hopeless from the beginning, and that in taking to the bush they were setting themselves, almost single handed, against the whole force of public opinion in the colony. Had they lived in Europe they might, perhaps, have enlisted in the army and thus been able to do something to satisfy their cravings for notoriety and adventure in a legitimate way. In Australia, however, there was no standing army, and even if there had been there was nothing for it to do in the colonies, and no chance of its ever being employed outside, where hard blows were to be struck and glory won. It may be true that even soldiers do not always find congenial work for them to do, and that many of them have lived very humdrum lives, but there is always the hope that they may be called on to defend their country, or to fight for its aggrandisement, and this hope is sufficient to induce them to enlist, when they are brought under the control of the disciplinarian and kept out of mischief until their boyish enthusiasm subsides and they are old enough to enter into the business of life. However, Queensland's "only bushranger," the Wild Scotchman, was captured after a brief but exciting career of about eighteen months, and the colony has not been troubled by bushrangers since.
Captain Moonlite; The "Reverend Gentleman" Robs the Bank, and Nearly Makes his Escape; He Breaks out of Ballarat Gaol; He Becomes a Reformed Character; He Sticks Up Wantabadgery Station; A Desperate Battle with the Police; Moonlite is Captured; His Young Companions in Crime; Sentenced to Death; The Wild Horse Hunters Turn Bushrangers; An Abortive Attempt to Rob a Bank.
From about June, 1872, to April, 1878, or nearly six years, Australia was free from bushrangers. With the exception of the two or three robberies in the far west of New South Wales, so far west as to be almost out of the colony, the roads were safe; travellers journeyed in all directions without fear of molestation; and the public, as well as the authorities, began to congratulate themselves once more on having at length definitely stamped out the scourge of bushranging. Since the shooting of Thunderbolt and the capture of Power, there had been no sign of a recrudescence of the crime, and bushranging was beginning to be referred to as belonging to a past age. But this peaceful condition of the country was not always to continue. The old leaven of convictism so frequently referred to, had not as yet been so completely eliminated as the public and the authorities hoped and believed. Reports began to spread about in 1878 that robberies had been committed in the neighbourhood where Power had so long set the police at defiance, and shortly afterwards the name of Ned Kelly began to be associated with them. Ned Kelly is still spoken of as the last of the bushrangers, and as his death closes the story, it may be as well to deal with some other bushrangers who finished their careers before "the gentleman of the Strathbogie Ranges." The most remarkable of these was George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite. His story belongs partly to the former era, but I have reserved it in order to make it more complete than would have been possible had it been divided. Scott was born in the North of Ireland, and emigrated to Victoria. He went to the diggings at a time when agents from New Zealand were endeavouring to raise a corps in Victoria for service against the Maoris. He enlisted and fought through the war in 1861-65, being wounded in the leg. On his return to Victoria he showed a strong desire to join the Church, and as he was well educated and a good speaker he was appointed lay reader at Bacchus Marsh, with a view to his being ordained a minister of the Church of England, when the Bishop of Melbourne should consider him worthy of the charge. His duties as lay reader were to travel round the settlement, to read prayers and conduct services, his head quarters being in the town at Mount Egerton. His chief friends here were the manager of the Union Bank and the schoolmaster. He soon came to be respected and liked in the district. One night, however, a masked man walked into the living apartments connected with the bank and ordered the manager, who was alone, to bail up. The manager recognised the voice and asked him whether he thought this a suitable practical joke for a clergyman. Scott replied that he would soon find it was no joke. He threatened to shoot the manager unless he surrendered and did as he was ordered. He then gagged the manager, took him across the street to the school-house, and compelled him to sign the following statement:—"Captain Moonlite has stuck me up and robbed the bank." There was no one at the school-house, Scott having apparently timed his visit when he knew the school would be empty. Leaving the paper on the desk in the school-house, Scott took the manager back to the bank, tied him hand and foot, and then took about £1000 worth in notes and coin from the safe. The schoolmaster found the paper lying on the desk when he went to open the school next morning, and at first did not know what to make of it. He handed it to the police, who, on going to the bank, found the manager gagged and tied. Having heard his story the police considered it absurd, and arrested the manager and schoolmaster as having been jointly concerned in the crime. The idea of charging the minister, as Scott was generally called, appeared to be preposterous, the more especially as Scott was very active in trying to find incriminating evidence against his quondam friends. Being intimately acquainted with the lives led by the two men, he was able to supply the police with several facts, true or false, which were considered strong circumstantial proofs of their guilt. They were committed for trial, Scott being bound over as a witness against them. He did not wait for the trial, however, but went to Sydney, where he put up at one of the leading hotels and spent money lavishly. He represented himself as a wealthy visitor to the colonies travelling for pleasure, and spoke of his intention to visit some of the South Sea Islands. For this purpose he purchased a yacht, for which he paid partly in cash and partly by a cheque for £150. This cheque was returned by the bank on which it was drawn as valueless, and the man who had sold him the yacht immediately communicated with the police. Scott had already set sail, but the police followed him in a steam launch and caught him just outside the Heads. He was brought back and tried for fraud and was sent to gaol for eighteen months.
Even the flight of Scott from Mount Egerton did not at first convince the police and others of his guilt in connection with the bank robbery, but without his evidence the case against the bank manager and the schoolmaster was so weak that it broke down, and they were discharged. Later on a warrant was issued for the arrest of Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, but he was then in gaol in New South Wales. On his release he was rearrested, and extradited to Victoria to be tried for the bank robbery. He was taken to Ballarat, and lodged in the newly-built gaol, a most substantial structure of blue stone (basalt). The building stands in a large courtyard, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high, also constructed of basalt. Looked at from the outside it appears to be one of the most hopeless places for a prisoner to escape from imaginable, but Scott had been educated as an engineer, and therefore what might have been impossible for another man was not so for him. There was a wooden partition which divided one cell into two. Scott was imprisoned awaiting trial in one portion of the cell, and a man named Dermoodie in the other portion. Scott cut through this partition, and with the aid of Dermoodie contrived to take the lock off the door. The two men walked into the corridor and hid in a dark corner until the warder came round, when Scott sprang on him, grasped him by the throat, and with the assistance of Dermoodie gagged and tied him. Scott then took the keys, and having shut the warder into the cell, with the door closed, so that any other warder in passing it would not notice that it had been opened, walked down the passage. With the keys he opened four more cells and liberated the prisoners in them. He made them take the blankets from their beds and follow him, after carefully closing the doors again. He opened the door leading into the great yard and went to a dark corner under the wall where he tore the blankets into strips and tied them together to form a rope. Scott then stood up against the wall. One of the other men climbed up and stood on his shoulders, another climbed up and stood on his, and so on until the last, Dermoodie, was able to take the rope and sit on the wall. With the aid of the rope each man was enabled to go up in turn to where Dermoodie was, and was then lowered down on the other side. Here they stood on each others' shoulders as before, to enable Dermoodie to climb down, then the others followed in turn, and they were free. The south-eastern corner of the gaol wall stands near the edge of the hill where the ground slopes sharply down to Golden Gully. The six men went down the slope to a safe distance, and then Scott said they must part, as they would have a better chance of getting away separately than if they all kept together. The four men liberated by Scott to help him over the wall were speedily caught, some in Ballarat and the others not far away, but as they were not bushrangers we have nothing further to do with them. Scott and Dermoodie went away together and slept in the bush. Scott said they must have money, and proposed to rob a bank, which he said could be easily done, but Dermoodie said he had only been arrested for a small offence, and he had made his case bad enough by escaping. He did not wish to make it worse. Scott called him a coward, a contemptible cur, and said he should never leave that spot alive. He gave him five minutes to say his prayers. He was in a terrible rage, but before the five minutes were over he said that Dermoodie was not worth killing, gave him a few kicks and blows, and ordered him out of his sight, an order which was quickly obeyed. Dermoodie went back to Ballarat and was recaptured a day or two after his escape, while Scott was found about a week later in a hut near Bendigo. He was tried, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for the bank robbery, and to one years' imprisonment in irons for breaking gaol.
Scott behaved in the most exemplary manner while he was in Pentridge, and contrived to convince both the chaplain and the gaol authorities that he intended to live "on the square" for the future. He was allowed all the remission possible under the rules for good conduct, and was released in March, 1879. He was a forcible and fluent speaker, and he made a living by open-air lecturing in Melbourne on prison discipline and other subjects. About this time the Kelly gang was at the zenith of its career, when suddenly Scott disappeared from his usual haunts in Melbourne. Probably his imagination was stirred by the reports current about the Kellys; perhaps he was prompted by jealousy of their doings; or, perhaps, by a sudden desire for notoriety. However this may be, he was gone.
On Saturday, November 15th, 1879, at about three p.m., six armed men rode up to Mr. C.F.J. Macdonald's station at Wantabadgery, on the Murrumbidgee River, New South Wales, and bailed up all the men at work there. Nineteen men were collected from various places about the station and marched into the dining-room of Mr. Macdonald's house. Mr. Miles was then ordered to unlock the door of the store, and the robbers selected a quantity of clothing and other goods which they required or fancied. They were engaged in packing these on some spare horses when Mr. Weir, of Eurongilly, and a schoolmaster rode up, and were called on to bail up. The schoolmaster refused, and one of the bushrangers loudly declared that he would shoot him. Hearing the altercation, the leader of the gang came out of the store, seized the schoolmaster by the leg, and dragged him from the horse, saying at the same time, "You—— old fool, get down and do as you're told. I'm Moonlite." He pushed the schoolmaster along, and forced him to go into the dining-room where the other men were sitting.
Towards evening Mr. Baynes, the manager of the station, returned from a back station, and was bailed up and conducted to the dining-room. The women had been told that they would not be interfered with, and were ordered to cook dinner. When it was ready it was served in the dining-room, where all partook of the food, the bushrangers sitting down in turn, while two remained on guard. After the meal some grog, obtained from the station store, was served round, and Mr. Macdonald was permitted to retire to bed. The others remained at the table all night, the bushrangers taking it in turn to sleep like the others with their heads on the table.
Breakfast on the following (Sunday) morning was taken as supper had been on the previous evening. During the meal Mr. Baynes said to one of the young bushrangers who was seated near him, "This is bad work." Moonlite, who was sitting on the other side of the large table, heard him and jumped up. He charged Mr. Baynes with trying to tamper with his men, and swore that he would shoot him. He seemed to be in a paroxysm of rage, and flourished his revolver about in a dangerous manner. The women, however, clustered round, assuring him that Mr. Baynes did not mean any harm, and begging him to spare him. In a few minutes Scott's rage had evaporated, and he sat down again and went on with his meal apparently oblivious of Mr. Baynes's presence. During the morning several men came to the station, and were bailed up and marched into the dining-room. One of these men was leading a young filly which had only recently been broken in. Scott admired her very much and said, "She'll just suit me." He led her round and then tried to mount her, but she was very skittish and would not let him. This threw him into a passion and he became violent, thus frightening the filly and making her more ungovernable. At length he swore that if she did not stand still he would shoot her, and as she continued to rear and try to get away he drew his revolver and sent a bullet through her head. When his fit of passion had passed off, Moonlite said he was sorry he had killed the mare, but she should have stood still when he told her. He then ordered Lindon, the groom, to put the horses into the buggy, and, taking Mr. Alexander Macdonald as a hostage, drove to the house of the superintendent of the station, Mr. Reid. Here he obtained a Whitworth rifle and some ammunition. He then forced Mr. and Mrs. Reid to mount the buggy, and drove away to Paterson's Australian Arms Hotel, which he stuck up, taking two shot guns and a revolver. He ordered Mr. and Mrs. Paterson to walk to the station, and, to ensure obedience, put their two little children into the buggy and drove away. On the return journey to the station he stuck up seven more men, and compelled them to march in front of the buggy to the station, and go into the dining-room.
As Moonlite jumped down from the buggy he caught sight of Mr. Baynes standing on the verandah. He rushed across to him, and charged him with attempting to corrupt his men. He ordered Mr. Baynes to be pinioned with a fishing line, and had him lifted into the buggy, saying "I'll drive under that tree and you can tie the rope to the limb, and we'll leave this gentlemen hanging there." A rope was tied round Mr. Baynes's neck ready, but the women, seeing these preparations for a tragedy, again gathered round Moonlite and begged him to let Mr. Baynes go. At first he refused, saying "The gentleman does not deserve it," but gradually he became less violent, and finally ordered Baynes to be untied. Then he called a muster of all the men in the dining-room and counted thirty-five.
After having given orders as to the custody of his prisoners, Moonlite mounted a horse and rode round, going for some distance along the road on each side of the homestead. He met a man coming from the adjoining station, Eurongilly, where he worked. "Hulloa," cried Moonlite, "where are you going with that pistol?" "To fight the bushrangers," replied the man. "By G——," exclaimed Scott, "you've found them, here we are. Hand over that revolver and we'll try you for unlawfully carrying firearms." The man was compelled to obey, and was taken into the dining-room. Moonlite took his seat as judge, having appointed two of his mates and two of the station hands as jury, and the trial was carried out as nearly in the orthodox manner as circumstances would permit. The charge was read by the clerk, witnesses were heard and cross-examined; the judge summed up, and the verdict returned was "Not guilty." Scott turned to the prisoner and said, "You may think yourself—— lucky. If the jury had found you guilty, I'd have given you five minutes to live." He then ordered the prisoner to be discharged, and said it was dinner time.
In the afternoon the vigilance of the bushrangers relaxed so far that Alexander Macdonald contrived to make his escape. He got a horse and rode to Wagga Wagga, twenty-five miles away. He informed the police of what had taken place, and Constables Howe, Hedley, Williamson, and Johns saddled their horses and started back with him to Wantabadgery, where they arrived at four a.m. on Monday morning. The robbers were still in possession, and the police hoped to find them unprepared, but this was not the case, and the police retreated to Mr. James Beveridge's station, Tarrandera Park, where they obtained fresh horses. By this time five more troopers had arrived from Gundagai, sixty-five miles away, and the police decided that they were strong enough to begin the attack. The people who had been detained in the dining-room speedily made their escape and collected on a ridge a short distance from the scene of battle, other persons, attracted by the sound of the firing, rode up from the stations round until some three hundred spectators of the fight were collected on the ridge, but they left the police to do the fighting unaided. Constable Bowen, who had already shot a bushranger in the Thunderbolt rising, was the first to make any impression, and a great cheer went up as one of Moonlite's men was seen to fall. The bushrangers went into the house, and the police took shelter in a hut some distance away. They advanced very cautiously, and Constable Bowen shot a second man, falling wounded himself almost at the same time. Some time afterwards Constable Carroll, who had crept close up to the verandah, in spite of the heavy fusilade which was kept up, shot a third bushranger, and soon after the other three came out and surrendered. Moonlite asked Mr. Wise to go for a doctor to attend to Nesbit, saying "Poor fellow! He was shot trying to save me."
James Nesbit, alias Lyons, who was shot dead, was born in Melbourne and was twenty-three years of age. Augustus or Gus Wernicke (also from Melbourne), aged nineteen, died a few days after the battle. Graham Bennett, also born in Victoria, was twenty years of age. He was wounded in the arm and recovered. Thomas Williams, alias Jones, nineteen years old, was born in Ballarat, Victoria. Thomas Rogan was born at Hay, New South Wales, but had been living for some years in Melbourne, where he became acquainted with Scott. Scott, the leader, was thirty-seven years of age.
Constable Bowen died of his wound on the Sunday following the fight, and the prisoners were tried on the charge of murdering him. The trial took place at Darlinghurst Court House, Sydney, and lasted for four days. A verdict of guilty was returned, but the jury recommended Rogan, Bennett, and Williams to mercy on account of their youth and the belief that they had been led into crime by Scott. In consequence of this the sentences on Bennett and Williams were commuted to imprisonment for life, but although some pressure was brought to bear on the Governor, Lord Augustus Loftus, the executive declined to extend mercy to Rogan. He and Scott were therefore hung in Darlinghurst gaol.
One of the witnesses at the trial, named Ah Goon, said that he had been robbed of a gold watch and chain valued at £25. When taking these and some money from him, Scott said he was "a—— Chinaman who took the bread out of the mouths of honest workers." It is worthy of note also that on the second day of the trial of the prisoners at Darlinghurst, the Melbourne Argus reported that James P. Nesbitt, father of the recently killed bushranger, was charged at the City Police Court, Melbourne, with having thrashed and abused his wife, the mother of the bushranger. He was ordered to be bound over to keep the peace for six months under a penalty of £25, and as the money was not forthcoming, he was sent to gaol.
The gallantry of the police in breaking up this gang of bushrangers at so early a stage in its career was duly recognised. The police authorities voted a reward of £100 to Constable Carroll, £75 to Constable Curran, and £50 each to the other constables engaged in the fight. A public monument was erected to Constable Bowen, and a pension was settled on his wife, while the Government undertook the care and education of his children. The police were paraded in Sydney; the Inspector General, Mr. E. Fosbery, read a letter from the Colonial Secretary (the late Sir Henry Parkes) publicly thanking the police constables for their services. After this ceremony, the purses containing the rewards were presented and acknowledged.
It is impossible to divide the bushranging of this epoch so as to keep the story of the different colonies concerned separate as I have in the previous epochs, because both the Moonlite and the Kelly gang operated in both Victoria and New South Wales. The small number of bushrangers who worked separately from these gangs are not worth dividing and may be dealt with here.
In February, 1879, three young men who had been engaged in running in and capturing warrigal horses on the lower Murrumbidgee, thought, perhaps, that that employment was less profitable than bushranging, and took to the roads. Their names were Thomas Gorman (twenty-one), Charles Jones (twenty), and William Kaye (nineteen). They bailed up a few travellers on the road between Balranald and Ivanhoe, and were then joined by William Hobbs, otherwise known as Hoppy Bill, because he had a crooked leg and arm. Hobbs had been employed as cook at the Hatfield sheep station, and was about thirty years of age. On the 21st they stuck up Mr. Grainger's store at Hatfield, about sixty miles north of Balranald, and stole £50 worth of clothing and other goods, two horses, with saddles and bridles. On the following day they stopped a hawker, saying "Bail up. We're the Kellys," and took £40 worth of goods and jewellery from his waggon. On the 23rd they arrived at Till Till station, and bailed up twenty-five persons there. Mrs. Crombie, wife of the manager, was very much frightened at first, but they soothed her by telling her that they "wouldn't hurt any one." They took six horses, a quantity of ammunition, and some other articles from the store. When they left they said that they intended to stick up Woolpagerie station.
In the meantime Mr. John Thomas Day, storeman at Grainger's, travelled as fast as his horse could go to Moulamein, and informed the police of the sticking up of the store. He was sworn in as a special constable, and accompanied by troopers Beresford and Powers and a black tracker, started in pursuit. They rode one hundred and eighty miles between nine a.m. on Sunday and seven p.m. on Monday, changing horses at Clare, where they came on the tracks of the bushrangers. On their arrival at Kilferra Mr. Casey supplied them with remounts, and joined in the chase. The tracks led down to the Four Mile Dam, where the pursuers came on the bushrangers in camp preparing their supper. As they went forward the bushrangers came to meet them, crying out, "Bail up." The police replied, "Surrender in the Queen's name." Both parties fired, and Constable Powers fell wounded in the shoulder. The bushrangers then threw down their arms and surrendered. They were tried on April 19th for shooting with intent to murder, and were found guilty. When asked if they had anything to urge why sentence of death should not be passed on them, Hobbs was the only one who spoke, and he said, "God forgive me if I have to die." Sentences of death were pronounced, but these were subsequently commuted to imprisonment for life.
On Wednesday, November 5th, 1879, an attempt was made to stick up the Bank of Australasia at Moe in the Gippsland district of Victoria. At first it was supposed that the Kellys had paid a visit to this part of the colony. The bank was a wooden building, situated about fifty yards from the Moe railway station, and nearly opposite the Selector's Arms Hotel. The bank closed at the usual time and nothing occurred until about nine o'clock p.m. At that time Mr. Hector Munro, the manager, was sitting in his parlour behind the bank chamber reading. He was alone in the house, his wife having gone up the main street to the grocer's shop. There was a knock at the door, and on Mr. Munro opening it, a man with a white cap over his head, with holes to look through cut in it, tried to force his way in. Munro endeavoured to slam the door to, but the white cap individual had got his foot inside and managed to push his way in. "Who are you? What do you want?" cried Munro, but no answer was returned. Munro still held the man and endeavoured to drag him out of the house. The white cap drew a pistol, but Munro clutched him by the arm, and in the struggle the pistol went off without doing any damage, except to the wall. Then another white-capped man appeared and struck Munro on the head. At the same time several people rushed over from the hotel to ascertain what the shooting was about, and the two would-be robbers bolted. Sergeant Irwin and two constables, with Dr. Archibald Macdonald and several other civilians, followed the bushrangers. They picked up two felt hats and a serge mask in the yard, not far from the back door of the bank. It was, however, too dark to do anything further that night, but at daylight the tracks were carefully followed, and shortly before six a.m. Constable Beck and Dr. Macdonald found two men sitting on the Trafalgar railway platform. The doctor covered them with his rifle while the constable handcuffed them. The men said that the constable was making a great mistake, as they were unacquainted with each other, having arrived there by different routes. They were waiting for the train from Melbourne to go further up country to look for work. Constable Beck replied, "Oh, that's all right; I'll stand the racket. What's your names?" As they hesitated, he continued, "Now, no humbug; I know you. You don't live far away, and if you give false names you'll soon be bowled out." They then admitted that they were brothers, and that their names were Robert and James Shanks. Their ages were twenty-three and twenty-one years respectively. Two revolvers were found in their carpet bags, and the white caps were picked up not far from the platform. They were convicted of having attempted to rob the bank, and assaulted the manager.
The Kelly Gang; Horse-stealing, a Great Industry of the District; Faking the Brands; Assault on Constable Fitzpatrick; The Bush Telegraphs; Murder of Sergeant Kennedy and Constables Scanlan and Lonergan; Sticking up of the Faithfull Creek Station; Robbery of the National Bank at Euroa; A Big Haul.
In the early years of Australian settlement bushranging was one of the normal conditions in the colonies, and therefore attracted little notice. Even the exploits of such heroes of the roads as Mike Howe, Brady, the Jewboy, and Jackey Jackey are very briefly related in the Press, and, with the exception of the first-named, about whom Mr. James Bonwick has written a romance, very little has been heard of them since the age in which they lived. In the next epoch the doings of the bushrangers were dwarfed in the public estimation by the sensational reports of the gold finds, and although in consequence of the growth of population and the great increase in the number of newspapers their actions received a wider publicity than those of their predecessors the accounts of them are still meagre. The sensational inauguration of the next era by the Gardiner gang—the sticking up and robbing of the Government Gold Escort—attracted wider notice to the bushrangers of that epoch, and some notice of them appears even in the English Press. But the notoriety of even the most celebrated of the bushrangers of that epoch was nothing as compared with that of the Kelly gang, about whom more columns of newspaper matter have been printed than of all the bushrangers together in the earlier epochs. Several histories of the Kelly gang have also been published, the best known, perhaps, being those of Mr. Superintendent Hare, who was for a time in charge of the police who were trying to capture the bushrangers, and Mr. John McWhirter, the reporter of the Melbourne Age, who accompanied the police in their final and successful effort to suppress the gang. Mr. McWhirter's "History" is largely compiled from the reports which had appeared in the Age, and Mr. Hare is also largely indebted to the same source. The Kellys have also inspired more than one drama, although the subject is not a favourite one with moralists, and the representation of bushranging dramas has not met with favour from a large section of the community. In this connection we may note the influence of modern science. The stage of the performances of the earlier bushrangers was confined to their own locality. They were rarely heard of outside the colony in which they appeared. In the next stage the telegraph carried news of their performances all over Australia, and occasionally a stray newspaper paragraph was quoted in England. With the Kellys, however, it was different. Notices of their exploits were even sent across the ocean by cable, and the British public naturally desired to hear more of these daring robbers, and therefore extracts from the newspapers of Australia appeared more frequently in the English Press than at any former epoch. The consequence is that we can reconstruct the history of the Kellys more easily than that of any other bushranging family. The father of Ned Kelly was transported from Ireland. The maiden name of his wife was Ellen Quinn. The eldest son, Ned, was born at Wallan Wallan in 1854. Jim was born in 1856, and Dan in 1861. There were besides four daughters—namely, Mrs. Gunn, Mrs. Skillian, and Kate and Grace Kelly. In 1871, the second son, James, then about fifteen years of age, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on two charges of horse-stealing. On his discharge in 1876 he went to New South Wales and stuck up a number of people. He was captured almost immediately, and sent to gaol for ten years. Edward, commonly known as Ned Kelly, was arrested in 1870 and charged with having assisted Power in one of his numerous bushranging exploits, but was acquitted, as none of the witnesses could swear to his identity. It is said that on more than one occasion he took care of Power's horses while that worthy was engaged in robbing. In 1871 he was sent to gaol for three years for horse-stealing.
Horse-stealing appears to have been the principal industry of the district, as cattle-duffing had been of the Wedden Mountain district, and of Manaro, and the Kellys, the Harts, the Byrnes, and others in this district, were quite as adept in "faking" brands as the Lowrys, the O'Meallys, or the Clarkes had been. But science had made advances even in these mountains since the era of the Gardiner gang. In earlier times the brands of horses and cattle were "faked"—i.e., altered so as to represent something different from what they were intended to do—by branding over them and adding to them. There were some expert blacksmiths among the cattle-duffers, and these would make a brand to fit over an old brand and completely change its character. For instance, a simple A brand might have a circle burned round it thus—(A), or it might have another letter conjoined to it thus—A-B. The manner in which brands might be "faked" was endless, and when it was impossible to "fake" a brand it was "blotched," or burned over, so that the original design could not be recognised. The Kellys and their companions in the Warby and Strathbogie ranges, however, did not go to the trouble of making special brands to "fake" other brands. They obtained the same results by the use of iodine, which burned such marks into the skins of the stolen animals as were desired. The plan adopted was to make raids into distant parts, collect a mob of horses, drive them into an inaccessible ravine in the mountains, "fake" their brands and keep them until the sores had healed and the brands looked old. Then the animals, having got fat in the meantime, were driven to market and sold without fear of detection. Horses stolen in the north—some even from across the New South Wales border—were driven south to Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, or some other large town, and sold openly in the public sale yards; while those stolen in the south were driven to some northern market, sometimes being taken as far as Sydney.
In 1876, Daniel, the youngest of the Kelly boys, was sent to gaol for three months for having taken part in a house-breaking robbery in conjunction with the Lloyds, who were connected by marriage with the Kellys. In the following year, 1887, warrants were issued for his arrest on six charges of horse-stealing, but he could not be found. On April 15th, 1878, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick, having learned that Dan Kelly was at home, went to the Kellys' hut at Greta, to arrest him. "This hut," said the Benalla Standard, "was a well-known trysting-place for the bushranger Power." The constable rode up, and seeing Dan standing at the door said to him, "You're my prisoner." "All right," replied Dan nonchalantly. The constable dismounted and hitched his horse to a sapling, when Dan said that he had been riding all day and had had nothing to eat. After some conversation the constable agreed to wait while Dan had some food, before taking him to Benalla, and Dan went in and sat down. As he did so Mrs. Kelly said to Fitzpatrick, "You won't take Dan out o' this to-night." "Shut up, mother," exclaimed Dan, "it's all right." The old woman continued to grumble in an undertone, while she placed bread and meat and tea on the table. Presently she asked the constable, "Have you got a warrant?" "I've got a telegram, and that's as good," replied Fitzpatrick. The constable was standing at the door, and Dan, who took his arrest coolly, as if it was a mere matter of course, told his mother not to make a row about it, as it did not matter, and then invited the constable to take some food. Fitzpatrick accepted the invitation, and went in. As he seated himself Mrs. Kelly remarked, "If my son Ned was here, he'd throw you out of the window." Dan was looking out of the window at the time, and he exclaimed "Here he is." Fitzpatrick very naturally turned to look, and Dan pounced on to him. Mrs. Kelly seized a heavy garden spade which had been used as a fire shovel and was much damaged, and struck Fitzpatrick a furious blow on the head, making a dint in his helmet. Fitzpatrick fell down, and several people hearing the noise rushed in. Among them were Ned Kelly, William Skillian (husband of one of the Kelly girls), and William Williams, alias Bricky. Ned Kelly held a revolver in his hand which was still smoking, and Fitzpatrick was wounded in the arm. Ned said, "I'm sorry I fired. You're the civilest—— trap I've seen." He offered to cut the bullet out and bind up the wound, but Fitzpatrick refused to let him touch it. Then Ned said that the constable could not be allowed to go away until the bullet was cut out and he had promised not to tell how he got wounded. "You can say your pistol went off by accident," he said. "Tell him if he does tell he won't live long after," cried Mrs. Kelly. The old woman was again told to "shut up." Fitzpatrick, knowing the men he had to deal with, promised not to say who had wounded him, and took his knife from his pocket. He cut a small gash, over where the bullet was, and squeezed it out. Then he twisted his handkerchief round the wound and said it was "all right." Ned Kelly picked up the bullet and put it away on a shelf, and a few minutes later the constable was allowed to mount his horse and go. On the following day a party of troopers went to the Eleven Mile Creek and arrested Mrs. Ellen Kelly, William Skillian, and William Williams. A search was made for Ned and Dan Kelly, but they could not be found. Skillian and Williams, when brought up for trial for their share in this assault, declared that they only came in after the shot was fired, and had taken no part whatever in the scrimmage. They were, however, sentenced to six years' imprisonment, while Mrs. Kelly was sent to gaol for three years.