by Haynes, Jim
The attack of the British force made no impression on the virtually undamaged main stockade, and Despard was forced to order a recall. More than 120 of Despard’s men were killed or wounded in this action. Despard at first blamed his men’s failure to carry axes and other tools as he had ordered but he later conceded that his plan had had little chance of success.
Despard then attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement but failed. Although he had a force of around 1300 British troops, several hundred Maori warriors and substantial artillery support, the northern war ended soon after without any British victories and Despard returned to New South Wales.
Despard’s performance during the campaigns of 1845 was woeful. He was impatient and obstinate and had a contempt for the Maori, which led him to underestimate them. When Maori chief Waaka Nene offered his services to help the British, Despard replied that, when he ‘required the assistance of savages’, he would ask for it. Despard suffered from neuralgia and bad temper. His decision to attack Ohaeawai was one of the most incompetent and tragic in British military history—prompted more by a fit of temper than by any military considerations.
The position of commander of British troops during the northern war had been given to a man of sixty who had not seen active service for nearly thirty years and was unequal to the task. He was to soon be involved in the mutiny of an entire regiment. (see The 99th Regiment Are Revolting!) Yet, on 2 July 1846, Despard was knighted for his services and, in 1854, he was promoted to major general. He then retired from the army.
He died at Heavitree, Devon in 1859.
JH
JOHN KNATCHBULL
Who Pleaded Insanity
One of the biggest events in Sydney in the 1840s was the hanging of the nobly born criminal Captain John Knatchbull on 13 February 1844.
In January 1844, John Knatchbull went into the shop of a poor widow, Ellen Jamieson and, while she was serving him, he raised a tomahawk and ‘clove the unfortunate woman’s head in a savage manner’. She died after a few days, leaving two orphan children.
John Knatchbull was the son of country squire Sir Edward Knatchbull who married three times and had at least twenty children. John was sent to Winchester School, joined the navy in 1804, served with distinction and became a lieutenant and later a captain. He incurred bad debts in the navy and in 1824 was convicted of stealing with force and arms. He was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.
Knatchbull’s career was a series of ups and downs. Appointed as constable in the colony of New South Wales, he was given a ticket of leave in 1829 after apprehending eight runaways, but was then charged with forging Judge Dowling’s signature to a cheque and sentenced to death. This was commuted to transportation for seven years to Norfolk Island, where he became partially crippled.
In 1834, he planned a mutiny and then turned informer and the twenty-nine other mutineers were sentenced to death. Judge Sir William Burton told the magistrate, who accepted Knatchbull’s evidence, ‘. . . he was the chief of the mutineers . . . You have saved his life, or prolonged it. He never can do good.’
Knatchbull returned to Sydney in May 1839 to serve the remainder of his original fourteen years, received a ticket of leave in 1842 and, in January 1844, was arrested for the murder of Mrs Jamieson, having been found in the house with her body, with her purse and money in his hands.
An attempt was made to plead insanity, by Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, a barrister who argued that insanity of the will could exist apart from insanity of the intellect; it was a novel defence for the time and the first time that moral insanity had been used as a defence. Lowe argued that Knatchbull had yielded to an irresistible impulse and could not be held responsible for his crime.
The court, however, found Knatchbull guilty. The Lowes subsequently adopted the murdered woman’s two young children, Bobby and Polly Jamieson, and the murderer’s brother, Sir Edward Knatchbull, sent out a handsome donation for the orphans.
In another weird turn of events, Knatchbull appealed unsuccessfully on the grounds that the judge had not directed that his body be dissected and anatomised, as required by law.
On 13 February 1844, 10,000 people witnessed the execution outside the gates of the three-year-old Darlinghurst Gaol. Captain John Knatchbull, aged fifty-six years, was led out into Forbes Street, at the gaol gates, and then ‘ascended the fatal scaffold without trepidation or fear, and was launched into another world with a noble and fervent prayer trembling on his lips’.
The bell of St Phillip’s tolled three times and John Knatchbull was dead.
JH
TEDDY DAVIS
Our Only Jewish Bushranger
Edward ‘Jewboy’ Davis (1816–41), was a convict who, in 1832 at the Old Bailey, under the name George Wilkinson, was sentenced to transportation for seven years for having attempted to steal a wooden till, valued at two shillings, and copper coins to the value of five shillings.
Davis arrived in Sydney in 1833 on the Camden and was put to work at Hyde Park Barracks. He escaped and was caught and sentenced to a further twelve months. In 1835, he escaped from a farm he was working on at Penrith and another twelve months was added to his term. He was assigned to a farmer at Hexham, but ran away a third time, and two more years were added to his sentence. He was caught, but in July 1838 he escaped a fourth time and formed a bushranger gang of runaway convicts.
For two years, his gang robbed settlers from Maitland down to Gosford. Davis sported curious tattoos and the gang wore colourful clothes and tied ribbons to their horses’ bridles. Davis insisted his gang be courteous to women and he gave some of what he took from the richer squatters to their convict servants. His rule was ‘no violence except to avoid capture’.
In December 1840, the inevitable happened. While the gang was robbing shops at Scone, a storekeeper’s clerk fired a shot, and gang member John Shea killed him. Realising that now murder had been committed, the game was up, the gang fled to one of their hide-outs, Doughboy Hollow near Murrurundi.
A posse led by police magistrate Edward Day tracked them down and a gunfight took place. A bullet from Davis grazed Day’s ear and Davis was wounded in the shoulder. Six of the gang were captured and taken to Sydney Gaol.
Shea was found guilty of murder, and the others were accused of aiding and abetting Shea. Davis’ counsel tried to save his life by pointing out that he was not present at the murder, but the jury found all prisoners guilty and they were hanged.
There was much public sympathy for Davis, who was repentant and accepting of his fate, and many settlers appealed for a reprieve. On 16 March 1841, Davis was hanged, in the presence of a rabbi from Sydney Synagogue, at the rear of the old Sydney gaol on the corner of George Street and Sussex Street, together with his gang. He was buried in the Jewish portion of the Devonshire Street cemetery.
Davis seems to have been our only Jewish bushranger on record.
JH
FRANK GARDINER
King of the Road
Frank Gardiner’s origins are shrouded in mystery. He was either born in Scotland in 1829 and migrated to Australia as a child with his parents in 1834, or he was born in the Boro Creek settlement near Goulburn in the early 1830s. His real name is thought to have been Francis Christie, though he often used one of several other aliases: Frank Clarke, Frank Christie, The Darkie, The Prince of Tobymen, General Gardiner and King of the Road.
He supposedly took the name Gardiner after a man who lived for some years with his family and who had taught him how to ride and break in horses. Although almost all legends state that his real name is Francis Christie, or Clarke, or even Girard, the famous outlaw himself signed his name ‘Francis Gardiner, the Highwayman’. He even used the surname Gardiner while in America, and he remains perhaps the most mysterious Australian bushranger.
In 1862, he bailed up the Lachlan gold escort at Eugowra with Ben Hall and John Gilbert—the largest ever gold robbery in Australian history. The total value of the 2700 ounces of gold taken was
estimated at two million dollars in today’s terms. Almost half of the gold was recovered following a raid on Gardiner’s hide-out in the Weddin Range near Forbes. The remainder was never found but it is rumoured that two Americans, who were thought to be Gardiner’s sons, visited the Wheogo Station near the Weddins in 1911. Local legend says they had a map and shovels.
In early 1864, Gardiner was recognised working as a shopkeeper near Rockhampton, apprehended by New South Wales police operating outside their jurisdiction and sentenced to thirty-two years’ hard labour. Gardiner served ten years and then successful appeals by his two sisters and public support saw him granted early release, conditional on his leaving the country.
The only Australian ever to have been exiled from his country, he left for Hong Kong in 1874 and ended up in San Francisco where he owned the Twilight Star Saloon. The circumstances of his death are not known due to the destruction caused during the 1906 earthquake. He may have died in 1904 of pneumonia.
JH
SAM POO
Australia’s Only Chinese Bushranger
In 1865, Sam Poo was scratching over old worked-out claims on the Talbragar goldfields, near Mudgee, when he decided to try the less arduous, if more risky, profession of criminal. Having left the Chinese camp and living alone, he continuously practised shooting at an old stump near his camp.
One morning, diggers were alarmed by the news that a Chinaman had robbed and assaulted a woman on the Mudgee Road and was ‘bailing up’ travellers. Constable Ward of Coonabarabran hastened along to the Mudgee Road and met two men who had been held up by a Chinaman just an hour previously. After some hard riding, Ward saw a Chinaman on foot, carrying a gun, but the man also saw the constable and ran off the road into the bush.
Ward gave chase. He soon caught up and called out, ‘Put down that gun.’
The Chinaman said, ‘Me fire; you policeman.’
Ward jumped off his horse, drew his revolver and again told Sam to ‘put down his gun’. Sam fired point blank at the constable, severely wounding him in the side. As he fell, Ward fired, but the Chinaman ran off into the bush. Ward would have bled to death but for the lucky arrival of a Mr Plunkett, who owned Talbragar Station, where the incident had taken place, and was out looking for stock. Ward was taken to the homestead and a man was sent on horseback for the nearest doctor, 80 kilometres away. When the doctor arrived next day, Ward was dead.
Meanwhile, the whole countryside was out looking for Sam Poo. Mounted police scoured the bush and an Aboriginal stockman named Harry Hughes tracked Sam down weeks later. A gunfight took place. Sam was shot through the neck and body with shotgun pellets and captured.
Next day he was taken to Mudgee, where his wounds were treated in the hospital. He was not expected to recover, but he did and was taken to Bathurst, where he was tried, convicted and hanged, nine months after his arrest at Mudgee.
So ended the brief career of the only Chinese bushranger ever known in Australia.
JH
BARNEY THE BUILDER
The Empire’s ‘Mr Fixit’
George Barney was the British Empire’s ‘Mr Fixit’. He was born in 1792 and his father was drawing master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. George Barney joined the Royal Engineers in 1808 and served in the Peninsular War and in the West Indies, where he had several years experience of civil engineering.
Promoted to captain in 1813, Barney married Portia Henrietta Peale in Grenada, West Indies, in 1817. He built wharves and harbours in Britain and the West Indies. Wherever civil and military works were needed around the empire, they sent for Captain (later Colonel) Barney.
He arrived in Sydney with his wife and three children in December 1835 with a detachment of Royal Engineers. Governor Bourke put him in charge of ‘fixing up Sydney’. His dream was to straighten out the streets of the town.
Among Barney’s many achievements were the removal of obstructions to navigation in the Parramatta River and the building of the ‘semi-circular quay’ at Sydney Cove, forever after known by the ridiculous abbreviated name of Circular Quay. He also constructed a breakwater at Newcastle, the harbour at Wollongong, the beautiful and functional Victoria Barracks and he repaired roads and bridges throughout the colony.
In 1836, Barney reported that the defences of Sydney were ‘in a very dilapidated state’ and in 1839, after Sydney had woken up one morning to find five American ships anchored in the harbour, he reported that measures were needed to protect the ports of New South Wales against ‘desultory attacks from foreign cruisers’.
Barney recommended that £5000 and two more engineer officers be provided for the construction of batteries and blockhouses for the defence of Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, Port Macquarie and Port Phillip.
The British government agreed to send out one additional officer, but would not adopt the plans for defence works. Governor Gipps, however, himself an officer of engineers, had already allotted Barney, now a major, 140 convict labourers, who were at work clearing sites for guns at Pinchgut Island and Bradley’s Head in Sydney Harbour.
George Street barracks was disposed of and a new site allotted in Paddington, where in 1841 the building of new barracks (Victoria Barracks) was begun under Barney’s supervision. They were occupied in 1848.
Pinchgut Island was quite a high and imposing island until Barney stripped the rock from it and levelled the island to build the famous fort. The new governor, Denison, reverted to Barney’s plan for Pinchgut and the keystone in the base of the tower at Fort Denison was laid by Barney on 24 July 1856 and the fort completed in 1857. It cost over £15,000 to complete and the British treasury was furious. Fort Denison never fired a shot in anger and if the cannons had ever been fired anyone in the tower would have been deafened for life.
Barney died at St Leonards, Sydney, in 1862 and is buried in St Thomas’ cemetery. His wife died twenty years later. They had one son and four daughters.
And the rock that was quarried from the island? Well, it was used to build the ‘semi-circular quay’! He never did straighten out the streets of Sydney.
JH
J.F. ARCHIBALD
The Fake French Visionary
John Feltham Archibald (1856–1919) was the son of a Warrnambool policeman and historian. His mother died when he was young and this left him as a rather sad and dreamy child. He worked on a local paper then went to Melbourne and re-created himself as a Frenchman, Jules François, and revised his family history, making his mother both French and Jewish.
Archibald travelled to Cooktown on a steamer, lived in a hut with miners and with them survived a food shortage, snakebite and an outbreak of fever. The adventure lasted probably only a few months, but it was his one real experience of Australian frontier life.
Archibald drifted to Sydney, worked on a few newspapers and eventually founded The Bulletin with John Haynes in Sydney in 1880. After three years of working twenty hours a day to make the magazine a success, Archibald went to London where he met a young Jewish woman, Rosa Frankenstein. His time in London only strengthened his anti-British feelings and he was back in Sydney in 1885. Rosa followed him and they married in November 1885.
Archibald became a wealthy and influential man due to the success of the Bulletin and he and Rosa lived in a luxurious home in Darling Point. Rosa lost a baby and the marriage was never a happy one. She eventually drank herself to death and Archibald was in Callan Park Mental Hospital several times—but he recovered and died a wealthy man in 1919.
The Bulletin was anti-British and helped Australians to develop a sense of being Australian. Archibald helped to start the careers of just about every great Australian writer and cartoonist from 1880 to 1910. He was a strange mixture of dreamer, workaholic and visionary, and suffered depression all his life. His fortune was used to build the fountain in Hyde Park and endow the famous art prize and help journalists. He is buried at Waverley cemetery.
JH
LARRY FOLEY
The Father of Aussie Boxing
> Larry Foley was the son of a schoolmaster. He was born in 1849 near Bathurst and at fourteen he went to Wollongong as a servant to a priest. He almost entered the priesthood himself, but changed his mind at seventeen, moved to Sydney and became a builder’s labourer.
Any godly thoughts he’d had soon vanished. He joined a larrikin gang and soon became leader of The Green, a Catholic gang. He was taught to box by a Negro fighter called Black Perry and, on 18 March 1871, he fought Sandy Ross, champion of the Protestant gangs, on Georges River flat near the suburb of Como in Sydney. The fight lasted seventy-one rounds before police arrived, but most agreed Foley won.
Foley then had another change of heart, left the gang, became a building contractor and boxed in gloves in prize fights and exhibitions. He never lost a fight in that time.
At the height of the colonial rivalry between New South Wales and Victoria, Abe Hicken, the English-born Melbourne champion, challenged Foley to a bare-knuckle fight for the Australian championship.
In Victoria, after 1866, it was compulsory to wear gloves and follow Queensbury rules; bare-knuckle fights were illegal. Attempts to stage the fight in Victoria failed, so it was held near Echuca on the Murray River on 20 March 1879, on the New South Wales side of the river.
The fight was well publicised and men travelled from everywhere to see it. A special train brought 700 spectators from Melbourne to Echuca and they were then ferried across the river into New South Wales.
Foley won in sixteen rounds, and received a prize of £600.
A Ballarat newspaper reported, ‘Victoria has lost the honourable distinction of being the proud dwelling place of the Australian champion, the glory of Melbourne has departed away, and we in the wilderness are in tears.’