Wednesday, 6 December 1854, Melbourne, Foster falls on his sword
All across town there remains only one topic of conversation, as even more horrifying details emerge from Ballarat. On this day it is The Argus that sets the tone, with its headline ‘Massacre at Eureka … cowardly massacre’ above one more Samuel Irwin story.
In Government House, Sir Charles receives first a formal delegation of squatters, who affirm that they support him entirely and wish to help him maintain law and order, then members of the Legislative Council, who also want to personally express their loyalty. Sir Charles, with his high officials, receives both delegations dressed in the full regalia of the highest servants of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, and in gracious language thanks them for their patriotic support. This is a time when all Englishmen must remain true to each other and to Her Majesty.
Hear, hear. Hear, hear!
Despite such fine words, the truth is that in the face of the enormous public outcry, the whole edifice of the previously rock-solid government continues to crumble. In the Legislative Council in the early afternoon, an ashen-faced Colonial Secretary John Foster asks for the indulgence of the House while he refers to a matter personal to himself.
‘I am aware,’ he says, ‘as the House doubtless is also, that a great personal dislike is entertained towards me in certain quarters, and from the public expression of this feeling, I have been induced to … resign.’67
Before formally leaving, however, he is happy to record his views to the Council that in reference to what happened at Eureka, he is ‘truly happy to say that the majority of the prisoners, as well as those killed, were foreigners’.68
The mood of the meeting is heavy - sorry, in some measure, to see Foster resign, while also understanding that his departure may help salve some of the growing public outrage. The main thing now is to rally to Sir Charles, and John Pascoe Fawkner goes so far as to support a resolution of sympathy for the Lieutenant-Governor.
The one serious voice raised in opposition to any suggested motion vindicating the government, however, is Councillor John Myles, who defends the course pursued by the diggers, and denounces the recent engagement as ‘a shooting down of the people for refusing to comply with a mere fiscal regulation’.69
‘After all,’ Myles thunders, ‘they were only banding together to save themselves from being hunted down like wild animals. In the meantime, every step taken by the authorities had been on the spur of the moment, and without thought, clearly showing that the men at the head of affairs are totally incompetent for the government of the colony.’70
This last sentiment is certainly one shared by the broad mass of people.
After the debacle of the meeting the day before, on this late afternoon another meeting has been called on the large grassed area outside St Paul’s Church, ‘for the assertion of order and the protection of constitutional liberty’.71 This time no fewer than 7000 people turn up. And there are a few more besides - they, however, are not participants in the normal sense.
Sir Charles Hotham was disturbed to hear how that meeting the day before had ‘been borne down by a turbulent section, and adverse resolutions carried’.72 And yet, even in that short time the level of public alarm has risen still more, and there have been further reports of diggers on the march from the disturbed districts, heading their way and determined to seek revenge on the government forces.
Immediately after the news of Ballarat had hit, the call Sir Charles put out for special constables was answered, and the first of a flood of what will be 1500 men have already been sworn in. But for this job he is taking no chances with amateurs and orders 300 armed police and 100 warders from Pentridge and Melbourne gaols to surround the meeting, while the last available seamen and marines of HMS Electra and Fantome guard the powder magazine and Treasury.
No matter. Entirely untroubled by their presence, the crowd is quick to vent its anger, particularly once the rumour spreads that Colonial Secretary John Foster has resigned. Far from placating them, the effect is the reverse - like a lion that has the whiff of blood, it now wants to go in for the kill.
‘Bring him to justice!’73 the cry rings out.
But to the business at hand. Again with the likes of Fawkner, Embling and Frencham taking the lead, three resolutions - most of them drafted earlier by the passionate Scottish journalist Ebenezer Syme - are passed. They blame the tragedy at Ballarat squarely on ‘the coercion of a military force … [and] the harsh and imprudent recommencement of digger hunting during a period of excitement,’ and seek a guarantee that steps will be taken such ‘that a military despotism will no longer be required’.74 They demand that a Commission be established to work out the differences between the government and the diggers, but also call for the immediate ‘withdrawal of the military from the diggings’.75
As to John Pascoe Fawkner, he is strong and getting stronger …
‘I will tell you why you are being misgoverned,’ he says. ‘It is because you are governed by the squatters, who have held 60,000,000 acres of the land for thirteen years, for which they had only paid to the government a quarter of a million of pounds! There are in the Council not less than a dozen of squatters so that their interests are always well represented whether the interest of the colonists at large are so or not!’76
But one thing he does wish to make clear is that while he and one or two others will represent the interests of the people in Council, he would not take up a musket - Fawkner is a proponent of moral force and moral force alone. ‘If you support your members,’ he insists, ‘you will get your rights. Petition the Council and you will soon get all you want and …’77
‘We want the troops out of Ballarat!’ a voice rings out. They should have it. For now, however, Fawkner is obliged to leave them for the purpose of attending to their interests in another place. The tone for the rest of the meeting is less angry than united - a terrible thing has occurred, and they are unanimous in the view that the government must change its whole approach. And perhaps it has an effect: that same afternoon a Victoria Government Gazette is issued announcing the revocation of martial law on Ballarat.
Thursday, 7 December - Saturday, 9 December 1854, Government Camp, charges are laid
Of all the prisoners, the one in the worst shape is a fellow by the name of James Powell, known to the diggers as ‘New Zealand Jamie’. He had been cut to pieces by sabres and stabbed with bayonets, and it is amazing he is alive at all. This once-vibrant man is now little more than a breeding site for the ‘hundreds of maggots … crawling in and out of the festering sores, which were disgusting to behold’.78
There is no help for him and, though the others do what they can, it is obvious he does not have long.
On this morning, however, there is at least some respite for the others as - sweet mercy - they are to be let out of the cell. This is not through any sense of mercy, but simply because it is time for the legal process of the committal hearings to begin. The short shuffle from the lockup to the courthouse in fetters is awkward and, once inside, the prisoners stand in line and make their way towards the bench. After magistrates Evelyn Sturt and George Webster read the statements already made about the accused by the Redcoats and the police, they then question the prisoners about their actions on the day, what they saw and what they were doing in the Stockade in the first place, to try to determine whether each man has a case to answer and whether he should be formally charged. In a process that will go on for the next three days, the prisoners are particularly encouraged to make statements about what they witnessed other diggers do in the Stockade so that all the statements can be cross-referenced to determine the most guilty. In building a case against the accused, various troopers, soldiers and other government witnesses are there to give their own account of the events, and the entire proceeding is observed by two journalists from The Melbourne Morning Herald and two from The Argus.
First up are those men against whom only trifling charges are recorded, for which there is litt
le hard evidence. One of these is John Lynch. Charged with sedition - encouraging one’s fellow subjects to rebel against royal authority - he pleads not guilty. In response, there is a stirring among the posse of witnesses, some whispering, but no-one offers to step forward to the witness box. Lynch is just taking this as a good omen when a trooper of sneeringly superior mien and sparkling epaulettes struts forth and offers to give testimony, almost as if he would like to do the Bench a favour.
Upon questioning, however - Lynch and many other prisoners are defended by Ballarat barrister Joseph Henry Dunne, whose pro bono offer has been gratefully accepted by all - the trooper proves to have scant recollection of what he had seen Lynch doing, beyond the fact that he had been responsible for mischief.
‘The more they tried to get something definite out of him,’ Lynch would later recount, ‘the less he yielded. At last he became quite confused, and was ordered out of the box: no other appeared. Then that terrible record, the police charge-sheet, was appealed to. No entry appearing there against my name, solemnly the magical word “discharged” was pronounced, and in a couple of seconds I found myself outside in the midst of a congratulating crowd.’79
For Raffaello Carboni, it is perhaps a measure of how eager the authorities are to indict him that in going through this process he finds himself chained to the one man who seems universally reviled by all the authorities: the so-called ‘nigger-rebel’ from America, John Joseph.
The only good thing is that the whole process does not take long. As Carboni and Joseph stand manacled before the bench, the Italian is staggered to find that several government witnesses - none of whom he recognises - do hereby solemnly swear that he was inside the Stockade on the morning in question, that he had attacked them with pikes and that he had been captured in the Stockade.
The outraged Italian swears in vain that none of these things is true, and that he can prove that they are not true. However, when he insists that both Dr Carr and Captain Charles Carter of the foot police, the officer who had first arrested him outside the Stockade, could definitively establish that the charges are false, neither man can be found. The only witnesses are for the prosecution, who take the sacred oath on the Bible and testify with ‘savage eagerness’.80
Most devastating is the evidence of Henry Goodenough, who testifies that the Italian ‘Charles Rafaello’ was not only the captain of a company of 25 men armed with swords and knives, but that he had publically exhorted those men - and all other men - to use their weapons. Why, on Thursday, 30 November, Goodenough had personally heard the prisoner urge from the platform, ‘Gentlemen soldiers, those that cannot provide themselves with firearms, let them provide themselves with a piece of steel, if it is only six inches long, attached to a pole, and that will pierce the tyrant’s heart.’81 And he had seen Carboni marching them back and forth, drilling them. Other witnesses back him up.
Carboni is shocked and appalled. ‘I shall not prostitute my intelligence and comment on the “evidence” against me,’ he would later recount, ‘from a gang of bloodthirsty mercenary spies’.82
He doesn’t need to.
For the evidence, such as it is presented, is overwhelming, and at the end the verdict comes down hard as the magistrates commit Raffaello Carboni to stand trial. John Joseph is, of course, similarly charged, as is John Manning shortly afterwards. When the lawyer for the Australian rebel Thomas Dignum tries to deny that he was the one with pike in hand who had struck a Redcoat, Trooper William Revell steps forward and says, ‘I cannot be mistaken in the identity of prisoner Thomas Dignum, for I cut him on the head. He has a cut on his head now.’83 All look to the prisoner’s head, and there is no doubting the still-angry wound. Dignum declines to make a statement in his own defence, and the verdict comes down against him, also.
Oddly, of the 125 diggers who had been rounded up on the Sunday, after three days of such court processes there are just 13 left who are committed for trial - perhaps because, under Hotham’s express instruction, ‘the magistrates were instructed to limit the commitments to those against whom the proof of participation was of the clearest kind’.84 They are all to stand trial for High Treason under the legislation introduced in Great Britain following the Chartist uprising six years earlier - the Treason Felony Act 1848. These charges are laid despite the fact that Sir Charles Hotham’s own high legal counsel has tendered the view that it will be very difficult to make the charge stick, as it was no more than ‘the expression of seditious opinions in which a considerable portion of the public coincide’.85
Sir Charles decides to ignore that and does not interfere with the Attorney-General’s determination to prosecute, come what may. Given the number of deaths and the outcry against his government, he feels it is important that the men who have instigated this bloodshed are found guilty of a major crime and punished accordingly. Yes, before the week is out he will announce the establishment of a Goldfields Commission of Enquiry to investigate the events on the Eureka and the management of the Victorian goldfields in general, and he will also gladly accept the resignation of John Foster as Colonial Secretary, but he is never in any doubt - at least not publicly - where the blame lies. It lies with the diggers, most particularly the ‘foreigners … found amongst the most active’.86
As to the authorities at Ballarat, it has not taken them long to realise that, while they have most of the ringleaders and troublemakers, there are three key ones who are missing: Vern, Lalor and Black. (The authorities don’t appear to know there are two Blacks who have been heavily involved, including Lalor’s Secretary of War, but George Black is the one they are after.) At least there is some good news: it is soon reported that, ‘Lawler the chief is dead’,87 though this is as yet unconfirmed.
On this afternoon, Assistant Military Secretary William Wallace of the Grenadier Guards writes to the Colonial Secretary in Melbourne, informing him, ‘The man Vern is said to be the mainspring of this discontent; and Sir Robert Nickle having received information that he was located near Buninyong with three hundred men, his company of picked Riflemen, sent a mounted force yesterday; but he had left that, the day before.’88
Inspector Gordon Evans, meanwhile, writes to the Chief Commissioner of Police, Charles MacMahon, on the same day, saying, ‘Lawler and Black who are known to be two of the principal ringleaders are not yet arrested. I have sent out men in disguise to all parts of the District and I hope soon to be able to arrest them.’89
It is no time to be a one-armed bandit in Ballarat, and Lalor continues to lie low. As to George Black, he has long ago made good his escape and is now heading for Melbourne, while Alfred Black seems to have disappeared.
Saturday, 9 December, Castlemaine agitates
It has been going on all week. Word spreads all over the diggings: a massacre at Eureka. The Redcoats killed dozens of them and threw the rest into the lockup! Meetings were held and resolutions passed as the diggers expressed their solidarity with their brothers on Ballarat and their anger at the authorities who did this.
And yet there is also something beyond the anger and solidarity - there is a desire to continue the political fight that the diggers of Eureka died for, a desire to show that the government might have won the week before with bullets and bayonets, but the fight for tomorrow goes on. And on this day at Castlemaine it has all come together. No fewer than 20,000 diggers gather to hear the likes of prominent Chartist William Dixon Campbell Denovan give a horrific account of the ‘massacre’ and exhort that, in regard to those who died, ‘Might their names descend to posterity among the heroes of Australia!’90
Together, the diggers roar their unanimous endorsement for this and other motions that had been passed at Bendigo the week before, including: ‘That, as all men are born free and equal, this meeting demands the right to a voice in the framing and making of the laws which they are called upon to obey, [and] … will not accept as a gift that which is their inherent right … will have nothing short of their full and fair share in the representation of the
country.’91
Indeed, all the resolutions are received with enormous cheering - most particularly including the one which states ‘that the present pernicious land system should, without delay, be abrogated’92 - until they get to the last one, for which the diggers remove their hats and bow their heads.
‘That this meeting from their very souls sympathise with the true men of the people who are unjustly imprisoned for taking part in the late outbreak and also desire to publicly express their esteem for the memory of the brave men who have fallen in battle, and that to [show] their respect every digger and their friends do wear tomorrow (Sunday) a band of black crepe on his hat and in their public and private devotions remember the widows and orphans of the dead warriors.’93
Sunday afternoon, 10-11 December 1854, down in the dumps in the Camp lockup
In the cells, Timothy Hayes is struggling. He is a man of rather aristocratic bearing, with clothes well above the cut of the average digger, so the comedown of being in the lockup with common criminals - for the usual run-of-the mill murderers and the like are also in there with the Eureka prisoners - has been a far greater fall for him than for others. He misses his wife and children terribly, and his discomfort has been compounded by the fact that his plump body is now covered in maddening lice.
Has Hayes been brought low enough?
One of the guards thinks not and decides that it is henceforth to be the job of Hayes to daily empty the slops bucket in which the men void themselves. Hayes agrees to do it once, but that is enough. Yes, he has been brought low, but decidedly not that low. The guard is infuriated, but given that Hayes is already in gaol, there is not a whole lot more that he can do, so the prisoner is allowed to record a rare win.
Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution Page 54