Gangland Robbers

by James Morton

  Bradshaw then became involved in horse stealing, working with John Mulholland, known as Flash (or Lovely, because of his extreme ugliness) Riley. (Lovely Riley should not be confused with John Finnerty, or John Burns, known as ‘Riley the Bushranger’, who, in 1874, robbed the Warialda mail coach and was finally released from prison in 1900. His career lasted from the month following Ned Kelly’s execution until the day the Indigenous Governor brothers began their murderous spree near Gilgandra in 1901.)

  In May 1880 Bradshaw and Riley held up the Commercial Bank in Quirindi, an event described as ‘unsurpassed by any of the exploits of the notorious and bloodthirsty Kelly gang’. Richard Allen, the manager, had gone to the stables behind the bank to rug up his horse when he was bailed up by two men who took him to the bank, where his wife was being held, and demanded the keys to the safe. Allen told them the local chemist had them, but when the robbers threatened to blow the safe, he handed over what he said was a duplicate. Even though he managed to hide some of the money and securities in what was called the treasury drawer, they took £600 in notes and gold, and demanded the record of the numbers of the notes—in fact there was a duplicate. They also demanded food and whisky, and when they had finished, told Allen that the premises would be watched during the night and he would be shot if he put his head outside.

  Allen had asked if he could keep his watch and the men had said their target was not him but the bank. It was more likely that they thought they might be identified if they were found with it. The robbers were masked but Allen claimed he could tell that one of them had a scar on his nose and cheek, and an unusual accent.

  After the robbery, Bradshaw had initially left the area, and returned after getting married, only to be arrested on 4 October at the Namoi River. On 15 November Bradshaw and Riley were found guilty of the robbery. Their arrests had come in a roundabout way, down to a dobber de luxe in the form of the cockney Joseph Goodson, described as a man with protruding grey eyes that looked like marbles and almost flashed when he became excited. He had been involved in a robbery at Cobar in central New South Wales, during its race meeting, when £375 was taken in gold, silver and cheques from a local store. The manager put up a £50 reward and 20 per cent of the value of the cheques. Goodson dobbed in his mates and, while he was in protective custody at the police station, took the opportunity to dob in Bradshaw and Riley as well.

  His version of events was that there had originally been four men for the bank job. They had drawn lots as to who should go into the Quirindi bank: one and two would go in, three would mind the horses and four would keep a lookout on the front door. Goodson drew number four but the others wanted him to go into the bank and, as a result, he and his offsider pulled out of the job and went to Cobar. Bradshaw and Riley received twelve years working on the roads, and Goodson was given £200 as a reward.

  Riley had buried his share of the proceeds in the area, and claimed that when he was released after serving eight years of the twelve-year sentence, he returned and dug it up; literally living, for some time, the life of Riley. By 1921, however, he was almost destitute and served a two-month sentence when he was unable to pay a fine. Bradshaw returned to his wife, but was found guilty of stealing from registered mail bags and went back to prison. After his final release, he made a living lecturing about his exploits and selling the books he had written—Highway Robbery Under Arms, and The True History of the Australian Bushrangers—for sixpence each in the Sydney Domain, and at various hotels and race meetings. In 1930 he successfully sued the Daily Guardian for saying he had been lashed while in prison—though many people would have thought that could only add to his reputation.

  When he died, in January 1937, the Catholic Freeman’s Journal was enchanted by the circumstances:

  The facts of human destiny never cease to provide instances of the ultimate triumph of early Catholic training, however far the individual may stray during his lifetime. That Jack Bradshaw, self-styled ‘Last of the Bushrangers’, should, after his desperate and dangerous career, end his days in the seclusion of Mount St. Joseph, Randwick, cared for by the gentle Little Sisters of the Poor, is an overwhelming proof of this assertion. At the time of his death, Bradshaw was in his 91st year.

  In 1880 he robbed the bank at Quirindi with an accomplice named Riley, and served a term of imprisonment for this offence. He was on friendly terms with the Kelly gang and knew Ben Hall and Thunderbolt.

  Yet the events of his reckless, lawless days must have seemed very far from him in the months before his death. The Little Sisters speak of him as having possessed an extremely gentle disposition and stated that he was ‘ever very grateful for anything that was done for him’. He received Holy Communion frequently during his sojourn at Mount St. Joseph, and died happily on January 12, having made his peace with his Maker, and received the Last Sacraments from Rev. Father F. Kenny,

  Bradshaw was outlived by James Kenniff from New South Wales. James and his brother Patrick were cattle duffers and horse stealers. They resettled in Queensland, where they raced horses and lived by bush work and theft. Shortly after Easter 1902, the bodies of Constable George Doyle of the Upper Warrego station and Albert Christian Dahlke, the manager of Carnavon station, who had set out with a tracker to arrest them, were found in Lethbridge’s Pocket.

  On the morning of Sunday 30 March 1902, a police party, including Doyle and Dahlke, had surprised the Kenniffs, who were camping at Lethbridge’s Pocket, and took James into custody, but Patrick managed to escape. Sam Johnson was sent to collect the police packhorses, so they could start in pursuit of him. However, on his return, there was no sign of Doyle and Dahlke, and the Kenniffs chased him as he fled for help. A manhunt began and the brothers were arrested, south of Mitchell, in 23 June that year.

  At the murder trial in Brisbane, both were convicted and sentenced to death. Patrick was hanged on 12 January 1903. His grave in South Brisbane Cemetery is the only one of those hanged at Boggo Road, which is marked with an individual plaque. There was some doubt over James’s guilt and, following an unsuccessful appeal, he was reprieved and released after serving twelve years. Suffering from cancer, he died in October 1940.

  It is particularly difficult to place women bushrangers in the pantheon. There seem to be only three, and each of them is surrounded by myth and mystery. The earliest would be ‘Black’ Mary Cockerill, who rode with Michael Howe in Tasmania until he was shot and killed in 1818, but not before he had shot her, accidentally or not, and she had given what information about him she could to the authorities. Quite what part, if any, she took in his predations is not clear.

  The second was Mary Ann Bugg, or Yellilong, who, in 1860, met ticket-of-leave man and horse thief Fred Ward, who went under the more imposing soubriquet of Captain Thunderbolt. Exactly how involved she was in his criminal activities is again difficult to establish. Many accounts claim she helped him by swimming to Cockatoo Island with a file, so that Thunderbolt could cut his chains in a rare escape from the island, but other evidence indicates she was miles away at the time.

  The third does seem, at the very least, to have been out and about as a poddy-dodger. From the age of eight, Elizabeth Jessie Hickman, born in 1890 at Burraga, was involved in the circus, joining James Martini in Martini’s Buckjumping Show. He was killed in 1907, and for the next three years she was ringmaster and promoter of the circus, until it was sold in 1910.

  She then met and married Benjamin Walter Hickman, and had a son with him in 1913. He joined the Australian Imperial Force and, during his absence, she turned to crime, serving short sentences for theft, including one for cattle stealing. Benjamin Hickman returned after World War I but they separated in 1924. She did not appear at the hearing when, with Hickman complaining that all she wanted to do was live in the country, they were divorced in October 1928.

  Perhaps by then she had had enough of court cases because in April of that year she had been charged in Rylstone, New South Wales, with stealing half a dozen cattle, which she had dri
ven 50 miles to her house at Stoney Pinch where she was living with a man named Brown. The police had chained her to a fence while they rounded up the animals. She claimed they must have strayed on to her property, and was acquitted at the end of August.

  The Burial, a novel by Courtney Collins, contains a highly romanticised version of her life, which has Hickman killing an abusive third husband and burying him in the bush, then running a gang of cattle thieves. For the last eight years of her life, she lived in Widden Valley. She died in 1936 from a brain tumour and is buried at Sandgate Cemetery in Newcastle. If Hickman can be counted as a bushranger, she must have been the last of the female bushrangers, and perhaps even the last bushranger of them all.

  Early Days

  2

  By the 1880s, urban crime was more prevalent than bushranging. In the early morning of 3 February 1894 three visiting Victorian burglars, members of the variously called Bookmakers’ Gang or Tobacco Gang (because of its bail-ups of bookmakers on their way home from the races, and its thefts of tobacco), tried to blow the safe at the Union Steamship Company near Circular Quay in Sydney. They had not realised it had an alarm, and when it sounded, they ran out into Bridge Street, where they met and laid out two police officers, Senior Constable McCourt and Constable Lyons, with iron bars.

  Not knowing the layout of the area, the three men then turned into Phillip Street, where they almost literally ran into the arms of officers from the nearby Water Street Police Station. They knocked down Constable Alford. As they headed for the Domain, they were halted by Constable Frederick Bowden, who they also knocked down, fracturing his skull.

  The police lost one of the men in the Domain. The two who were caught and charged with attempted murder were ‘Buck’ Montgomery, better known as Millidge, and the safebreaker ‘Curly’ Williams, aka Carroll, who had met in prison. Both were convicted and sentenced to death, with Williams receiving a recommendation of mercy from the jury. Their lawyer, Richard Meager, set up a petition for a reprieve for both men, which was signed by more than 25 000 people, including Constable Bowden, and backed by Cardinal Moran. There were several deputations to the premier, Sir George Dibbs, who demanded ‘New Facts’, of which there were none. On the eve of their execution, there was a mass meeting and procession calling for reprieves.

  As for the men, they were allowed to meet each other after Williams had earlier seen his wife and two children, a scene described by Truth in a manner worthy of the death of Little Nell:

  A wife kissing her husband full in the vigour of life, knowing that in the morning the blood which coursed his veins at the command of nature would be stopped at the instance of law and order. His children bade him farewell little reeking that the voice of the father which said ‘Good-bye’ would be silent at the bidding of the hangman.

  The next morning, all went well for a time, with Williams singing, ‘There is a fountain filled with blood’, until they reached the scaffold, where Millidge had intended to make a statement regarding his ‘Conflict’ with the police. He was dissuaded from doing so by the chaplain, who pointed out that Williams would probably not be able to bear the strain. Out of consideration for his mate, Millidge decided not to speak.

  It had been arranged that Williams should be hanged with a long rope and Millidge with a short one but, unfortunately, the hangman, ‘Nosey’ Bob Howard, somehow reversed their positions. Millidge’s neck was broken and he died instantaneously, but Williams, who fainted when the hood was being put on him, was strangled to death. Neither relatives nor friends claimed their bodies, and they were buried in paupers’ graves in Rookwood Cemetery.

  But who were these men? Millidge, who started his criminal career stealing pigeons, learned much of his craft from his time in prison with some of the foremost Victorian criminals of the day, such as the confidence trickster Herbert Valentine, known as Lady Armstrong, and Charles Kent, known as Velvet Ned, one of England’s best jewel thieves, who had been transported to Australia. Another tutor was Billy Barnes, who went on to kill the litigious semi-recluse Joseph Bragge Slack.

  Millidge then joined a gang of coiners, and in 1884 was the leading light in a robbery of around £2000 in sovereigns and £1 notes from Simpsons Road, Box Hill, Melbourne, where the bank used a shop as a local agency. Millidge and his mates George Fortune and Edward Alcock, known as Carrey, hid in the shop, waiting for the manager to bring money from the head office.

  They were dobbed in by a fellow criminal, William ‘Gunny’ Hughes, once a leader of the Bourke Street Rats but at that point seriously on the slide. Millidge saw him outside the Early Bird Hotel in Johnston Street and gave him some money from the proceeds. Demonstrating that no good deed goes unpunished, Hughes went to the police.

  Millidge and his co-accused, Tiger McMahon (who was on the raid as well), George Fortune and Edward Alcock, were not helped by the confession of George Raingill, also known as Shaw. He turned Queen’s Evidence, possibly after being threatened with the lash by an Inspector Kennedy. Millidge had four previous convictions and, with the others, was sentenced to six years.

  After his release, during the summer of 1888 Millidge carried out a series of single-handed burglaries—several involving safebreaking—in the suburbs of Fitzroy and Collingwood. It’s been said that a master carriage builder, who was known to hold considerable sums of money, was advised to be especially careful. ‘I can protect myself,’ he said confidently. ‘My factory has a gallery round it, like a theatre. I sleep in that gallery with a loaded Martini at my side. The safe is on the ground floor opposite, and I keep a jet burning on it all night. I’ve got no scruples about dealing with burglars. I’m a light sleeper, and at the first sound I’ll send a bullet through his heart.’ Rashly, the carriage builder repeated his methods of dealing with burglars to all and sundry, and this boast reached the ears of Millidge, who was always open to a challenge. One morning, the coach builder awoke at the usual time. The safe door was swinging open, and the rifle had disappeared from his bedside.

  Towards the end of 1888 Millidge carried out what was described as ‘the most wonderful piece of criminal organisation that Australia has seen in the last half-century’. This was the formation of the famous Tobacco Gang, whose depredations proved so profitable that, according to the estimates of Melbourne detectives, Millidge’s own share amounted to more than £1000 a year for three years. He was a stylish but not a flash dresser, and always looked like a gentleman. His one weakness was diamonds. He was said to love them so much, he would even pay for them. The Tobacco Gang profits allowed him to do so, and during this period he was known as ‘Diamond George’. He also set up and ran a team for robbing bookmakers on their way home from the races—that is, until the beginning of February 1894 and his visit to Sydney.

  And the third man who tried to blow the safe at the Union Steamship Company and who got away in the Domain? He was an Englishman, known as Henry Gilmour or Edward Smith, as well as Seymour, Palmer and George Sweeny, born in 1856. In 1882 he had received three years for housebreaking, and in 1890 three years for bank robbery. After the abortive Union Steamship robbery, he sailed from Newcastle on a wool ship to Callao in Peru. He was thought to have then made his way via America to London, but nothing was heard of him in Australia for nearly ten years.

  He did reach London because, on 19 November 1894 at the Old Bailey, he received seven years for two housebreakings carried out with an offsider, James Ward. In April 1901, now using the name Gilmour, he was arrested in 39-year-old Louisa Kolb’s flat, in the Avenue Henri Martin, Passy, a smart suburb of Paris. Around 3 a.m. Mlle Kolb, a one-time actress at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, had woken while he was trying to rob her and she was badly beaten in the struggle that followed. In all, she received forty-three wounds. The concierge heard her screams and ran to get the police. When they arrived, they found Gilmour in another room, bandaging his hand. During the scuffle, he had severed an artery in his wrist.

  He was identified not through the new science of fingerprinting but t
hrough the almost outdated Bertillonage system, which measured a criminal’s features. He also had a hat with the name of a London hatter, H.M. Stanley of Eastcheap, which helped in his identification. He appeared for trial at the cour d’assises in Paris in late November, described as small, hard faced and with a small stiff moustache, dressed in a black frock coat and a blue cravat. The jury did not find any mitigating circumstances and there were reports in the Australian newspapers that he had been guillotined. In fact, in December that year he received a sentence of penal servitude for life, which meant transportation to French Guiana.

  After Millidge’s execution, captaincy of the team, so to speak, passed to Billy O’Neill, but he and his colleagues did not last long on the outside. On 25 January 1895 he, along with John Mulligan, Alfred Marks and William Carrah, went on trial, charged with stealing tobacco on Melbourne Cup Day the previous year. Against them in the witness box was a former gang member, Robert Colquhoun, charged with a separate offence of stealing a horse. It seems that when none of the others would give him an alibi for that, he turned Queen’s Evidence. Mulligan and Carrah were acquitted, Marks was convicted of receiving, and O’Neill had pleaded guilty, as had Colquhoun.

  Very sensibly, O’Neill, who had been convicted nine times in the previous fifteen years, wrote to the judge, saying he wanted to become a decent member of society. However, his Lordship would have none of it:

  Looking at your past life, no amendment is to be expected in the future. Society must be protected from rascalities of this kind.