Murder at Myall Creek

by Mark Tedeschi

  By the mid-1840s, it had become apparent that the education system in New South Wales was seriously deficient. A Select Committee of the Legislative Council found in 1844 that more than half of the 25 600 children in the colony were receiving no education at all. Within two weeks of Broughton’s departure and his replacement on the Executive Council by Plunkett, a significant grant of £2000 was made to establish the beginning of a national school system. As the religious authorities of the colony still jealously protected their right to their own denominational schools funded at public expense, the solution that Plunkett devised was a dual education system modelled on the Irish one that had been introduced so successfully many years earlier. In this new system, the denominational schools would continue to receive government support, but a public system, similar to the Irish National Schools, would be funded alongside them. Plunkett was convinced that such a scheme had inherent advantages that would allow families to make their own choices for the education of their children. The churches were firmly opposed to a dual system, perceiving (rightly in the long term) that a public system alongside their own would drain students, funding and resources from their sector.

  It was John Plunkett who drafted the National Education Board Act, which became law in New South Wales in 1848. Governor FitzRoy asked Plunkett to become the Chairman of the new National Education Board, which Plunkett accepted with relish. He was joined on the Board by physician, politician, explorer, pastoralist, and philanthropist, Charles Nicholson1 and by scholar and naturalist, William Sharp Macleay.2 The Board faced a huge undertaking to set up a public education system. While the denominational schools had well-established administrative structures, buildings, teachers and curricula, the new Board had the job of establishing all these aspects from the bottom up. That makes it all the more remarkable that the members of the Board served without any financial reward. It is also noteworthy that Plunkett was able to serve as Chairman while maintaining his busy roles as Attorney General and member of the Executive Council.

  At the time, there was no facility in the colony for the education and training of teachers, so Plunkett and his Board set up a new model school for the practical training of teachers in what had formerly been the military hospital at Fort Street in The Rocks area of Sydney.3 The overwhelming success of the Board and the wide acceptance of its school system by the community at large can be gleaned from the fact that, by 1850, just three years after commencing, it had established forty-three schools and was in the process of creating another fifty-two.4 Plunkett served as Chairman of the Board for ten years. On his retirement, his fellow Board members noted the ‘untiring zeal and assiduity with which he sacrificed, year after year, the scanty leisure of a laborious public life to this self-imposed and gratuitous labour of love’.5

  In the meantime, the religious hierarchies controlling the denominational schools felt under serious threat. One of the most vociferous critics was Plunkett’s friend and co-religionist, Archdeacon John McEncroe, who by now was the Director of Catholic Education in the colony. Plunkett was viewed by many of his fellow Catholics as having contributed little or nothing to advancing the interests of their church. Plunkett had always been careful to maintain the appearance and the reality of absolute impartiality in the performance of his public duties, and so the impression of his church leaders that he had not done anything special for them was quite accurate. What he had done, however, was to achieve a situation in which Catholics – and people of most other religions – were treated equally to the adherents of the dominant Anglican religion. The principal method of achieving this was to require public institutions to adopt non-discriminatory policies and practices. In a sense, what Plunkett introduced was an early version of the philosophy behind our present-day anti-discrimination laws.

  * * *

  Not content merely to establish a system of public primary and secondary schools, John Plunkett was one of those who were instrumental in establishing Australia’s first tertiary educational institution – the University of Sydney. In 1849, William Charles Wentworth proposed in the Legislative Council the creation of the colony’s first university; the motion was seconded by John Plunkett. Despite the fact that Wentworth was one of the wealthiest landowners in the colony and an anti-establishment figure who frequently attacked state officials, including John Plunkett, the two of them held many significant views in common, and The Australian newspaper, of which Wentworth was the founder and editor, had been supportive of many of Plunkett’s reforms. Wentworth’s mother had been a convict, and his rejection by the exclusives because of this had caused him to become a champion of the emancipists. Even nine years after the end of transportation in New South Wales, the social and political divisions between the exclusives and the emancipists endured. This division had been Wentworth’s overriding concern during his many years of active politics in the colony. As one of the colony’s leading political figures since the 1820s, and through his role as the editor of The Australian, Wentworth advocated for representative government, freedom of the press, trial by jury and the rights of emancipists. Despite his retrograde views on Aboriginal people giving evidence, he frequently spoke out against religious bigotry. On the question of a public university for the colony, Wentworth and Plunkett were united. Together, they drafted the Act of Incorporation of the new university. In accordance with the instructions they received from the Legislative Council, they created the legal framework for a university with no religious affiliation and one that did not require any religious test for entrance. They were both intent on avoiding the kind of discrimination that for centuries had kept universities in Great Britain and Ireland out of reach of non-Anglicans.

  The joint motion for the establishment of the university hit a serious hurdle when one of the names on the list of proposed Senators of the new institution was the prominent surgeon, politician and philanthropist Dr William Bland. The opposition to Dr Bland derived from the fact that he was an ex-convict – even though he had contributed enormously to the colony since being pardoned thirty-five years earlier. This opposition was diametrically opposed to Plunkett’s views on the rights of emancipists – that they should have equality with those who had never been convicts. However, there were sufficient numbers of exclusives on the Council to ensure that Dr Bland’s name was removed from the list.

  The University of Sydney Act was passed on 24 September 1850, and received the Governor’s assent on 1 October, making it the first university in the British Empire outside the United Kingdom. John Plunkett was one of the fifteen people who became inaugural members of the University Senate. The University opened its doors in 1852 in the grounds of what is now Sydney Grammar School in College Street.

  Within a year of the incorporation of the university, an issue arose that caused Wentworth and Plunkett great distress and illustrated only too clearly that there were still residual supporters of religious discrimination in the colony. In Plunkett’s absence, due to his other arduous duties, the Senate voted in favour of a directive that appointments of academic staff should be restricted to distinguished candidates from either Oxford or Cambridge universities. At that time, those two pre-eminent English universities still did not allow attendance by Catholics, so the directive was in clear breach of the non-denominational status of Sydney University. In July 1851, Plunkett proposed in the Senate that candidates be considered from all the major universities in Great Britain or Ireland. His motion was rejected. Once again, John Plunkett had demonstrated his enlightened, anti-discriminatory views, and once again he had been thwarted.

  In the first few years of the university, student enrolments were low. By the end of 1852, only thirty-eight students were actively attending classes. In 1853 there were sixty-five and in 1854 the number dropped to forty-seven. The Head of Classics, Professor John Woolley, expressed concern at the poor quality of many of the students, saying that he sometimes found it necessary to engage in rudimentary teaching before any genuine university work could be done. This underl
ined the need for a good grammar school to educate students – males only – to a level that would make them eligible to enter the university. As a result, another Select Committee was established by the Legislative Council in 1854,6 and John Plunkett was one of its members. Later that year, the Committee recommended the establishment of a grammar school for boys with financial support from the government. The result was the passage in 1854 of the Sydney Grammar School Act. True to the philosophy of non-denominational, non-discriminatory education introduced by Plunkett years earlier, the Act stated that:

  It is deemed expedient for the better advancement of religion and morality and the promotion of useful knowledge to establish in Sydney a public school for conferring on all classes and denominations of Her Majesty’s subjects resident in the Colony of New South Wales without any distinction whatsoever the advantages of a regular and liberal course of education.

  The school opened its doors on 3 August 1857 in the College Street building that had previously been occupied by the University of Sydney. As Attorney General, John Plunkett was one of the first ‘ex officio’ trustees.7 Under the leadership of the first headmaster, William Stephens, enrolments quickly grew and by 1859 they had reached 210. Unusually for the times, William Stephens had a kindly relationship with his students and rejected all forms of corporal punishment, banning the cane and outlawing the ‘fagging’ system so prevalent in the English great public schools (which were really private schools).8 Fagging entailed younger boys acting as servants to more senior boys, who were given the right to discipline their charges, taking that duty away from the house-master who ran the dormitory. The system frequently resulted in physical and sexual abuse of the younger boys. William Stephens’ values were too far ahead of his time, and a revolt by some of his staff led to an enquiry by the school’s trustees and his unfortunate, abrupt departure.

  On 27 February 1858, the University of Sydney received a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria, giving degrees conferred by the university rank and recognition equal to those of universities in the United Kingdom.9 In 1859, the university moved to its current site at Camperdown. In 1865 John Plunkett was appointed as the fourth vice-chancellor of the university – a position he held until 1867.10

  * * *

  John Plunkett’s efforts to remove all religious discrimination from major public institutions extended to one operated by members of his own faith – St Vincent’s Hospital. Bishop Polding, the head of the Catholic Church in Australia, had requested the leader and founder of the Sisters of Charity, Mother Mary Aikenhead, who had established the Order in Dublin in 1815, to send a group of her Sisters to the colony to minister to the female convicts. As a result, five of the Sisters arrived in Sydney on the last day of 1838, to be met at the wharf by John Plunkett. They were the first nuns to enter the colony and attracted much attention on their arrival. They immediately set to work looking after the practical and spiritual needs of more than 800 female convicts at the Female Factory at Parramatta. The work of the Sisters brought instant improvement, for Bishop Polding wrote to Ireland in March 1839 that, ‘within three weeks, an almost miraculous change had taken place in a gaol that had seemed full of hopeless misery, resentment and despair’. Plunkett was one of their constant supporters, both financially and practically. At one stage, the Sisters lived in his home. Maria Plunkett became very involved in their work and it became an important part of her life.

  In 1855, John Plunkett helped the Sisters to acquire Tarmons, their first convent, situated in Victoria Street, Potts Point, and he later organised a public appeal to convert that property into their first hospital in Australia.11 Those who responded to the appeal included residents from all sections of the community. In 1857, the Sisters opened St Vincent’s Hospital as a free hospital with twenty-two beds. The Sisters did not confine their work to Catholics, but provided treatment to people of all faiths, without attempting to proselytise. A similar policy had applied for many years at the corresponding hospital in Dublin, set up by Mother Mary Aikenhead. Plunkett became St Vincent’s Hospital’s treasurer and one of its three trustees. As treasurer, he consistently used his position to insist on the non-denominational character of the hospital. St Vincent’s epitomised Plunkett’s view that public institutions – even those run by religious orders – should adhere strictly to non-discriminatory policies and practices, and offer services to all, irrespective of religion, status or wealth.

  Plunkett’s support for St Vincent’s came into serious question in May 1859 when the ‘Bibles incident’ rocked the hospital. On 16 May 1859, a visiting Catholic curate from the Sacred Heart Presbytery on Darlinghurst Hill, Father Patrick Kenyon, took it upon himself to remove several Protestant Bibles12 he had found in the female ward of St Vincent’s Hospital. Father Kenyon informed one of the Sisters, Mary De Lacy, that ‘it was not lawful for her and her sisters to supply these books and that if (he) should find they continued to do so (he) would feel obliged to bring the matter under the notice of the Archbishop’. Sister De Lacy brought the matter to the attention of Dr James Robertson, the hospital’s Protestant medical doctor, who complained to Bishop Polding. The Bishop instructed the hospital that the Bibles were to be immediately placed back in the ward,13 and Sister De Lacy was asked ‘to inform Mr Kenyon, on his next visit to the Hospital, that he must not interfere in the management of the Hospital, that of course he could visit the Sick &c., but that he was in no ways to interfere in other matters, and that the books in question were not again to be removed from the ward’.

  Further action ensued behind the scenes. Two days later, on 18 May, Dr Robertson submitted his resignation to Bishop Polding and on 26 May, Sister De Lacy also announced her resignation. Meanwhile, Father Kenyon was openly penitent for his actions. In a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald published on 7 June 1859, he stated:

  All patients in the hospital, admitted into it irrespectively of their faith, and solely because they were sick and poor, might have, by all means their own books to use, might have their own ministers sent for at their request, to be their comforting friends … If I erred in thinking those books were theirs [the Sister’s], I am sorry for it, as men are sorry for an accident. I am more sorry for it, because of the great sorrow and misery that have grown up alongside of my act.

  When John Plunkett heard about the removal of the Bibles, he was incensed at this breach of the hospital’s non-discriminatory policy towards patients of other religions and horrified at the resignation of two stalwarts of the hospital who had contributed so much. He precipitously and publicly resigned his position as both treasurer and trustee, claiming that the incident had amounted to a breach of trust with the many donors to the hospital of other faiths. In what was an extraordinary overreaction, he even suggested that the hospital should be closed.14 His resignation can only be categorised as rash and ill considered. Perhaps he had been affected by the departure earlier that year of one of his few friends, Roger Therry, to Ireland. Perhaps he was troubled by the spectre of an election for the Legislative Assembly that was looming two weeks later. The incident irrevocably affected the relationship between Plunkett and Archbishop Polding, who wrote that it was ‘one of the most convincing instances of the folly of lay persons however good mixing in Church matters’.15 Of Plunkett’s role, he wrote:

  He seems to consider that he may say and do whatever he deems right, but that the Church or Churchmen may not resent statements made publicly by him and which are injurious to religion or might be if not noticed. He has lost much of that he so much loves, popularity – by his interference about St Vincent’s and the very haughty position he has assumed in reference to all parties.16

  In fact, the ‘Bible incident’ was but one of the triggers that led to the resignations of Dr Robertson and Sister De Lacy, as there had been earlier tensions between Archbishop Polding and these two senior personnel at the hospital. Religious politics had pitted the Benedictine nuns, who were answerable to Polding, against the Sisters of Charity, who we
re fiercely independent Ignatians. There had also been some antipathy from the Archbishop towards Dr Robertson, which may have had something to do with a certain Miss Gray, who was employed at the hospital and was a novitiate of the Vincentians – an order for women within the Catholic Church that allows them to make annual vows throughout their lives, rather than perpetual vows binding for life. Miss Gray’s duties at the hospital were to assist Dr Robertson in the dispensary each day, and at his instruction to make up the prescriptions and generally attend to his needs. It became the view of her supervising Sister that Miss Gray began to ‘neglect or omit her own spiritual duties under the pretext of duties in the hospital’. Ultimately, Miss Gray abandoned her calling and was ‘taken by Dr Robertson to his own house, paraded through Sydney in his carriage and accompanied him to the Protestant Church’.17 Such a defection was not easily forgiven or forgotten.