Hell's Gates

by Paul Collins

  Before the learned judge that June morning were two accused. The first to come before the bench was a free man, William Pilinger, who was arraigned on the charge of having stolen a bull and an ox on 15 August 1823.The animals belonged to the wealthy capitalist and often absentee landlord Edward Lord, Esquire, and the animals were valued at £10. Pilinger was well represented by Mr Solicitor Ross who, in an acute cross-examination, soon bamboozled the only witness, the stock-keeper Thomas Burrell. The jury felt that the evidence was insufficient to establish Pilinger’s guilt and had no hesitation in acquitting him.

  The second accused man had no such accomplished defence attorney. In fact, he had no one at all to defend him and the case was a lot more serious than stealing a bull and an ox. Alexander Pearce ‘was arraigned for the murder of a fellow-prisoner named Thomas Cox, at or near the King’s River in the month of November last’. When asked what he pleaded, Pearce defiantly said,‘Not guilty’. It was the only plea he could make if he wanted to save his life. But it was inconsistent with the admissions that he had already made to Cuthbertson.

  The reporter for the Hobart Town Gazette was present in the courtroom for the whole of Peace’s brief trial, and he did not hesitate to make his feelings about Convict No. 102 known to the Gazette’s readers: ‘The circumstances which were understood to have accompanied the above crime had long been considered with extreme horror. Report had associated the prisoner with cannibals; and recalling as we did, the vampire legends of modern Greece, we confess, that on this occasion, our eyes glanced in fearfulness at the being who stood before a retributive Judge, laden with the weight of human blood, and believed to have banqueted on human flesh’ (his italics). In other words, there was no presumption of innocence in the small community of Hobart Town, and by now everyone knew about Pearce’s admissions to Bobby Knopwood concerning the first escape.

  Thomas Wells’s ‘exclusive’ story was dead in the water in Van Diemen’s Land.The respectable people of Hobart Town were horrified because it was presumed that Europeans could not possibly be guilty of such cannibalistic deeds. You might occasionally expect to encounter man-eating among the non-white races, although the especially well informed were no doubt not surprised that if any European did indulge in such a practice it would be an Irishman! Apparently they had forgotten the Englishman Robert Greenhill and the Scotsman John Mather.

  The prosecutor in the Pearce case was the newly appointed 38-year-old Colonial Attorney-General, Joseph Tice Gellibrand. Gellibrand himself was to become lost in the bush near Melbourne in 1837, and was almost certainly killed by Aborigines close to the present city of Geelong. His body was eventually found and buried in Sydney Town.

  Both judge and prosecutor were scrupulously anxious to quash all talk of man-eaters and to focus the prosecution case on the explicit charge that Pearce faced: the murder of Cox.The jury were instructed by His Majesty’s Attorney-General to achieve the impossible: they were asked ‘to dismiss from their minds all previous impressions against the prisoner’ and ‘however justly their hearts must execrate the fell enormities imputed to him, they should duteously judge him not by rumours – but by indubitable evidence’. Everyone had heard about the eight white cannibal escapees of Macquarie Harbour and, while the authorities now believed Pearce’s tale to Knopwood about all that had happened during the first escape, a charge of murder requires a body for it to stick, and Cox’s remains were the only evidence the authorities had. Hence Pearce was not charged with the deaths of his companions on the first escape; this was supposed to play no part in the trial at all. Of course, if Pearce had been thinking straight he would have disposed of Cox’s remains before surrendering, which would have been easy enough to do, and then made up a story to cover the young man’s disappearance. Since there was no body he might have even escaped the murder charge altogether. However, given his personality, there is no doubt that he would have provided the authorities of Van Diemen’s Land with the opportunity to get him on some charge in the end. Perhaps in his heart of hearts he really wanted to die.

  Prosecutor Gellibrand detailed Pearce’s confessions for judge and jury, firstly to ‘the much-lamented Lieutenant Cuthbertson’, and secondly his admissions under examination by the Reverend Robert Knopwood. His Majesty’s Attorney admitted that these confessions, ‘although in some respects inconsistent’, would ‘when coupled with all the facts, merit the most serious attention’. Gellibrand then turned to the known facts about the Pearce–Cox escape. He told his rapt audience that having absconded from the work gang at Kelly’s Basin, they wandered about for eight days, hiding in the rainforest before arriving at King River on the Sunday evening. In a curiously telegrammatic fashion, the Hobart Town Gazette summarised Gellibrand’s description of what happened after that: ‘A quarrel then arose because the deceased could not swim, and after the prisoner had struck him on the head three times with his axe, the deceased seeing him about to go away . . . said, in a faint voice, “For mercy’s sake come back and put me out of my misery!” Prisoner then struck him a fourth blow, which immediately caused death’. Pearce then proceeded to butcher the body and eat parts of it. The next morning, according to Gellibrand, he set off northward, but soon became ‘so overwhelmed by the agonies of remorse’ that he resolved to return and give himself up to the authorities. Knowing what we do of Pearce it is hard to imagine his level of remorse. His motivations were more complex, but mention of ‘remorse’ satisfied the moral sensitivities of the time. Gellibrand concluded by saying that the accused publicly owned up to the murder and admitted that he was ‘willing to die for it’ on the way back to Sarah Island.

  This ‘thrilling tale of almost incredible barbarity’, as the Gazette writer called it, was confirmed by the evidence of several reliable witnesses, among them Thomas Smith, the Commandant’s coxswain, and William Evans of the Waterloo pilot-schooner, who had gone ashore to take Pearce captive. The Gazette reporter, with a plethora of commas, then summarised the rest of the evidence: ‘Many other witnesses were called, who corroborated the above depositions in every essential point; and proved, that the clothes and hat, worn by the deceased, when he absconded, were those which the prisoner wore when he was taken on board the pilot boat’. They even found a hat-cover near Cox’s body that matched the one worn by Pearce when he was captured.

  The case against the Irishman was strong. Besides openly confessing to the Sarah Island Commandant that he had killed Cox in a fit of rage, he had admitted the crime before several other reliable witnesses. His captors repeated the testimony that when he surrendered, Pearce was dressed in the murdered man’s clothes. And he knew exactly where the body was to be found and led witnesses straight to it. Thus there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about his guilt.There is no record that Pearce said anything on his own behalf.

  However, this did not stop the Chief Justice addressing the jury at ‘considerable length’ and ‘with much solemnity’ as to ‘whether or no it was fully proved that the deceased had died from blows inflicted by the prisoner? And as a quarrel had been stated to have occurred before death, was the prisoner was guilty of the crime charged, or of manslaughter?’ In other words, perhaps he was so angry he did not know what he was doing? It was a nice distinction and an important one, and it might have made the difference between life or execution for Convict No. 102. However, the jury did not have much difficulty distinguishing between murder and manslaughter in Pearce’s case. They ‘retired for a short time and found a verdict of – Guilty’ of murder.

  The guilty verdict gave Pedder an opportunity to indulge in some gratuitous comments from the bench about the horrible events that had been described in the confessions and evidence, and about the need for the miserable culprit to prepare himself to appear before the one divine tribunal where mercy could be obtained.Then, without wasting any time on reflection about the sentence, Pedder solemnly put on the black cloth sentencing-cap over his horsehair wig and passed sentence upon Pearce immediately. ‘Your sentence is that you be rem
oved from this place to the gaol, and (when the supreme authority shall appoint) thence to the place of execution to be hanged by the neck until you are dead; afterwards your body to be delivered over to the surgeons for dissection’ – or as the Criminal Record Book of the Supreme Court puts it: ‘His body [is] to be anatomized’. Apparently God was not requested to have mercy on Pearce’s soul. This was to be left up to the Catholic chaplain. Dissection was a humiliation reserved for the worst murderers and was not common, even in early nineteenth-century Van Diemen’s Land. However, in the case of the Irishman from County Monaghan, there is a curious resonance between the crime and the punishment: the body of the cannibal was to be cannibalised for science.

  After the drama of the trial, the judge, prosecuting attorney, legal officers and jury retired to lunch, and Pearce was led back to jail. The intrepid reporter from the Hobart Town Gazette gave full vent to his rhetoric in the paper of 23 July 1824:‘ We trust these awful and ignominious results of disobedience to law and humanity will act as a powerful caution; for blood must expiate blood! And the welfare of society imperatively requires, that all whose crimes are so confirmed, and systematic, as not to be redeemed by lenity, shall be pursued in vengeance, and expiated with death!’

  Now a condemned felon, Pearce began to reflect on his situation. That night he talked at length to the Keeper of the Hobart Town Jail, John Bisdee, who also acted as a chief constable and as the keeper of the local animal pound. Bisdee was a likeable, reliable and just man, and there were few escapes during his decade-long tenure as jail-keeper. He was also a successful farmer and fine-wool grower. Since Pearce had apparently had no opportunity to say anything in his own defence at his trial, he confessed to Bisdee all that had happened to him since he had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land and he asked the keeper to write it down. He obviously wanted to get his side of the story on the official record somewhere.

  Bisdee’s account of Pearce’s confession has come down to us in an article entitled ‘Horrid Cannibalism’ in a short book printed in London in 1825 with the title Tales of Today. Again this shows how interested people in the United Kingdom were in the story of antipodean cannibalism, and how right Wells had been about the possibility of selling the story to newspapers and magazines in the home country. The Bisdee ‘confession’ is brief, factual and to the point. This probably reflects Bisdee’s tidy mind rather than Pearce’s brevity. It does not tell us anything particularly new, but it has the importance of being an account in the Irishman’s own words.

  No date had been set for the execution, and Pearce was to wait another month before being hung. He was only told on Friday 16 July that he was to die the following Monday morning. Knopwood happened to be at the jail when the sheriff informed Pearce. Four other convicts – John Butler, John Thompson, Patrick Connolly and James Tierney – condemned by the Supreme Court three days after Pearce to be hung for sheep-stealing and highway robbery, were told they were to die later in the week.

  Pearce had another visitor after he had been sentenced to death – the Roman Catholic chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land, the Reverend Mr Philip Conolly. (The title ‘Mr’ was generally used in the period before diocesan priests were given the title ‘Father’, which for several centuries had applied only to priests who were members of religious orders.) Part of Conolly’s ministry, as well as that of Knopwood and Bedford, was the care of men condemned to death. Conolly was an intelligent man, devoted to his ministry, with a cynical and dry sense of humour. While most of his ministry was subsumed by his convict chaplaincy – convicts, after all, made up the majority of the population – the priest also regularly visited Launceston, George Town, Campbell Town, Ross and Longford. During his latter years, Conolly’s pioneering ministerial work was spoiled by internal strife in the Catholic community, and there was much criticism of him from the newly arrived Irish free settlers. A disagreement over church property led him to criticise the new Catholic bishop in Sydney, John Bede Polding, which in turn led to his temporary suspension from priestly functions. No such criticism came from his civil superiors. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur told Earl Bathurst that ‘The conduct of this gentleman was very favourably spoken of by my predecessor, and . . . he has always merited my approbation . . . In my opinion it would not be possible for any person to perform the duties required by his office, which in a Protestant community are often of a delicate nature, with more satisfaction to the government’.

  Conolly had come to Van Diemen’s Land in mid-April 1821 and had worked hard building up the Catholic community in both Hobart Town and Launceston. He also built good social relationships with important people in government, no doubt helped by his closeness to Knopwood. This was not mere snobbery. It was the period before Catholic Emancipation (1829) when Catholicism was still a proscribed religion and bigotry toward priests was widespread, especially among Evangelically inclined government officials. Part of his task as a chaplain to convicts and to the Catholic community was to make sure that he built bridges with those in power. Sorell had been particularly helpful to him and, like many in Hobart Town, Conolly regretted his departure. However, as the report to Bathurst showed, he would also get on well with Sir George Arthur.

  The reverend gentleman had a busy time throughout June and July 1824. Three of the other four men to be hung had Irish names, so the priest would probably have been looking after them as well as Pearce. During this period Conolly and Knopwood would have talked to each other about the most onerous of all their duties, ministering to those condemned to death, for parson and priest knew each other well. In what was a quite remarkable ‘ecumenical’ friendship, especially for its time, Knopwood and Conolly spent a lot of time together, talking, smoking a pipe, eating dinner or sharing a drink of wine or liquor. Their closeness had begun at about 1822, the year after Conolly’s arrival, and lasted until Knopwood’s death in 1838. Both men were criticised by their respective ecclesiastical superiors and members of their own churches for their intimacy, and many subsequent writers, including the distinguished historian Manning Clark, have taken the scuttlebutt of the time as true and accurate. They have been accused of being a couple of lazy boozers who failed in their pastoral duties. Knopwood, as we saw, was also maliciously labelled a ‘womaniser’, largely because of his kindness to an orphan girl whom he adopted as his ward. In a small community, the peccadilloes of parson and priest would have been eagerly seized upon and exaggerated by scandal-mongers and the rumour-mill.

  While they certainly did enjoy a few creature comforts and neither of them was a saint, these men spent almost their entire pastoral lives ministering in a brutalised and isolated penal environment, often having to deal with men and women in the most terrible circumstances. Conolly particularly spent a lot of time travelling all over the colony on horseback, often in extreme weather conditions, most of the time ministering to a jail population that showed little interest in religion. Many of the free settlers were engrossed in the pursuit of mammon. It is no wonder that Conolly and Knopwood sought some solace in each other’s company.

  Back in the jail in Hobart Town it was an important part of the priest’s duties to care especially for those condemned to death. This was not because the government was particularly concerned about the salvation of those who were to die, but because the judicial authorities wanted the hangings to take place in a way that reflected well on the righteousness of the law and the integrity of the court system. There was a ritual to be gone through, and the priest played a key role in this. It began with the religious and moral preparation for the execution.

  Pearce and Conolly both came from County Monaghan, and no doubt the priest was able to use this in building a relationship with No. 102. Conolly was about four years older than the maneater, but they had arrived in New South Wales within five months of each other in 1820, although Pearce was the first to reach Van Diemen’s Land. Also they could both speak Irish (they had grown up at a time when the language was still reasonably widely used), and conversed in their na
tive tongue. Through the language they built up a rapport. Given Pearce’s opportunistic personality, he was quick to embrace the consolations of religion when Conolly offered them to him.This is not to say that he was insincere, but simply that he was easily influenced. Catholicism provided a good sacramental preparation for death via confession and absolution, followed by Holy Communion. No doubt the priest counted Pearce as a successful penitent. At the end of 1823 Conolly wrote to tell Bishop William Poynter, the Vicar Apostolic of London, that while the behaviour of most convicts was ‘depraved’, he was bringing some to repentance. ‘There is every day some one presenting himself, full of afflictions for his misfortunes, and professing himself ready to follow any course of amendment that might be pointed out to him.’ So probably well before the Lieutenant-Governor had set the date for Pearce’s execution, Conolly would have heard his confession and given him sacramental absolution. He would have then brought him Holy Communion. Once the date for the execution had been set, the priest spent a lot of time with Pearce, praying and getting him to admit his guilt. Late in the afternoon of the day before execution Conolly read him the ‘condemned sermon’, delivered in Pearce’s cell, which would have contained an exhortation to throw himself upon the mercy of God.

  Executions were normally carried out in the precincts of the jail in Macquarie Street, but they were visible to the large crowds that gathered outside to witness the spectacle. The hanging of Pearce was a special occasion, given the notoriety of his crimes, and the authorities were always pleased when a good crowd gathered. It was seen as Conolly’s task to prepare the condemned man psychologically and religiously by getting him focused on prayer, repentance and divine judgement in order to keep him under emotional control as he went to his death.The government did not like impromptu speeches from those to be executed, and especially not the utterance of any critical comments.While most felons who were executed in Arthur’s time in Van Diemen’s Land went to the scaffold either resigned to their fate and asking for God’s mercy, or shaking with fear and sometimes screaming, there were also a number of very flash, indecorous executions, at least from the point of view of the legal establishment. The bushranger Matthew Brady, attended by Conolly, was cheered by the crowd as he went to the scaffold and died more of a martyr than a convicted criminal and murderer. His Irish colleague, Patrick Dunne, again led by Conolly, approached his execution blessing the cheering crowd. Most convicts did not have the theatrical talent of Brady and Dunne to turn the execution into a show, and occasionally a malefactor refused the ministry of the chaplain and had to be dragged to the gibbet, screaming and cursing God and the legal system. This was the kind of spectacle that the government wanted to avoid at any cost.