Monthly Archives: November 2009

When Governor Gipps was running through the long list of people who had complained about Judge Willis, he mentioned that eighteen magistrates had come forward with complaints about Willis’ behaviour.   How did people get to be magistrates in Port Phillip in the early 1840s?

A bit of back-tracking first.  The role of ‘magistrate’ has a long history. In England they have been a feature, in one guise or another, of the justice system for the past six centuries.  Traditionally the gentry families of the countryside, almost as a matter of course,  appropriated the role as their right within the village system of deference and moral responsibility that underpinned English rural life.  The magistrate, who usually held unreported hearings in his own house, had wide latitude over many areas of life; magistrates knew the villagers  (their families, their entitlements and their histories)  and were known themselves (their families, their entitlements and their histories)  by the village inhabitants.

In the early years of penal settlement in New South Wales and Van Diemens Land, there were very few free settlers and at first nearly all magistrates held other positions.  As more free settlers arrived and took up large land grants, they were called upon to police the work and leisure of the convicts who worked on their properties.  Have no illusions about this: the colony depended on the forced labour of convicts, and the efficiency of this dispersed, in effect privatized, system depended on the surveillance, assiduousness and authority of the magistrates.

The Colonial Office back in London appointed the main office-bearers for Colonial positions,  shifting, juggling and negotiating individual careers as part of a huge chess-game, with influential spectators on the side making their ‘suggestions’, pulling their strings and calling on and bestowing favours in the swirl of patronage and reciprocity.   The appointment of magistrates was, however, one of the positions in the gift of the local Governor in the colony- and he used it.  And eager aspirants knew that and approached him too, with their letters of introduction and recommendation from patrons both at home and those who had preceded them to the colony.

The early magistrates in Port Phillip were appointed from Sydney, both paid and unpaid.  There was a sniffiness about paid (or stipendiary) magistrates, and certainly the London-based Colonial Office preferred honorary magistrates who did not need to be paid.  But from about 1822-42 the courts had increasing oversight over magistrates’ activities and the issue of conflict-of-interest became more pressing.  Unlike in England, the landed proprietors of New South Wales were not a leisured class: they were entrepreneurial men on the make themselves, who were anxious for quick returns on their capital, which in turn depended on convict productivity.   The rapid extension of settlement necessitated the appointment of paid magistrates in charge of an organized, generally ex-convict, police force.   On the anxious fringe of frontier settlement, there was increasing demand for police magistrates which was on  one level resisted by the local government on grounds of cost, but acceded to as a ‘temporary’ measure because it meant that personnel could be shifted to meet population movements and changing needs, unlike honorary magistrates who were appointed because they were already established in a particular locality.

Patronage power tended to be diluted the further one travelled from the metropole.  The Colonial Office could, and did, ask that particular men be appointed magistrates-  F. B. St John, the Police Magistrate in Port Phillip was one such Colonial Office request.  But generally, the magistracy was one area of patronage, interwoven as it was with local status and visibility, that the Colonial Office was prepared to devolve to the Governors.  Once La Trobe arrived in Port Phillip, Gipps shared aspects of this patronage with La Trobe.  He always consulted La Trobe before ratifying appointments and he entertained suggestions from La Trobe’s end.  But the actual gift of  the magistracy rested with him.

Gipps’ practice was to avoid making magistrates from among practising doctors and from the clergy (unlike earlier times- the Rev Samuel Marsden was commonly known as a whipping parson). He insisted that magistrates must have been in the colony for one year, and must be at least 24 years of age.  Gipps relied on La Trobe’s opinion and asked him to vet the appointments amongst others in the locality- for instance, before appointing Stephen and Edward Henty to the position of magistrate in Portland, La Trobe consciously sought out people who thought they should not be appointed- to no avail.  Gipps advised La Trobe to broach the topic with nominees beforehand: “I hope you always obtain a man’s consent to act before you recommend him as it is very necessary to do so.”  Gipps suggested that La Trobe make the recommendation directly to him (Gipps) or to his Private Secretary as “a man might not want his qualifications for the Magistracy discussed in public office” (Gipps to La Trobe 1 March 1840, Shaw Gipps-La Trobe Correspondence p.17)

By the early 1840s the magistracy was no longer seen primarily as a penal surveillance mechanism, but had been overlaid with other municipal, moral, licensing and public order issues.  The honorary and police magistrates were responsible for the “regulation and control of a community” including the administration of regulations over buildings, fire prevention, roads, cleanliness etc.   as well as petty crime and public safety.  When the Melbourne Town Corporation was created in 1842, a separate division of magistrates was created from among the town councillors.

One thing that you did not need was legal training.  In the 1830’s Plunkett published his book which came to be known as “Plunkett’s Australian Magistrate” and the mainstay of legal advice for magistrates and the first Australian practice book of its kind.  As the 1840s went on, there were increased bureaucratic demands made of magistrates in terms of documentation and official oversight.

Paul de Serville  in Port Phillip Gentlemen lists the magistrates appointed in 1841.  Several held other government positions e.g. Edwards,, Le Souef, Parker, Robinson  and Sievwright were all magistrates by virtue of their positions as Aboriginal Protectors;  Airey, Fyans and Powlett were also Commissioners of Crown Lands.  Lieutenant Russell as Commander of the Mounted Police was a magistrate; as was  James Simpson as Police Magistrate until replaced by the Colonial Office’s suggestion of F. B. St John.  Alongside these were the honorary magistrates recognized for their importance in the community.  As part of the gentlemanly identity that they all projected and drew upon, all magistrates were involved in myriad civic and business activities.

As might be expected given Willis’ temperament, he clashed with several of the magistrates under his purview.  He strongly embraced the educational aspects of his role as Supreme Court judge, insisting that the magistrates attend court to familiarize themselves more fully with the law.  He was critical of magistrates who were involved in speculation – or at least, those who got caught out in the financial distress of the early ‘4os, and clashed with Simpson, Farquhar Mc Crae, Lonsdale and Brewster.  He was often critical of the Aboriginal Protectors, especially Sievwright who was by this time under a cloud over other improprieties as well.  In one of the frequently-retold vignettes from Judge Willis’ courtroom, he clashed on several occasions with J. B. Were, most famously when he without warning ordered Were, attending court as a magistrate,  to take the witness stand to testify.  When Were protested that he could not remember certain details, Willis awarded him one-two-three-six months in jail for contempt of court.  Needless to say, J. B. Were was one of the 18 who protested Willis’ behaviour.  But not all magistrates opposed him.  Willis looked favourably on Robert Martin, William Verner and J. D. Lyon Campbell- all of whom happened to live nearby to Willis in Heidelberg- and they gave him their unstinting support.   The split in support or opposition to the Judge amongst the magistrates mirrored the division in public opinion more generally.

One of the most high-profile criminal cases of 1842 was that of the Plenty Valley bushrangers who were hanged on Judge Willis’ instructions in 1842.

The four Plenty Valley bushrangers embarked on a five-day spree on 26^th April 1842 that entailed eighteen robberies and eventuated in a shootout where one of bushrangers was killed and the leader of the captors, Henry Fowler, was injured through a gunshot wound.[1] After robberies on 26th-28th April around the Oakleigh/Mulgrave area, they turned northwards towards the Plenty Valley.

Click here to see a map of their exploits in the Plenty Valley

In her study of convict bushrangers, Jennifer McKinnon draws a distinction between “footpads” the often- unarmed bandits in small groups staying close to the main centres of population, and “banditti” in large armed and mounted gangs who operated in the interior.[2] She cautions, however, that the distinction between “footpads” and “banditti” is not a hard and fast one. Certainly the Plenty Valley bushrangers combine elements of both: they ranged around familiar, relatively settled territory in what are now fringe suburbs within riding distance of central Melbourne, where they had been employed previously. But they operated on horseback, at first in pairs, but later in a larger group of four, and possibly five, armed men.

To a certain extent they fit the archetype of social bandits and draw on a time-worn trope of

…the bold Robin Hood of their morning songs, and … the unfortunate victim of legal oppression, the captured of the chase….His reckless daring would be the noblest chivalry; and the jovial freedom of his manners, the frankest generosity.  His immoral jests would be treasured for posterity, and the éclat of his life and death would stimulate the worthy ambition of sympathizing souls.[3]

Graham Seal, likewise, identifies Robin Hood as the beginning of a coherent and continuous tradition of British outlaw heroes portrayed as

“friends of the poor, usually driven to outlawry by some injustice.  They are however, brave, courteous to women, and use violence only when it is unavoidable or in justified revenge.  Generally, they die bravely and usually through treachery.”[4]

Thus, we see the Plenty Valley bushrangers avidly pocketing the £63 they stole from Capt Gwatkin from the trading vessel Scout in a hold-up on the road to Dandenong, while giving 5 shillings of the Captain’s money to fellow-victim Frederick Pitman so that he can pay for his bed at the Travellers Rest Inn at nearby No-Good-Damper.[5] Paula Byrne’s study notes the extravagant dress often adopted by bushrangers, and here we see one of the Plenty Valley bushrangers resplendent in the scarlet-lined Austrian Hussars costume stolen from an earlier victim, complete with dangling sword, in a subversive and swaggering challenge to uniformed authority.[6] Food, too, was important: Byrne comments that settlers often recalled the exact food taken or consumed by bushrangers.[7] Hence we have the goose killed and thrown to Capt. Harrison’s cook with instructions to have it ready for their dinner the next day, and the roast ducks and herrings appropriated for their own breakfast when the bushrangers burst in on five men at Campbell Hunter’s station, the site of the final shoot-out.  We have the bravado of bushranger Jepps, nonchalantly standing outside the door of the hut, lighting his pipe with bank notes and, as Constable Vinge recalled later, challenging his captors:

After considering for a time he opened his arms and walked towards us, and then stood still for a while and said, ‘Gentlemen, I have robbed most of you that I see, but I want to get away!’  I answered ‘No; you will not get away’.  He then said ‘Gentlemen, rather than be taken to Melbourne and made a public show of on the gallows, shoot me’. I walked up and handcuffed him.[8]

Although there may not have been outright support from settler sympathizers, there does seem to be a degree of ambivalence amongst some of their victims.  An early victim, James Bruce Donaldson, may have been robbed by them one or two days previously, but did not report the crime.[9] The bushrangers took another settler, George Rider, hostage and ordered him to guide them to the next victim’s house where he interceded with the two women present, shared a champagne with the bushrangers, and was released with his watch.  Rider returned home with no attempt to alert the authorities, and returned the next day to act as intermediary between the besieged bushrangers and their captors.[10] He later handed in a sum of money for the prisoners’ defence, but Willis disallowed the use of the proceeds of crime for this purpose.[11]

However, the Plenty Valley bushrangers differ from the convict bushrangers in several important ways. Chronologically they fell between the convict bolter period of the 1820s and 1830s and the “golden age” of bushrangers in the 1860s.  During this hiatus, there was a marked decline in social prestige for bushrangers. With the abolition of assignment in the early 1840s, they lost their raison d’etre as social bandits, and they had not yet taken on the mantle of exemplars of the social struggle over land of the 1860s.[12]

Moreover, and importantly, the Plenty Valley bushrangers were not perceived to be convict bushrangers at the time. Their leader, 27-year old John Williams was a Catholic bounty migrant, thought to be Irish but actually born in England.  Martin Fogarty was also described as an Irish bounty migrant.  Charles Ellis, aged 18 was English and appeared to have arrived as a free immigrant, and Daniel Jepps was a 27 year old American whaler, said to have “had the air of having once moved in a different sphere”.[13] Although Ellis was later described as “an old lag from Van Diemen’s Land” and Fogarty was said to have been forced to leave Ireland after turning Queens Evidence in a number of murder cases, the public perception, at least prior to the trial, was that they were not ex-convicts.[14] Hence Willis’ address to the jury focused on the need for attention to be paid during the selection process to the character of incoming immigrants- a variation on his more common warnings about the degradation of society occasioned by convict gangs employed on public works and expirees from Van Diemens Land.[15] In the mirror that Willis held up to the community in his courtroom addresses, Port Phillip was not a penal colony.  Indeed Willis prefaced his Latin-laden address to the jury hearing the Plenty Valley bushrangers’ trial by noting that it seems

“as if the contamina [sic] of similar enormities in the penal colonies had extended its baneful pestilence to this district- a district colonized by free emigrants, not peopled by convicts, and therefore reasonably expected to be the less polluted.”[16]

In a settlement that distinguished itself from the older penal colonies, this first incidence of bushranger activity elicited a strong public response.  No fewer than three police groups, headed by ex-Chief Constable ‘Tulip’ Wright; Crown Land Commissioner Powlett and Constable Vinge, and two groups of civilians converged on Lowland Flats for the final confrontation.  One of these volunteer groups was a contingent of five men from the Melbourne Club who were feted as “the gay and gallant ‘Five’, the heroes of the time, whose bravery was theme on every tongue” [17] Their earlier indiscretions of dueling, insolvency and altercations at the horse races were forgiven as the gentlemen of Melbourne drank their health at a public dinner and the Masonic Lodges awarded three of them with gold medallions.  The formation of a Yeomanry Corps amongst the “gentleman residents” of the District for the protection of the community was proposed by Police Magistrate F. B. St John, and the Plenty Valley settlers offered to form a volunteer corps among themselves- an offer endorsed by the “resident ladies” of Plenty Valley in a rare petition with only female signatures.[18] In the immediate aftermath of the capture, rumours circulated that other fugitives from the Goulburn River had conspired to meet with the Plenty Valley bushrangers on the Maribyrnong River where they would wait in hiding until an opportunity arose to steal a vessel to make their escape.[19] There was heightened agitation for surveillance of the sawyers and timber cutters along the rivers as anxiety rose about the need for social control of “skulkers of various descriptions” and expired convicts from the penal colonies, especially Van Diemens Land, flooding into the Port Phillip district.[20]

So, what happened when the captured bushrangers encountered Judge Willis in the courtroom?? Ah- for that you’ll have to wait for the completed thesis (from which this was cut- as if you can’t tell!) and the supporting documentary and soap opera.  Suffice to say, the three surviving bushrangers were hanged on 28th June 1842- three of the six executions carried out during 1842 under Willis’ sentencing.

[2] Jennifer A McKinnon, Convict Bushrangers in NSW 1824-1834, La Trobe University, 1979,  61-62.

[3] James Bonwick, The Bushrangers: illustrating the early days of Van Diemen’s Land (1856), Hobart, Fullers Bookshop, 1967, p. 89.

[4] Graham Seal, Ned Kelly in Popular Tradition, Melbourne, Hyland House, 1980, p. 31.

[5] Mann, The Plenty Bushrangers of 1842: the first Europeans hanged in Victoria, p. 5.

[6] Paula J Byrne, Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales 1810-1830, Cambridge (Eng), Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 134.; Mann, The Plenty Bushrangers of 1842: the first Europeans hanged in Victoria, p. 15.

[7] Byrne, Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales 1810-1830, p. 135.

[8] Constable George Vinge ‘Bushrangers in the Olden Times’ The Argus, Friday 6^th August 1880.

[9] Mann, The Plenty Bushrangers of 1842: the first Europeans hanged in Victoria, p. 12.

[10] Ibid., p. 25.

[11] Port Phillip Patriot 12 May 1842.

[12] Michael Sturma, Vice in a Vicious Society: Crime and Convicts St Lucia Qld, University of Queensland Press, 1983, p. 101.

[13] Mann, The Plenty Bushrangers of 1842: the first Europeans hanged in Victoria, pp. 2-3.; Port Phillip Herald 20 May 1842.

[14] On Ellis as expired convict see Macfarlane, 1842 The Public Executions at Melbourne, p. 28. and Fogarty as exile Port Phillip Herald 20 May 1842.

[15] Port Phillip Herald 13 May 1842.  For his more-frequent commentary on the dangers of convicts and ex-convicts see Port Phillip Herald 28 May 1841; 17 August 1841; 14 January 1842.

[16] Port Phillip Herald 13 May 1842

[17] Finn, The chronicles of early Melbourne, 1835 to 1852 : historical, anecdotal and personal / by “Garryowen”, p. 408.

[18] St.John to La Trobe 30 April 1842, PROV 19, Unit 33, 42/1366; Campbell Hunter and men of the Plenty to La Trobe, 5 May 1842 PROV 16 Unit 3 42/592;  Ann Bear and ladies of the Plenty to La Trobe 5 May 1842 PROV 16 Unit 3 42/593.

[19] Mann, The Plenty Bushrangers of 1842: the first Europeans hanged in Victoria, pp. 29-30.

[20] La Trobe to E. D. Thomson 4 May 1842 PROV 16 Unit 12 42/571   This was not an unjustified fear.  Sturma notes that of 5000 convicts freed by servitude or holding conditional pardons recorded leaving Van Diemens Land between 1847 and 1849, over 3,800 departed for Port Phillip compared with less than 250 for Sydney.  Cited in Sturma, Vice in a Vicious Society: Crime and Convicts p. 54.