Speaker 1: So this ended up with a big legislative change twelve
Speaker 1: years later in eighteen sixty five that leads to bodies.
Speaker 2: Being buried at Old Melbourne Jail.
Speaker 1: There were anything from thirty four to fifty odd bodies
Speaker 1: buried here. And Alfonsine and George are the reason why.
Speaker 3: I'm Jen Kelly from the Herald Son and this is
Speaker 3: in Black and White a podcast about some of Australia's
Speaker 3: forgotten characters. Today's story is about notorious bush ranger George Melville,
Speaker 3: who was part of an audacious robbery of a gold
Speaker 3: escort heading from the Goldfields to Melbourne in the eighteen fifties. Incredibly,
Speaker 3: after George was executed at Old Melbourne Jail, his wife
Speaker 3: put his body on display in her oyster shop in
Speaker 3: the heart of Melbourne for the public to come and view.
Speaker 3: To tell us the story, we're talking with Damian Beard,
Speaker 3: a tour guide at Penridge Prison Tours, for part one
Speaker 3: of the story today. Make sure you return tomorrow for
Speaker 3: part two. And just a warning, this episode contains discussion
Speaker 3: about self harm. If you or anyone you know needs help,
Speaker 3: you can contact a lifeline on one three double one
Speaker 3: one four and you can find more helplines in the
Speaker 3: show notes to this episode. Welcome back to the podcast, Damien.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Now. I don't know about you, but the weird fact
Speaker 3: that fascinated me about the story of George Melville is
Speaker 3: that after he was executed, his wife put his body
Speaker 3: on display in her oyster shop. What was that all about.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit complicated to kind of guess we're
Speaker 1: going to run across the problem a lot today of
Speaker 1: the fact that there are no real.
Speaker 2: Sources for this.
Speaker 1: This was incredibly controvert at the time what his wife,
Speaker 1: Alfonsine did, and I found one newspaper article describing it.
Speaker 1: A lot of the court records are gone, a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff, but what it was about was essentially Alfonsine,
Speaker 1: his wife, was incensed at what happened to her husband
Speaker 1: and basically put his body on display in her shop
Speaker 1: to draw attention to the fact of what happened, and
Speaker 1: possibly maybe to make a little bit of money as well.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Ah, so people had to pay to see the body.
Speaker 2: I don't know. This is what kills me in my mind.
Speaker 1: She takes the body to her shop and then walks
Speaker 1: out because Alfonsine I just love her. From everything I've
Speaker 1: read about her, she seems like absolute girl boss energy.
Speaker 1: In my mind, she takes the body to a shop,
Speaker 1: you know, puts it on display because when you sell
Speaker 1: a lot of fresh projects back then, you need a
Speaker 1: lot of ice to keep it fresh. Guess what else
Speaker 1: Ie can keep fresh?
Speaker 2: George.
Speaker 1: So she decorates him with ribbons and flowers, puts him
Speaker 1: on display, and in my mind, she walks out into
Speaker 1: Burk Street.
Speaker 2: It's like right I was to see a dead body
Speaker 2: and then start selling tickets to her shop.
Speaker 1: I do know that one of the reasons why the
Speaker 1: public or the authorities, I should say the public were
Speaker 1: very interested. There were lines all the way at Burk
Speaker 1: Street to come in and see this, And the whole
Speaker 1: time Alfonsine was standing behind the counter and her shop
Speaker 1: just non stop tire rate about the police and the authorities. So,
Speaker 1: you know, possibly quite incense to what happened to her husband.
Speaker 1: But I do know one of the reasons that it
Speaker 1: became so controversial was because she did make quite a
Speaker 1: bit of money off it, either from people paying tickets
Speaker 1: or getting hungry and getting oysters out from underneath George.
Speaker 1: So you have this twofold thing one a woman did
Speaker 1: something without the permission of a man in eighteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: how dare she? But also quite possibly that she made
Speaker 1: a lot of money And the only people who make
Speaker 1: money off prisoners alive or dead is the prison So
Speaker 1: this ended up with a big legislative change twelve years
Speaker 1: later in eighteen sixty five that leads to bodies being
Speaker 1: buried at Old Melbourne Jail. There were anything from thirty
Speaker 1: four to fifty odd bodies buried here, and Alfonsine and
Speaker 1: George are the reason why.
Speaker 3: So before that you could just take the body and
Speaker 3: do whatever you wanted.
Speaker 1: You could apply to have it released to you and
Speaker 1: show up at the gate which is on Russell Street.
Speaker 1: Now just inside that gate there was the death house,
Speaker 1: which was where executed prisoners were taken. And men they
Speaker 1: shaved their heads and their beards. Women they tied their
Speaker 1: hair back and they took a plaster cast of their
Speaker 1: head to make a death mask. Because of the pseudoscience
Speaker 1: of phrenology that believed you could tell everything about a
Speaker 1: person by the shape of their head, they figured if
Speaker 1: all these people are having their lives ended on their
Speaker 1: gallows for crimes, they must have something in common with
Speaker 1: their shape of their heads, right, and guess what they found?
Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing, because it's nonsense. But family could then apply
Speaker 1: to have the body released to them. They could come
Speaker 1: and collect the body and take it and have it buried.
Speaker 2: In consecrated ground. I believe.
Speaker 1: I don't believe there was anything about it being buried
Speaker 1: in unconsecrated ground or anything like that. There's stories about
Speaker 1: how prisoners were meant to be buried in cemeteries so
Speaker 1: that they never left the jail even in death. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that's true. I believe it's much more of
Speaker 1: a prosaic factor for what's going to happen to the
Speaker 1: bodies is someone else going to put it on display
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So now that we've heard about the gruesome end of
Speaker 3: George Melville's life, perhaps we talk about the beginning of
Speaker 3: his life. So he came from Glasgow, is that right.
Speaker 1: And he started work at the age of twelve to
Speaker 1: supplement the family income. But he was actually quite a
Speaker 1: bright kid, and his mother had insisted that he learned
Speaker 1: to read and write, and apparently he picked it up
Speaker 1: quite easily. He was caught stealing when he was a
Speaker 1: teenager I have not found the exact day, and sentenced
Speaker 1: to fourteen years transportation. In eighteen thirty six, he was
Speaker 1: transported to Australia on the Lady Kenaway and arrived in
Speaker 1: Port Jackson and was quickly sent out to work as
Speaker 1: an indentured servant, a farm laborer, basically slavery. He chafed
Speaker 1: on the restrictions and at one point he was enterence
Speaker 1: to hard laboring chains on a road gang. Obviously he'd
Speaker 1: sort of tried to abscond or you know, had to
Speaker 1: go at his oversea or something like that, not really sure,
Speaker 1: but while on this road gang he absconded and he
Speaker 1: stowed away on a whaling ship named the Fame. He
Speaker 1: was caught and the captain was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: you wouldn escaped convictor bolter as though were called back then.
Speaker 1: He said no, and the captain was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: you can work. But then he realized that the ship
Speaker 1: was turning around and heading back to Port Jackson, and
Speaker 1: one of the mates said, yeah, the captain's going tow
Speaker 1: you in. Because if masters of ships were found with
Speaker 1: bolters in their crews at the time, they could be
Speaker 1: fined really quite severely. So they're heading back to Port
Speaker 1: Jackson and he's within side of shore. He jumps overboard
Speaker 1: and swims for it, spend some time in the bush,
Speaker 1: but eventually finds himself in Melbourne in eighteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: When he's in Melbourne, he worked as a laborer. He
Speaker 1: took on clerical jobs because he could read and write,
Speaker 1: which was unusual for someone of his background at the time.
Speaker 1: And apparently it was quite the ladies man quite quite
Speaker 1: had a captivating wit.
Speaker 2: It's one of the things that I read.
Speaker 1: And working at the markets, he met a French woman
Speaker 1: named Alfonsine Barbelet, and she owned her own fruit and
Speaker 1: oyster shopping Berke Street, and it seemed to be genuinely
Speaker 1: really love at first sight. They really did seem to
Speaker 1: really care for each other. This really does come across
Speaker 1: in the documents when you work in my position and
Speaker 1: you sort of see this sort of historical stuff a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. Quite often you tend to view
Speaker 1: these marriages. Often they can be a little bit cynical,
Speaker 1: a bit like you know, let's just do this, or
Speaker 1: you're pregnant, we better do this kind of thing. They
Speaker 1: actually appeared to really really care for each other. She
Speaker 1: came from Caledonia. She was from a French family, and
Speaker 1: he actually ended up learning quite a bit of French,
Speaker 1: which got him the nickname Frenchie. But in eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: one he headed up to Mount Alexander.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they've headed up to the goldfields.
Speaker 1: Together by himself. I believe she's got a shop. Why
Speaker 1: she can abandon this shop. She's probably making way more
Speaker 1: money than it.
Speaker 3: So now this story takes place during the Victorian gold Rush.
Speaker 3: Can you set the scene a little for us? What
Speaker 3: do we need to know about that era before we
Speaker 3: plunge right into Melville story.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen fifty one, a man named James Esmond,
Speaker 1: he's walking through the bush outside plunes out near Balarat,
Speaker 1: trips over bloody big rock, turns around to shake his
Speaker 1: fist and swear at it, and notices the sun shining
Speaker 1: through the trees is making the big rock sparkle. And
Speaker 1: he's found gold. And the gold rush begins. Now we
Speaker 1: go from about seventy seven thousand white settlers in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty to over half a million in the space of
Speaker 1: eight to ten years. And as these people come here,
Speaker 1: there is absolutely nothing for them. There are no jobs,
Speaker 1: in no houses, no provision for this at a time
Speaker 1: where being unhoused or unemployed was could technically have you
Speaker 1: charged with vagrancy or idleness and put in jail. Up
Speaker 1: at the Goldfields, at one point nearly forty people a
Speaker 1: month sting to death. They were turning to crime to
Speaker 1: stay alive. The roads from the goldfields are super dangerous
Speaker 1: because lots of people have come here and realized that
Speaker 1: digging up gold's really really hard work, and do you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier you let someone else do the
Speaker 1: hard work, and then when they're bringing the gold back
Speaker 1: you rob them. None of that helped by the fact
Speaker 1: that over ninety five percent of the police force deserted
Speaker 1: their posts to.
Speaker 2: Go become gold miners.
Speaker 1: They were meant to be forty policemen on gidy on
Speaker 1: Year's Day eighteen fifty two, two showed up for work. Wow,
Speaker 1: out of thirty eight, all up at Sovereign Hill. So
Speaker 1: the government is looking at this huge crime wave and
Speaker 1: they're like, we need to do something about this. You know,
Speaker 1: let's tackle the causes of this with social housing and
Speaker 1: free I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: They're like, we need more jails for poor people.
Speaker 1: So they cut the masks off a bunch of ships,
Speaker 1: they paint them yellow, they fill them full of prisoners.
Speaker 1: They keep cramming people into the stockade up at Penridge
Speaker 1: and they start expanding the site of the old Melbourne
Speaker 1: Jar or the same you're back then, the new Melbourne Jail,
Speaker 1: and this is where George ends up ending here life
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Now, one job I hadn't heard much about is these
Speaker 3: gold escorts, and this is pretty relevant to this story.
Speaker 3: So can you explain what they were?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you find gold, you can't well, you
Speaker 1: can go and trade it in at the pub and
Speaker 1: things like that, and people quite frequently did.
Speaker 2: But what you really want to do is convert it
Speaker 2: to currency.
Speaker 1: And the best exchange rate for this currency was from
Speaker 1: the government at the Treasury. The exchange rates up to
Speaker 1: the gold fields, where you don't have to go through
Speaker 1: all the hassle of transporting it to Melbourne, they're obviously
Speaker 1: not as favorable to the gold miners. So what gold
Speaker 1: miners want to do is they want to go and
Speaker 1: they want to sell it directly to the government where
Speaker 1: the exchange rates are much better. However, to do this
Speaker 1: you have to get to Melbourne. Remember what I said
Speaker 1: about the roads. Now, the government doesn't want this happening
Speaker 1: law and order, but also they want the gold, so
Speaker 1: pretty quickly on they established these gold escorts, which were
Speaker 1: literally armed escorts that would take the gold once a
Speaker 1: week from the gold fields. What ends up happening is
Speaker 1: as the goldfields expand out from Ballarat and Bendigo, people
Speaker 1: start their own private escorts. A company stumps up the
Speaker 1: money and the cart and the driver. They're provided with
Speaker 1: troopers government personnel to guard it, and then they leave
Speaker 1: from these various other diggings and meet the government escort
Speaker 1: at a place like Bendigo or Ballarat, join up with
Speaker 1: that government escort and then are sent on through to Melbourne.
Speaker 1: So there was one such escort, a private one that
Speaker 1: was starting in eighteen fifty three for the Makaiva diggings,
Speaker 1: which is east of what's now today Heathcott, and this
Speaker 1: one ended up encountering a few men who had a
Speaker 1: bit of a plan.
Speaker 3: Ah, So tell us about some of these.
Speaker 1: Men, Yes, so some of them I have more information
Speaker 1: on than others, particularly the Francis brothers. John Francis under
Speaker 1: the name of John Fern He is sentenced aged nineteen
Speaker 1: for theft. Here now he's already done time in England
Speaker 1: in jails with his brother George for poaching, and once
Speaker 1: they got out they'd work together and what they would
Speaker 1: do is George would bump into a target in the
Speaker 1: street and well distracted, John would pick their pockets. John
Speaker 1: was caught doing this, apprehended by a constable and in
Speaker 1: December eighteen forty three he was sentenced to ten years
Speaker 1: transportation to Van Demon's Land. He arrived in Van Demen's
Speaker 1: Land on the Maria Solmes on the thirtieth of July
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four. He was quite good conduct prisoner and
Speaker 1: released on the thirtieth of January eighteen forty six, given
Speaker 1: a pass to head out and work. Eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: now under the name William Fern, he was working as
Speaker 1: a laborer and associating with other what the newspapers called
Speaker 1: low types, and in May eighteen forty seven he's involved
Speaker 1: in a robbery of silverware from a man named Charles McLaughlin.
Speaker 1: He was the managing director of the bank of Van
Speaker 1: Demon's Land. They stole a bunch of items, a bunch
Speaker 1: of silverware, candlesticks and.
Speaker 2: Things like that.
Speaker 1: They were quite unhappy to find out that it was
Speaker 1: actually plated silver, not solid silver, but they stole them
Speaker 1: all and stashed them in a brothel in Hobart.
Speaker 2: They're all caught quickly.
Speaker 1: John turned evidence against his compatriots and he was given
Speaker 1: three months on a road gang and forbidden from residing
Speaker 1: in Hobart. At the end of his sentence, he was
Speaker 1: joined in Hobert by his brother George. George was a
Speaker 1: year younger, five inches shorter, and allegedly had a much
Speaker 1: much shorter temper. A few months after George's conviction, back
Speaker 1: in England, he was caught stealing beeswax worth ten shillings
Speaker 1: sixpence in Pontefract and was given a seven year sentence
Speaker 1: of transportation. He arrived in Van Diemen's Land on the
Speaker 1: fifth of September eighteen forty four on the ship Barossa
Speaker 1: with three hundred and twenty one other convicts, and he
Speaker 1: was marked as a bad conduct prisoner when arriving. He
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time going absent from work gangs
Speaker 1: without leave, got six months hard laboring chains for stealing
Speaker 1: a blanket, probably committed other infractions.
Speaker 2: Haven't been able to find anything.
Speaker 1: Else but both George and John received their tickets of
Speaker 1: leave in eighteen forty eight and eighteen forty nine respectively,
Speaker 1: and as John was barred from living in Hobart, they
Speaker 1: eventually made their walue to Melbourne following the gold rush.
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty two, both married to women in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: George was married to a woman named Ellen. In Melbourne,
Speaker 1: Ellen introduced George to her friend Agnes and her husband Bill.
Speaker 1: Bill Atkins was a former convict who had served his
Speaker 1: time in New South Wales, and they became friends together
Speaker 1: and they drank quite frequently together along with his brother John,
Speaker 1: and at a pub in autumn eighteen fifty three, William
Speaker 1: Atkins introduced John and George to his friend George Melville.
Speaker 3: So it's quite a little gang that's forming.
Speaker 1: Now, it is absolutely And in fact there was a
Speaker 1: fifth member as well, a man named George Wilson, where
Speaker 1: we don't know a whole lot about him, as allegedly
Speaker 1: an ex convict. Most of these men were. He arrived
Speaker 1: at bendy Go in eighteen fifty two to try his
Speaker 1: hand at gold mining, leaving behind a wife in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: but apparently quite successful. But he was a gambler, so
Speaker 1: I didn't hold on too much of what he found.
Speaker 1: But at Bendigo he met another man named Joe Gray
Speaker 1: or John Gray, I don't know, because we know absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing about this man. He is allegedly the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: the whole plot, but we just don't know who he is.
Speaker 2: There is one.
Speaker 1: Author who has a belief as to who he is.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I'm not sure I believe him, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. But Joe John, I'm going
Speaker 1: to call him Joe, the mastermind behind the pole plot.
Speaker 1: He's the one who's seen the gold Escorts and thinks, okay,
Speaker 1: there's quite a lot of money going on in that,
Speaker 1: and he starts sort of sussing it out, camping out
Speaker 1: and watching it, trying to get friendly with the guards
Speaker 1: and figure out what their routine is, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: He approaches George Wilson, who brings in all the others,
Speaker 1: essentially Melville, who brings in Atkins and the Francis brothers,
Speaker 1: and they allegedly met at the house of John Francis
Speaker 1: in Collingwood which was called Collingwood Flat back then, in
Speaker 1: June eighteen fifty f to plan their robbery.
Speaker 3: We'll be back soon. Do you hear what happened the
Speaker 3: day the bush Rangers stage their daring robberies? They stay with.
Speaker 4: Us, so tell us how the day of the robbery
Speaker 4: went down?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure.
Speaker 1: Now I will have to credit especially Deb from Old
Speaker 1: Geelong Jail Crime and Justice Museum. Her podcast Locked Up
Speaker 1: in History has a really good episode about this, and
Speaker 1: I just want to thank Deb. I know Deb and
Speaker 1: Rob from Old Gelong Jarl they're lovely people, but Jed,
Speaker 1: I'm cribbing a lot of Deb's research here, So thanks Deb.
Speaker 1: But on the twentieth July eighteen fifty three, the Private
Speaker 1: gold Escort, I have been able to actually find the
Speaker 1: name of it, whether it was you know, the so
Speaker 1: and so gold Escort or whether it was literally called
Speaker 1: Private gold Escort does what it says on the tin,
Speaker 1: But anyway, it leaves the Makaiva Diggings carrying two two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three ounces of gold and cash in
Speaker 1: two strong box.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not very familiar with ouncers, but it
Speaker 3: sounds like an extraordinary amount of gold.
Speaker 1: It is, yeah, I mean a lot of it's small
Speaker 1: tiny nuggets, dusts and things like that, but it totals
Speaker 1: about eighty seven hundred pounds in value, which is nearly
Speaker 1: three million dollars today. So they're heading for Keinton and
Speaker 1: then Bendy go to join the government escort. At the
Speaker 1: head of the column is Superintendent Robert Warner with Sergeant
Speaker 1: George Dowan's and the cart carrying the actual gold is
Speaker 1: driven by a driver named James Fooks. Troopers Samuel Benham,
Speaker 1: Davis John Morton, and Davis Beswater. There's a few different
Speaker 1: pronunciations of his name. I'm going to go with that one.
Speaker 1: They're also escorting it. They're all quite heavily armed. They're armed,
Speaker 1: in fact, with a sword, a carbine, and pistols. Warner
Speaker 1: and Dowan are also carrying revolvers. Only Fooks, the driver
Speaker 1: is he's the only one who's unarmed. Now, just outside Maya, Maya, Gray, Melville, Wilkson, Atkins,
Speaker 1: Francis Brothers and allegedly others lay in wait. What they've
Speaker 1: done is they've found a spot where there's a sort
Speaker 1: of a bend in the road and off to one
Speaker 1: side there's a bit of a culvert with a drop
Speaker 1: off off to the other side quite a steep incline
Speaker 1: with a lot of bush Now just around the bend
Speaker 1: in the road, they've cut a bunch of branches off.
Speaker 1: They've barricaded the road to make it look like a
Speaker 1: tree's fallen down, but also provided a bit of a
Speaker 1: barricade for a couple of the bushrangers to hide behind.
Speaker 1: They've picked this spot really, particularly because there's no escape,
Speaker 1: hemmed in by a drop off on one side, a
Speaker 1: larger sort of escarpment on the other side, and then
Speaker 1: coming around the corner and seeing this barricade without much
Speaker 1: time to stop and investigate. But Duance, he's riding up front.
Speaker 1: He did see the screen and he called a holt
Speaker 1: to investigate it. There's men hiding behind the screen and
Speaker 1: off to the side, and they suddenly appeared and opened fire.
Speaker 2: Now there is a lot.
Speaker 1: Of dispute over who shot first. The bushrangers said that
Speaker 1: the guards shot first. The guard said the bush rangers
Speaker 1: shot first. One account I read of the article of
Speaker 1: the incident, I'm sorry, said that, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the bush rangers misfired.
Speaker 2: They're gone.
Speaker 1: The bush rangers later claimed that they had not intended
Speaker 1: to shoot anyone. Of course, they're claiming this in the
Speaker 1: dock when they're on trial for their life, so you
Speaker 1: know what exactly can you trust? But the end result
Speaker 1: is someone shot and there is a gunfight the troopers
Speaker 1: all full. Morton receives a ball in the shoulder, Davis
Speaker 1: is shot in the cheek. Bears Water is shot in
Speaker 1: the leg and fell from his horse, dislocating his arm.
Speaker 1: Fuchs is shot in the knee and received a graze
Speaker 1: on the temple. Dewan's horse received bullet runs which made
Speaker 1: a bolt, but it bolted straight ahead and went crashing
Speaker 1: through the barricade. So Diwans has effectively escaped this ambush
Speaker 1: and he brings his horse under control and he heads
Speaker 1: to a government camp three miles away to raise a arm.
Speaker 1: They keep everyone at bay at gunpoint. Now most of
Speaker 1: the troopers are injured on the ground. The only one
Speaker 1: who is not his warner, but they keep him at
Speaker 1: bay at gunpoint while they're taking the strong boxes. And
Speaker 1: then Superintendent one, he sort of just stands around watching
Speaker 1: and then as the bush rangers head off into the bush,
Speaker 1: he sort of just follows about fifty meters behind, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of hiding behind trees, poking his head out that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, trying to see where they're going, until
Speaker 1: eventually they notice him and they start firing at him
Speaker 1: until he's driven away. He retreats to nearby Patterson Station
Speaker 1: to get assistants and Damien.
Speaker 3: There were hundreds of people involved in the hunt.
Speaker 1: Yes, so Dowan's returns to the scene with troopers and
Speaker 1: a bunch of miners as well. He can imagine all
Speaker 1: the miners they're like, maybe my gold was on that escort.
Speaker 1: I want to find this, you know. So they're quite motivated. Now, Generally,
Speaker 1: the troopers, the traps as they were known, we're not
Speaker 1: popular around the goldfields. They're in forcement arm of the
Speaker 1: government up there checking licenses and stuff like that. Famously,
Speaker 1: that all boiled over at Eureka a few years later,
Speaker 1: but in this instance, the miners had a bit of
Speaker 1: self interest. So eventually nearly four hundred miners were scaring
Speaker 1: the bush trying to find them. In the meantime, the
Speaker 1: bushrangers went into the bush and remove the contents of
Speaker 1: their strong boxes, putting it in their settle bags. Now
Speaker 1: it's interesting describing as people as bushrangers to my mind,
Speaker 1: because this is the first and only time they do
Speaker 1: these things together. It's almost like a heist movie. You know,
Speaker 1: you put together the gang to do this one job,
Speaker 1: and then they're all absolutely intending to go their separate ways.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're going to go maroud in the
Speaker 1: bush like Ben Hall or anything like that. But they
Speaker 1: did head into the bush and spend the night in
Speaker 1: the wild, and the following morning they divided the gold
Speaker 1: and the cash up and they headed into Kilmore and
Speaker 1: then to a place called Rocky water Holes which is
Speaker 1: now Calcallo. It's from there that they split into two
Speaker 1: groups and headed for Melbourne.
Speaker 3: What's happened next?
Speaker 1: So there's news spreads very very quickly. There's rumors everywhere,
Speaker 1: including the trooper Morton had died and rewards offered. The
Speaker 1: private gold escort company offers a reward, and not long
Speaker 1: after the government does a five hundred pounds reward and
Speaker 1: passage out of the colony.
Speaker 3: Now Damien. That must have just been an extraordinary amount
Speaker 3: of money. An extraordinary reward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's over seventy eight thousand Australian dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: That's not one hundred percent accurate. Money changes value over time,
Speaker 1: but that's what the calculators say. It's more than any
Speaker 1: individual share that any of the bush Rangers would have
Speaker 1: received from the amount of gold and money that they
Speaker 1: were dividing up. But more importantly is this passage out
Speaker 1: of the colony. This is really calculated move because this
Speaker 1: way they're trying to offer it to someone who's part
Speaker 1: of the gang more than your share, and also secure
Speaker 1: passage away from anyone who's going to want to have
Speaker 1: a bit of a word with you about you turning
Speaker 1: informa on them.
Speaker 2: So it's a really calcul related move.
Speaker 1: You know, they're offering a reward, but it's a reward
Speaker 1: that has really calculated to appeal to members.
Speaker 2: Of the game themselves.
Speaker 3: So did it work?
Speaker 2: Eventually?
Speaker 1: It did, But there were some difficulties in this, one
Speaker 1: of which is who actually was Joe great Now, there
Speaker 1: is one author that believes Joe Gray was actually Frank
Speaker 1: Christi or Frank Gardner, he was a famous Bushranger. About
Speaker 1: ten years later, I said before I don't think I
Speaker 1: believe this, and this is because he's really basing it
Speaker 1: on a couple of things. Number one is a article
Speaker 1: in Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, dated August
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three. Now I've already told you how many
Speaker 1: rumors have spread about this place within the last twenty
Speaker 1: four hours of it happening. That's just in the Goldfields.
Speaker 1: Imagine how distorted that game of telephone has got by
Speaker 1: the time we get up to Sydney. But this article says,
Speaker 1: and I really want to read in the British pathe
Speaker 1: of ice. But anyway, it will be some gratification to
Speaker 1: learn the leader of the gang who attempted the whole
Speaker 1: sale and cold blooded slaughter of the private escort yesterday
Speaker 1: week has been captured and recognized, and that he admits
Speaker 1: himself to have been one of the party. The wretch
Speaker 1: was taken in bed on the following Saturday at Makaiva
Speaker 1: Diggings where he was lying booted and spurred with a
Speaker 1: female as a bandit, as himself a sex worker. He
Speaker 1: was an ill looking fillo named Christie, about twenty six
Speaker 1: years of age, and whose life has been one scene
Speaker 1: of crime for.
Speaker 2: First to last.
Speaker 1: He had not long escaped from Penry Stockade, and it
Speaker 1: was the lookout for him as a runaway convict which
Speaker 1: led to his detection as one of the would be murderers.
Speaker 1: Frank Christy had escaped from pantridge at the time Pantry
Speaker 1: stockade at the time. The wall around the stockade was
Speaker 1: only a meter high. Yeah, can you see the problem
Speaker 1: with a meter high wall around a prison? Penridg Prison
Speaker 1: opened December fifth, eighteen fifty with thirty prisoners inside the stockade.
Speaker 1: By March eighteen fifty one, just three months later, forty
Speaker 1: eight prisoners had escaped from the place. I've seen more
Speaker 1: than were there on the first day, including Frank Christi
Speaker 1: alias Frank Gardner. There is absolutely no proof that this
Speaker 1: is the same man, particularly because he was never heard from,
Speaker 1: since there's just this one article about the arrest of
Speaker 1: this man who police arrested believing him to be the
Speaker 1: escape prisoner. And then according to the book I read,
Speaker 1: this man was confused and thought he was being arrested
Speaker 1: for the MACKAIV Gold escort robbery and confessed to that.
Speaker 1: And now according to this book, he allegedly bribed the
Speaker 1: policeman to let him go. Never heard anything else, no
Speaker 1: convictions in said. The only other thing this author has
Speaker 1: to back up this theory is Frank Gardner. Frank Christy
Speaker 1: was definitely involved in a robbery in eighteen sixty two
Speaker 1: at Ygara, which used very, very similar tactics. But I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: if you're going to rob a gold escort in the
Speaker 1: book in the Bush, the best way is to set
Speaker 1: up an ambush like that. It's pretty obvious. Obviously I
Speaker 1: don't really believe it, but Joe Gray is the key
Speaker 1: to the whole thing, and he like much of the
Speaker 1: information is missing. I'm going to go for the next
Speaker 1: bit based off entirely on the facts that we've been
Speaker 1: able to ascertain. Either Deb's been able to find out,
Speaker 1: I've been able to find out from newspapers. There are
Speaker 1: a few authors who've sort of offered a bit of
Speaker 1: interpretation of these facts, but I'm not sure. At around
Speaker 1: two pm on the afternoon of the robbery, Detective Tucker
Speaker 1: receives word of it at the Mackaiva Diggings, and at
Speaker 1: the same time a young man comes into his office
Speaker 1: and a report's theft of a revolver from his tent,
Speaker 1: and he suspects his neighbor. The authorities search the tent.
Speaker 1: The man is long gone, but what was left behind
Speaker 1: was a map of the ship Madagascar, which was then
Speaker 1: currently mout in Hobson's Bay preparing for a journey to
Speaker 1: England and on the Map was written Jay Francis, Cabin Passenger.
Speaker 3: We'll leave part one of the story of George Melville
Speaker 3: there and we'll re turn tomorrow with part two to
Speaker 3: hear how the police closed in on the gang. Thanks
Speaker 3: for listening. This has been In Black and White, a
Speaker 3: podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted
Speaker 3: by me Jen Kelly, edited by Harry Hughes, and produced
Speaker 3: by John Tyburton. You can find all the stories and
Speaker 3: photos associated with our episodes at haroldsun dot com dot
Speaker 3: au slash ibaw. If you've enjoyed this podcast, we'd love
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Speaker 3: Any comments or questions please email me at in Black
Speaker 3: and White at haroldsun dot com dot au. Any clarifications
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