Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (45 page)

Though clearly intent on demonstrating that the writ of law runs over Ballarat, the authorities do not seem too particular as to which diggers it arrests – it seems that anyone will do.

Early hours, Saturday, 21 October 1854, on Ballarat, a digger’s dilemma

Andrew McIntyre is restless. Late the night before, one of the officers in the police whom he knows, a detective, quietly came to give him fair warning that he is to be arrested this day. Sure enough, even though it is still only two in the morning, he can hear men marching outside, quietly grunting, cursing. Perhaps in the darkness they’re not sure which is his tent. But he has no doubt, from the clink of stirrups, the snorting of horses and the guttural commands, that there is a substantial armed force not far away. What to do? Surrender? Flee?

McIntyre feels himself to be innocent and has no desire to flee. Instead, he leaves the searchers waiting for two hours until the first light of dawn, then goes out and pleasantly asks if they would like to come in for a nobbler or two.

No, they would not. The ten detectives and the sergeant major of police would like to arrest him. And just to be sure that there will be no trouble, they are backed by a file of mounted police.

McIntyre is manacled and marched away to the lockup.

Another fellow, a printer by the name of Thomas Fletcher, is also quickly taken, and it is not long before both are brought before the presiding magistrate, Commissioner Johnstone, to defend the charge that they did on ‘the 17th day of October last, at Ballarat, unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assemble together to the disturbance of the public peace, and being then so unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, as aforesaid, did then feloniously, unlawfully, and with force, demolish and pull down the dwelling-house of one James Francis Bentley, there situated, in contempt of our lady the Queen and her laws, to the evil example of all others in the like case offending . . .’

Eight policemen give eye-witness evidence against McIntyre before the case is opened against Fletcher. One young rebel who is there, Samuel Lazarus – he came to Australia at the same time as Tim and Anastasia Hayes and their children – records in his diary that the second witness, ‘a thin cadaverous sickly looking wretch (useful only for such vile purposes) . . . went on as fluently as though he was reading from a book, charging him with destroying property, arson and even inciting to murder. Poor Fletcher grew pale as death as the wretch proceeded in his diabolical evidence and seemed as though he could hardly support himself at the bar.’

Bail refused. (And this, after Bentley, accused of murdering a man, had been bailed. The sheer injustice of it is staggering.) The two men are ordered to stand trial the following Thursday, whereby, whereb . . . whe . . .
What is that noise
?

It is the sound of shouting.

Word has spread and by now some 7000 outraged diggers have gathered outside, demanding that McIntyre and Fletcher be released on bail or they will storm the Government Camp.

Of
all
people to have arrested. Throughout the madness on that night, it had been McIntyre who had been actively trying to calm things down, while many of the diggers seem to feel – mistakenly – that Fletcher had not even been there at all!

So volatile is the situation that anything might happen, and it is all that some of the more moderate diggers can do to restrain the others from storming the premises.

In the end, the mob agrees to stay well back while a delegation of 12 men go inside to negotiate. Even then it is a close-run thing.

In extremis
,
Magistrate Sturt, after consulting with Acting-Commissioner of the Victoria Police Charles MacMahon – both men have arrived together in Ballarat that very afternoon – reach an agreement with the delegates inside the Police Magistrates’ Court. Arthur Akehurst, the young ‘Clerk of the Peace’ and leading legal functionary in the court, carefully notes that each man is to be released with bail of £500 and sureties of £250. (Which, again, is staggering considering that the presumed murderer, Bentley, only had bail of £200 and £100 surety.)

Still, when Sturt tells them he is only interested in ‘investigating the matter’ and is remarkably conciliatory in his approach regarding bail, the diggers feel that the authorities have tacitly promised that there will be no more arrests. The delegation also meets MacMahon, who quietly and privately feels a little less conciliatory than the Magistrate he has advised. He reports to Colonial Secretary Foster that he actually thinks the diggers are ‘exhibiting a bullying spirit’ and are lacking any ‘proper respect for authority’. But given that he had been quietly told by a couple of men in whom he has implicit confidence that unless he gives bail to the men, the Camp would likely be attacked in order to force their release, he feels he had no choice but to grant bail. It is with this threat in mind that he orders that there are indeed to be no more arrests . . . until a detachment of the 12th Regiment arrives on Ballarat in a few days’ time.

Meanwhile, the situation outside remains volatile. The 7000 diggers who have promised to stay back from the Camp first get to the gully below it, then cross the Yarrowee upon the newly constructed bridge and approach the entrance of the Camp itself, where they are confronted by armed police and troopers.

‘Nothing could exceed the wild frenzy, the commotion, and even the terrible determination that prevailed of proceeding to violence at once,’
The Ballarat Times
would report, ‘notwithstanding the previous arrangement of sending a deputation. In this manner the people were agitated like a troubled ocean for upwards of an hour on the precincts of the Camp. During the whole time the Camp was panic-stricken, dismayed and terrified.’

Anything could happen at this point, most particularly after one rough-looking bear of a man cries out, ‘Come on, I’ll be your Bloody Captain!’ and starts to lead them forward. Just when it seems that a violent clash is inevitable, just after five o’clock on this Saturday afternoon . . .
there they are
!

McIntyre and Fletcher, surrounded by the diggers’ delegation, triumphantly appear from the Camp entrance and walk towards the bridge. The sum of £1000 for their release has been raised by the committee for their defence.

They are quickly engulfed by the masses and head back down the road, away from the Government Camp. Catastrophe is avoided, though many in the crowd can’t resist firing their pistols in the air as they go, a gesture of both celebratory defiance and warning. ‘One Irish man,’ McIntyre would later write to his brother, ‘had 6 six-barreled revolvers in his hand, in all 36 shots.’ The crowd wants to carry McIntyre away on their shoulders and have a German band ready to lead them, but the Scot, ‘got them advised to desist such a demonstration’.

At this point it is Tom Kennedy’s considered advice that McIntyre should flee from Ballarat, a point vigorously objected to by one of the committee who has put up a fair portion of his bail. In any case, McIntyre will have none of it. He says he has done nothing wrong and refuses to hide for so much as an hour. He is happy to have his day in court.

Commissioner Rede, for one, is very glad to see the back of the lot of them, as all of the goldfields now seem to be in revolt. Apart from the burning of the Eureka Hotel, the issue of the maltreatment of Father Smyth’s servant has continued to bubble and boil, to trouble and toil. There is to be a meeting of the diggers in the chapel after Mass on Bakery Hill the next day, to look at ways of seeking justice.

On the direct orders of His Excellency, Rede has to call on Father Smyth and officially tell him that Sir Charles ‘sees no reason for being dissatisfied with Mr Johnstone’s conduct, [and] say that [Sir Charles] relies upon the Priest using that influence he possesses over his flock to maintain the peace and stop excitement’. Against that, Sir Charles has also taken the precaution of removing James Lord from Ballarat.

Not to worry, the priest tells him. As Rede would later recount in a report to his superiors, ‘He said he did not wish to press the charge, and promised he would keep the people so late at Chapel that they would not have time to assemble.’

Evening, 21 October 1854, Star Hotel, Main Road Ballarat East, a committee is formed

Yes, the Eureka Hotel is gone, but few of the diggers ever drank there anyway, so no-one misses it. For many of the most distinguished diggers, their preferred place to drink is the Star Hotel on Main Road, and it is here in the days after the arrests that a gathering of diggers and other interested parties votes to form a committee – composed of Friedrich Vern, John Basson Humffray and, of course, Thomas Kennedy – to organise the defence of the arrested men.

Of these men, perhaps the most impressive ‘gentleman’ – for that is his whole persona – is the good-looking, eloquent and softly spoken 30-year-old Welshman and moral-force Chartist, Humffray.

Eighteen months earlier, Humffray had been living and working in Cardiff, doing his articles to become a solicitor when, like so many, he had chanced to read some articles about the riches to be found on the Australian goldfields. Shortly thereafter, he threw it all in to try his luck.

After arriving on Victorian shores aboard
Star of the East
on 19 September 1853, he quickly made his way to the goldfields and soon recognised that precisely the same issues that the Chartists were concerned with were also present here. It was natural that he should also become involved in the reform movement in Australia. He had always made the case, however, that the people should make their fight via the legal routes of petitions and resolutions, and never by attempting to take the law into their own hands. The moment you step outside the law, you lose all moral authority to make your case for legal redress.

In fact, his approach to the matter at hand has been neatly summed up in a letter to
The Ballarat Times
,
where he describes the charred rafters of the Eureka Hotel as a ‘bundle of crayons with which to write the black history of crime and colonial misrule . . .’

‘The diggers know their rights,’ he continues. ‘They know also they have the power to enforce them, but they are also willing to hail them under the banner of peace, law and order . . . The people ask for justice not bullets! . . . The land question, the license question, and the representative question are all questions of moment and must be satisfactorily answered.’

Carboni, always a hard marker in such matters, likes Humffray from the first and later describes him thus: ‘He had an honest and benevolent heart, directed by a liberal mind . . . possessing . . . a fine forehead, denoting astuteness . . . a pair of eyes that mark the spell . . . a Grecian nose; of a mouth remarkable for the elasticity of the lips, that make him a model of pronunciation of English language.’

Humffray is a well-educated, natural leader of men, with a melodic way of speaking. There is no violence in him, no hint of menace. If the time has now come to parley with the Lieutenant-Governor is now, he is the obvious one among them to speak to His Excellency on his own level.

For his own part, Carboni is typically caustic in his summation of Vern, the Hanoverian, who is nevertheless liked by others, ‘With the eyes of an opossum, a common nose, healthy looking cheeks, not very small mouth, no beard . . . broad shoulders . . . splendid chest, long arms – the whole of your appearance makes you a lion amongst the fair sex, in spite of your bad English, worse German, abominable French . . . You have not a dishonest heart, but you believe in nothing except the gratification of your silly vanity, or ambition, as you call it.’

In the meantime, all over the diggings, placards are now posted, declaring:

FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD

Whereas James Scobie was, early on the morning of the 7th instant, found murdered near the Eureka Hotel, Ballarat.

Notice is hereby given that a reward of Five hundred pounds will be paid to any person . . .

And at least, in this case, the government has done the right thing, putting up the money for the reward and allowing those diggers who had previously raised the £200 for their own reward to be reimbursed.

One who takes particular notice of the Scobie poster is the man who used to be the nightwatchman at the Eureka Hotel when it was still standing, Thomas Mooney. As one who is now without a job and without prospects, he decides to confess everything about the murder in the hope of claiming the reward. He was there on the night; he saw it all. It is with this in mind that the next day he quietly, oh so quietly, presents himself to the authorities and asks to speak to someone on the matter of the death of James Scobie . . .

Not long afterwards, there is yet one more fellow who, after flitting through the long shadows of dusk, suddenly emerges to whisper that he would also like to have a quiet chat with the constabulary at Government Camp, Ballarat. And so it is that the important deposition of one Michael Welsh – a waiter who lived at the Eureka Hotel, was there on that fateful, fatal night and saw it all – is also taken down and added to the weight of evidence for the prosecution. By that night, Welsh is on his way under armed guard to Geelong, where he will be secured for his own safety.

———

One bit of positive news for the diggers amid all the drama is that Peter Lalor and his committee composed their petition to His Excellency – ‘. . .
your
petitioners [are] dissatisfied with the manner in which justice has been administered in regard to the death of one James Scobie
. . .’ –
and received a positive response.

In the face of the uprising and the petition, in receipt of the dissenting view from Assistant-Commissioner Johnstone – and with the news that two of Bentley’s staff have come forward and offered to give evidence against their employer – the judicial authorities under Sir Charles, led by Attorney-General Stawell, feel they have no choice but to act. Stawell feels so strongly that, once he is convinced ‘the authorities had taken the wrong course’, he immediately journeys out to Toorac House and exhorts His Excellency to have Bentley and his companions arrested once more and again brought to trial, something Sir Charles readily agrees to.