AUSTRALIAN OUTLAWS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7680, 15 April 1903, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN OUTLAWS.

*■ • ; BUSHRANGERS OF A BYEGONE DAY.

[All Rights Reserved.]

CHAPTER XVlll.— (Continued.)

After, evidence had been produced supporting the account of the murder already given, and showing how the bodies of the lour men had been found lying dead in the bush — two in one place and two in another, with gunshot -wounds in different parts of the bodies— witnesses were called to connect the prisoner with the crime. Their evidence 'was of a character so extraordinary that 1 make no excuse for the extensive quotations, taken from, the published report of the trial, which follow : —

Edward Smith deposed: On Jan. 8 last I was •managing- the Jinden station, about forty miles from Braidwood ; I remember come dea-it bodies being found about a mile and a half from Jinden House • the d-ead bodies were those of Carroll, Phegan, M'Donnell and Kennagh. I saw the prisoner at my place ou the evening of Jan. 8 la-st. He did not remain there more than a quarter or half an hour ; he came to me and said that Carroll and his party were on the road— that they were at the Dirty Swamp as he passed them; prisoner was riding a bay horse, and when lie left any house 'he rode' away towards Braidwood in the direction in -which „,_ had said Carroll and his party were coming; on the same night a young man named IJempsey — who was sub-equ-ently an-ested — came to my house and stayed about half an hour, and about sundown Carroll and his party arrived and remained at my house all night ; they left on the following morning about seven o'clock, going towards the farm of a man named Ouinn es, a. free selector ; the prisoner came to my house on that morning,' about half an "hour after Carroll's party left. Prisoner told me that he had seen Carroll and his party going towards Guinness place. Carroll and his party left my place on foot, having left their horses with me. Prisoner stayed about half an hour, and when he left he went ays if he were going to Guinness place. He was riding a grey horse. He asked me to lend him my breech-ioading rifle. I refused to do so. I told him he should not have it.He told ane not to give it to Ser.geant Byrnes or Carroll, I did not see any other stranger's about my place on Jan. 8. I know iM'Eneny's place. It is about threequarters of a mile beyond Guinness. I was there about three days before. I did not see any strangers about there or about Guinness. I next saw the prisoner on the following •Sunday at the house of Michael O'Connell, a publican at -S'toney Creek ; some people call him Connell. Stoney .Creek is sixteen miles from misplace. I had some conversation there with the prisoner alone. I saw him there on the following Sunday, the 13th. He said: " After leaving your place last night, I went towaids Clarke's place." Clarke's place, is between twenty and twenty-five utiles from Jinden House. Priwiner said: "I broirght the bushrangers up that night." He did hot mention any name. He said : " Bill ;. Scott and John 'Clarke .stood b?hind one tree, and Tommy Clarke stood behind th-e other"; be did not mention any place; he said, "Carroll and his party advanced, and Tommy Clarke went out from behind the tree and called upon them to surrender;," those are 'the exact words; "Phegan and M'Donnell fell; M'Donnell fired one shot <nit of his revolving rifle and his leg was broken ; they fired into the detectives ; Kennagh and Can-oil retreat*-, down the flat; Kennagh took two ball? from the tree behind which Bill Scott and Johnny Clarke were ; Tommy Clarke ran round at the back of Kennagh and fired a shot at (Kennagh, and the ball went into a sapling close alongside of him ; Clarke called for a horse, and a horse was brought down." He did not tell me by whom the horse was brought down ; that was after

he told. m. Tommy Clarke got behind Kennagh ; he did not tell me which took place first ; Tommy Clarke fired a shot at Kennagh, and called upon Kennagh to surrender ; Kennagh looked round and threw his rifle on his arm and surrendered ; there was one shoJ> in the revolving ritle- when Kennagh surrendered ; Tommy Clarke said to Carroll, "You are Carroll;" Carroll said that he was not Carroll, that Carroll was lying dead on the road 1 ; Tommy Clarke said, "Make up your mind,; you have not got many more minutes to live;" .Carroll then said, ',' Mercy!" Tommy Clarke said, " You can't expect mercy, you - did not show mercy to my sister;" that is all prisoner „„.<?; he said that Tommy Clarke shot Carroll, and that Bill Scott sdiot Kennagh ; John Clarke did not shoot any of them ; Tommy Clarke shot three out oi the lour ; he did not tell me whereabouts the wounds were ; he did not tell me what Tommy Clarke shot Carroll Avithj or what Bill Scott shot Kennagh with ; he said all the money on them was only £1 2s 6d ; that is all the prisoner said ; he said nothing at all about Kennagh; he did not fay o»i whom- the money was found ; he made some remark about Kennagh, but I do not remember what it was ; prisoner said he held the horses ; I remember that now ; I don't remember anything more as to where he held them, how he held them, or anything else; he said that he held the horses ; h_ did not tell me who took the horse down, on the flat ; he said Clarke called for a horse ; prisoner expressed a wish to go with me to Gippsland; I told him that it looked very suspicious, and that he had better not go ; he said Tommy Clarke had his boots off and was barefooted ; Mick Connell, the landlord, wa~ present, and asked Griffin if the gin had taken effect, anci Griffin replied, " Only for the gin I could not have got 'em up to the pinch;" when prisoner came to the house on the 9th he had some gin m a square bottle ; I was in

the parlour when I heard the two talking, and Connell said, "Then you brought the horses there?" Griffin said that Tommy Clarke could not catch Carroll running down the hill barefooted.

The -witness was subjected to a rigorous cross-examination by Sir Dalley, who appeared for tho accused, and admitted that he had sworn differently at the Police Court, but- explained that he was then in fear of his life-, some of the Clarkes' friends having declared that if lie told anything against them he and all belonging to him would be shot- down. In answer to the judge, Smith said that he had been previously fired at- nnr_<his place burned down, and that after giving evidence at the Police Court he had sold out and left the district. *

Catherine M'Eneny, who • resided near Jinden at the lime, identified the prisoner as one of lour armed men who had called at he-r hut on the morning of the murder. She heard the firing in the biu-b. after they left, and subsequently saw them returning across the bush. This witness also declared that she had been threatened and compelled to leave the district, her pigs and gee.c having been snot. r

The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. There was home manifestation of feeling on the p.t-t of the crowd m the Court ; but tlie applause was ahnost instantly suppressed by the police.

The prisoner was then remanded to gaol to 'be subsequently tried with a brother for complicity v/ith the bushrangers in other matters. In the charge preferred against them, however, the Crown failed to make good its case — in fact, circumstance, redounding to the credit-- oi one of flic accused were brought to light in the Court. Ho had frequently givtu information to the police regarding the movements oi the bushranger-, and it was upon his information and by his guidance that the party of police under Wright surrounded, the hut where tl^o two Clarkes were staying the night preceding their capture. When discharging the two men — tlie jury having returned a- verdict of not guilly — the Chief Justice said he thought the authorities might have shown them a little more consideration, in view of tlie services which they had rendered to the police.

But James Griffin was not yet out ot the toils. In September following he was- again placed upon his trial on a charge of being concerned in the Jinden murders. Special Constable Kennagh being specifically n_nn.d aa the victim. He was ably defended by Mr. Dalley, but additional evidence was forthcoming ,vhich clearly established his complicity in the cowardly and bloodthirsty deed. One witness wa.x called who declared that on the day preceding the murder the prisoner had asked him to join in the murder, while Smith repeated the evidence given by him on the former trial concerning the conversation he had heard between the prisoner and Connell. Griffin was, on this occasion, found guilty, and sentenced to death ; but that sentence was subsequently- commuted to imprisonment for life, the fii.st three years in irons.

One move event in connection with the reign of the Clarkes remains to be recorded. At least one man of the many who had by sheltering and assisting them enabled the outlaws to successfully evade airest for Mich a length of time was brought to account. Shortly after the Griffins had been discharged, Michael Connell, brother of the bushranger of that .name, who was a member of Clarke's gang, and who had been shot by the police during one of their earliest encounters with the gang, was charged under the Outlawry Act with having harboured and assisted the Clarkes. Connell, at the time of his arrest, was postmaster and publican in that part of the di.'»trict forming the favourite resort of the Claikes, and it was proved that he had repeatedly furnished the- bushrangers with provisions and spirits, and even with ammunition. The principal witness against him was a man who was serving a long sentence for highway robbery, he having been captured when engaged with the Clarkes in "sticking up ' a store. This man declared that his principal duty was to obtain provisions for the gang, and that he repeatedly visited Conhell's house, sometimes with another member of- the gang, and obtained supplies, Connell knowing at- the time that they were for the outlaws.

Upon this evidence Connell was convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, his land and goods being confiscated at the Mine time to the Crown. His was tho first case brought before the Court under the provisions of the Felons' Apprehension Act bearing upon secondary offenders — aiders and abettors of the criminals outlawed, and it goes without saying that Connell's fate served as a salutary warning to others who had been guilty of similar offences, or who may have felt inclined to commit them. It will be readily understood that- the complete break up of the Clarkes' gang and its large cordon of ac-. complices and active sympathisers, gave satisfaction to the people of Braidwood. The beginning of ' the end of bushramging had already been seen in the district, and

henceforth bushranging in gangs, either in this or other districts of the colony, was to be lookeCl 'upon a-s a thing of the past,for .It hough the crime of bushranging in New South Wales was not completely stamped out it was narrowed down until it became confined to individual cases, one man preying upon his fellows, generally for only a short time, until the now bettermanaged police force succeeded in arresting the offender. It must next- be imagined that the "old leaven, " of which the Chief Justice spoke in his address to the Clarkes*, had workcdi out of the social system of what were known as tlie infested districts. The youth who were inclined to bushranging had not been suddenly made virtuous by any moral awakening tn tbe -iufulnes- of time sin. But fear kept them from indulgence — the fear of treachery on the part of trusted friends, or the fear of the better police service, which had developed — very slowly, certainly — out- of a system which had more- than once, in Parliament and in 'the Press, been frequently characterised as "rotten." Thes** were the causes operating to the. greater peace and safety of the dwwlleir.? in the bush, who hitherto had been the victims of the lawles.-iiesji that had prevailed; and tlie reign of long-lived, daring bushranging gangs was, so far as New South Wales was concerned, brought to an end by the execution of the Clarkes and the death or imprisonment of their confederates and their principal, aiders and abettors. I+- was reserved for the neighbouring colony of Victoria, whose constant boasti it had been that bushrangers could not live in her territory for as many days a-s they had reigned', years in New South Wales, to furnish, some ten years afterwards, one of the mo^t notorious of all notorious bushranging gangs that ever cursed Australian soil — more darinsr. more cool and determined, more skilled in bushcraft, more bloodthirsty than any that had preceded it, and whose capture cost the State no less a sum than £115.000. The story of bnshranging in -Australia would not be complete if the extraordinary exploits of the Kelly Gang were not given ; and although they relate to a period not at all early in the history of the colonies their narration here will not, I trust, be considered out of place. (To be continued on Saturday.) A happy thought, leading to the production of a useful article, often brings the inventor a fortune. See handbook on " Patents," obtainable, free by post from Baldwin and Rayward, 172. Gloucester Street. Christchur.ii. A. H. Hart, reprejentative. X3056-2 King Solomon's Mines, tha. fabulous place, Heaped ..p *-;th precrm- stor-:. Poor Avarice, even, cannot trace, Or claim it for her own ; There's something wanting mere than wealth To happiness secure, Cure vniir cough, enjoy good health, "Take— 6 WOODS' GREAT PEPPERMINT CURE.