THE LIFE OF BURGESS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXI, Issue 2432, 25 October 1866, Page 5

THE LIFE OF BURGESS.

Appended to the report of the trial of the Maungatapu murderers, which has been issued from the Colonist office, there is a sketch of the life of llichard Burgess, one of the criminals, which has been prepared from a history written by himself, by Mr. Luckie, the editor of that paper. The original manuscript, which Burgess wrote in prison, was replete not only with vain aud pretentious declamation, and with. much, useless repetition, but also, strange to say, with scriptural phrases ; it has consequently been much improved in the abridged form in which it now appears. Richard Burgess was born at Hatton Garden, London, on Uth February, 1829, being the illegitimate offspring of a lady's maid, serving in the family of Lord Grosvenor and "«omo one connected with the Horse Guards." After being sent to two schools, from both of which he was expelled, he was sent to learn the trade of cabinet making, but left it when he was fourteen years old, to become the associate of thieves and pickpockets. In 1845 ho was tried at the Old Bailey for burglary, and, being sentenced to fifteen years' transportation, was sent in May, 1817, with threw hundred other convicts, to the colony of Victoria, whore they all obtained conditional pardons. After wundering about Australia for a few months, sometimes living by crime, sometimes working at a trade, ho was ia 18-18 apprehended in Adelaide on a charge of forgery, and being found guilty, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. We now quote from the life beforo us.

At the expiration of his period of imprisonment, he left; Adelaide, and returned to Melbourne j und thero, about the beginning of the year 1850, he engaged, he declares, with a butcher, who now .occupies a dignified station in society, to steal cattle wholesale for him. "In this business he continued until he had stolen more than 500 head

of cattle and a much greater^number of sheep; and it does not appear that he w.as ever suspected in these transactions.

He next took to robbing gold diggers, and after living by these means for some time, committed his first murder in 1851, on tho Keiler Plains. His second murder was thafc of a German at Black Forest, on the Bendigo diggings. These crimes remained undiscovered, but on returning to Melbourne ho was apprehended, according to his own account, on a false charge of robbery, and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. While in confinement he behaved himself very badly, and made attempts to escape, but they were unsuccessful. In 1855 ho was sent on board the hulk Success, and being allowed to p,o on shore to work^ at stone cutting, at which he was very skilful, he, .with some* other convicts, made another attempt to escape by seizing a boat on shore, in charge of two officers, belonging to the hulk. The attempt was unsuccessful, but it ended in murder. The manner of it was as follows : —

Whilo the boat -was lying at the wharf with, two officers in charge, one of whom was named Owen Owens, the ten prisoners suddenly leaped ' into her, overpowered the men, and launched off from the wharf. They threw the two officers overboard; but seeing that Owens could not swim, they took him on board again. He" lay down or sat down in the boat, which, to get out, had to pass not far from the hulk, and a good way within gunshot distance. Those on board th« hulk observed what was going on, and fired on the boat. Burgess, who was among the last to jump into the boat, had broken the tiller with his foot, so that, being in the stern, he was managing the rudder with his hands, stooping as much as possible to get out of the way of the bullets fired from the hulk. He was stretching out his arms, grasping the upper part of the rudder between his hands, when he heard one of the prisoners ordering Owen Owejis to stand up in the boat, as they knew that if those on board the hulk saw Owens, they would cease firing for the sake of their own officer. Owens repeatedly refused to stand up. The other prisoner then asked Burgess to hand him a small stone-mason's hammer, which lay in the stern. He stretched out hia hand and handed him the hammer. At this, time he was shot in the back by a bullet from the ship, and the other man struck Owens or the head and scattered his brains about the boat. When Burgess recovered his consciousness, he found thia murder committed ; and the boat was soon after taken, and all the prisoners recaptured. They were all charged with murder, and Burges9, wh» was severely wounded, was brought into Court on his mattress. This happened in October, 1855. The men wero all committed for murder; but' on the trial, owing to some informality in the law, • which professed to discover that the men were not in proper legal custody at the time they attempted to escape, they were not convicted j otherwise, had a conviction been obtained, they would all no doubt have been hanged. The hulk system does not appear to have been a very good one, and it was abandoned* after the murder of Mr. John Price, Inspector of the Penal Department in 1857, for which seven meu were tried, condemned, and executed. After being in prison seven years, Burgess was liberated with a ticket-of-leave, but he could not live honestly, and having made Melbourne " too hot," fur him, came to Otago in January, 1862, in the Asa Eldridge, and commenced his career of crime in New Zealand. Here it was that he met Kelly, and adopting the murderous maxim, " Dead men tell no tales," determined to put to death everyone that he robbed. Hia subsequent career is so wellknown that it is scarcely necessary to say anything about it here. What he might have been, if he had not led a life of crime, the following extract may serve to show:— • During the remainder of his incarceration in Duncdiu, Burgess applied himself with great assiduity t& study. His reading was very extensive, and he says embraced books on history, biography, science, and art. He taught himself plane and spherical trigonometry and algebra; and he mastered the difficult problems of navigation. The learning of navigation was done with a purpose, and it was the basis of one of the most remarkable schemes of daring ever heard of. . His study of this branch of learning was undertake* with a "view to the capture of a steamer carrying gold. Ho saw the ease with which he could ally himself with a sufficient number of desperadoes to form a band strong enough to seize one of the golden-laden steamers on taking their departure from the W«st Ceas 1 ;, overpower the crew, and kill all who were refractory, and sail away with the prize. Nor was the mere seizure of a Wesb Coast gold steamer the only object Burgess sought after in thus perfecting himself in the art, which would ( enable him to direct the course of a vessel. Mere local sailing was not his sole aim. He was desirous of ranging the high seas, and appeared to have / visions of rivalling, if but for a short time, the career of pirates of a century and a-half ago. Such wa9 hia dream. He thought that witli a smart steamer, calca-. lating the date of a gold ship from Melbourne, he could lie in the path of homeward bound ships and succeed in seizing a prize worthy of capture, with the proceeds of which he and his coadjutors in crime might retire into thafc " dignified position" which he affirms his quondam associate in the cattle stealing exploits in Victoria now occupies. That an attempt of this kind might have been made by such a man as Burgess at the head of a body of sooundrels, such as ho, with his long prison experience in the colonies could without difficulty have gathered around him, we readily beli«ve; that it would have been ultimately successful is another question. Still the difficulty of disposing of the ship, and of landing the stolen prizes without detection, and the possible chances of failure, would weigh lightly in the balance against a scheme of the kind conceived in the fertile brain, and sanguine imagination of a great and clever criminal like Burgess. That he cherished this scheme is clear, for, in his cross-examination of Sullivan in tha Court, he spoke of it as having been under consideration, and he subsequently Btated in prison that he felt some such attempt would bo necessary, as he had made so many places on land too hot for him that he knew he would some day bo obliged to try the water. He had been driven from place to place,' and had become a marked man, and having done so muoh on the land, ho had hopus of one great success on the sea, which lie intended should terminate his career of crime, and ho would then become an honest citizen 1

But any design of that kind, even it were possible to be carried out, was formed "too late. There was a time in- his life, perhaps, whon he might have retraced his stepa, but having become so steeped in wickedness, like Macbeth, he oould neither go back nor stand still ; he must plunge still more deeply into the abyss of crime. Besides the life of Burgess, there are also short sketches of the lives of Kelly, Levy, and Sullivan, which form a valuable record of the circumstances connected with the late trial.