Black Caesar – John Caesar, First Fleet Convict and Australia's First Bushranger – c.1763 to 1796

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.

Ask most people to name an Australian bushranger and you'll get Ned Kelly, Ben Hall or Captain Thunderbolt. Hardly anyone says John Caesar. Yet the man the First Fleet officers called "Black Caesar" was out in the bush around Sydney Cove robbing gardens with a stolen musket in 1789, the best part of a century before the Kelly Gang. He escaped again and again, ran a small gang of runaways, had a price put on his head, and was shot dead near what is now Strathfield in February 1796. The Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW all call him Australia's first bushranger.

A word of warning before we start. Nearly everything we know about Caesar was written by the officers who were trying to catch him, mostly the Judge-Advocate David Collins. Collins wrote about him in the openly racist language of the 1790s. I quote him where I have to, because his are the only eyewitness words we have, but remember who was holding the pen.

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson in January 1788, drawn by Lieutenant William Bradley of the Sirius. John Caesar was below decks on the Alexander. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was John Caesar?

We don't know his real name. "Caesar" was a common name given to slaves, and the account on the Enslaved.org database (from Kimberly Cheek's entry in the African American National Biography) says he probably got it after being taken to the Americas as a slave in the late 1770s. The ADB says he was "of unknown African parentage" and "may have been born on Madagascar". Lieutenant William Bradley wrote in January 1790 that Caesar was "a Native of Madagascar". The Dictionary of Sydney, on the other hand, calls him a "West Indian who fled to England to escape plantation slavery".

Madagascar on John Hamilton Moore's map of 1791. Bradley called Caesar "a Native of Madagascar". John Hamilton Moore, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From Slavery to the Streets of London

The historian Cassandra Pybus, in her 2006 book Black Founders, put Caesar into a bigger story. Jeff Sparrow's review in The Age explains it. During the American Revolution, Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, offered freedom to slaves who would fight for the King, and hundreds ran to the British lines. When Britain lost, the lucky ones got a berth on the last ships out of New York and were written down in a register called the Book of Negroes. Many ended up poor and friendless in London. Pybus summed up the point bluntly: "Australia's first bushranger was black as pitch."

Wikipedia, drawing on Pybus, says the Book of Negroes lists two young men called Caesar, aged 14 and 18, sailing to Spithead in England in 1783, and that Pybus believes the 14-year-old, a "stout fellow", was our man. The Enslaved.org account says he either fled to the British hoping for freedom, or was the property of a Loyalist owner who went back to England after the war.

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation of 7 November 1775, offering freedom to slaves who would fight for the British. Pybus traces Caesar's road to London back to promises like this one. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A page from the Book of Negroes, the 1783 register of Black Loyalists leaving New York with the British. Pybus believes Caesar is in it. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Deptford, Maidstone and the Hulk

By 1786 Caesar was a servant living in the parish of St Paul, Deptford, on the Thames. On 13 March that year, at Maidstone in Kent, he was convicted of stealing about £12 from a house and sentenced to seven years' transportation. He was sent to the hulk Ceres to wait for a ship. When his age was taken in May 1787 it was put at 23, which is where the "born about 1763" comes from.

Deptford Dockyard on the Thames, painted by Joseph Farington in the 1700s. This was Caesar's neighbourhood in the 1780s. Joseph Farington, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St Paul's Church, Deptford. Caesar was a servant living in this parish in 1786. Anosmia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A convict hulk at Woolwich, from the New Newgate Calendar. Caesar waited on the hulk Ceres before he was put aboard the Alexander. Page, after Dodd, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Alexander and the First Fleet

On 6 January 1787 Caesar was put aboard the Alexander at Woolwich. The Dictionary of Sydney calls her "the largest and most notorious convict transport in the First Fleet", a 452-ton barque carrying 195 of "ye worst of land-lubbers". Its entry describes Caesar as "a well-built Malagasy". Wikipedia says he was one of at least twelve black convicts on the ship. Carolyn Webb, writing about Santilla Chingaipe's research in 2021, said there were at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.

The Alexander reached Botany Bay with the rest of the fleet on 19 January 1788.

The First Fleet at Cape Town in November 1787, the last port of call before Botany Bay, by William Bradley. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Fleet arriving at Botany Bay in January 1788, engraved by T. Medland after R. Cleveley, with Aboriginal people watching from their canoes. R. Cleveley and T. Medland, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Strength and Appetite

What everyone noticed about Caesar was his size and his hunger. Collins wrote that he "was always reputed the hardest working convict in the country; his frame was muscular and well calculated for hard labour". Then came the problem: "his appetite was ravenous, for he could in any one day devour the full ration for two days. To gratify this appetite he was compelled to steal from others, and all his thefts were directed to that purpose."

That rations problem was real. Wikipedia says Caesar was six feet tall, and that the weekly ration in 1790 was about a kilo of pork, 1.2 kilos of flour and a kilo of rice. For a big man doing hard labour, that was hunger.

The trouble started early. Extracts from the Sydney Cove records, put together by the University of Wollongong's First Fleet project, show that on 30 April 1788, barely three months after landing, Caesar was accused of stealing 4 pounds of bread from Richard Partridge's tent. Caesar said the bread in his bag had been given to him by a Mr Shairp.

Sydney Cove in 1788, by William Bradley. This tiny camp was the settlement Caesar kept running away from. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Into the Bush, Again and Again

The First Escape, May 1789

On 29 April 1789 Caesar was tried for theft again and sentenced to transportation for life. Scott recorded in his diary that "two Black men (Convicts) one by the name of Ceasar and the other called Black Jemmy" were tried that day. Caesar got life and Black Jemmy got 500 lashes.

On 13 May Caesar ran. Scott wrote that he "Elloped from Camp taking with him Arms and Ammunition belonging to Abraham Hand, Marine". Collins said he took "some provisions, an iron pot, and a soldier's musket". On 26 May he robbed the brickmakers of their rations and got away from the party sent after him. On the night of 6 June another convict, William Saltmarsh, caught him close to the house of Zachariah Clark, the assistant commissary.

Caesar wasn't sorry. Collins wrote that he was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing off some trick upon the executioner." Governor Phillip decided not to hang him. Instead he was sent to Garden Island to work in fetters, and he was given vegetables from the garden on top of his ration.

Garden Island today, now part of the naval base. Caesar worked here in chains in 1789. Dcoetzee, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Canoe, December 1789

Caesar behaved himself on Garden Island well enough to have his irons taken off. Then on 22 December 1789 he took the canoe kept there for the workers, along with a week of their food, and went. A few nights later he came back in the canoe and helped himself to an iron pot, a musket and some ammunition.

This time he tried to live off the land. The ADB says he robbed settlers' gardens and threatened Aboriginal people camped nearby, taking their food. He couldn't make it work. On 30 January 1790 Collins recorded that Caesar had turned up at Rose Hill "very much wounded by some natives whom he had met with in the woods", with "several spear wounds about him in different parts of his body". Caesar tried to talk his way out of a flogging with a story that he had found the colony's lost cattle being minded by Aboriginal men, and had been speared trying to drive them home. Nobody believed him. He went to the hospital instead of the triangle.

The naval depot on Garden Island about 1900, from the Tyrrell collection. Powerhouse Museum, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Norfolk Island

Phillip then did something surprising. He pardoned Caesar and shipped him off to Norfolk Island in the Supply, in March 1790. Collins wrote that among the convicts sent there was "the troublesome and incorrigible Caesar, on whom he had bestowed a pardon".

On the island Caesar did better than he ever had in Sydney. By 1 July 1791 he was supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough and had been given a hog. In January 1792 he was given an acre of land and only had to work three days a week for the government. He also had a partner, Ann Power, a convict who had come out on the Lady Juliana in 1790. Their daughter was born on 4 March 1792.

The Justinian and Surprize standing into Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, on 23 August 1790, drawn by William Bradley. Caesar had arrived on the island a few months earlier. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Part of the reef in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, where the Sirius was wrecked, by William Bradley. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kingston, Norfolk Island, from Flagstaff Hill in 2018. Inas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It didn't last. About twelve months after his daughter was born, Caesar went back to Port Jackson in the Kitty, leaving Ann and the baby behind. Ann died on Norfolk Island in 1796. Their daughter was taken in by a woman named Hannah Fisher, was baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power in 1806, and later went to Van Diemen's Land.

Back in Sydney, and Pemulwuy

Caesar was barely back before he was off again. In July 1794 Collins reported that he "took up again his former practice of subsisting in the woods by plundering the farms and huts at the outskirts of the towns". He was soon caught and flogged hard, and he answered, Collins wrote, "with exultation and contempt, that 'all that would not make him better.'"

Late in 1795 Caesar was with a convict work party at Botany Bay when it was attacked by warriors led by the Bidjigal resistance leader Pemulwuy. The ADB says Caesar wounded Pemulwuy. Wikipedia says he cracked his skull. For a while the colony thought Caesar had killed him. In December Collins wrote that Caesar was "reported" to have "done one meritorious action, killing Pe-mul-wy". The Dictionary of Sydney's Pemulwuy entry says the report "turned out to be false". Pemulwuy kept fighting for another six years, until he was shot dead on 2 June 1802.

Botany Bay about 1789, a watercolour by Charles Gore. Late in 1795 Caesar's work party was attacked at Botany Bay, in Bidjigal country. Charles Gore, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Watling's "Direct North General View of Sydney Cove", 1794. This was the town Caesar came back to from Norfolk Island. Thomas Watling, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Australia's First Bushranger

In December 1795 Caesar escaped for the last time. Collins, in one of his ugliest lines, called him "a savage of a darker hue" who had "once more fled from honest labour to the woods, there to subsist by robbing the settlers". This time Caesar wasn't on his own. He had a gang of runaways around him, armed, and Collins later put their number at "six or eight".

Caesar sent word into town that "he neither would come in, nor suffer himself to be taken alive". That made him a real problem for the Governor. Collins wrote that "scarcely a morning arrived without a complaint being made to the magistrates of a loss of property supposed to have been occasioned by this man. In fact, every theft that was committed was ascribed to him." When a cask of pork went missing from the millhouse and the sentries were acquitted, the blame went on Caesar too.

Governor John Hunter, engraved in 1801. Hunter put the reward on Caesar's head in January 1796. Engraved by Ridley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Reward: Five Gallons of Spirits

On 29 January 1796 Governor John Hunter offered a reward to whoever would "secure and bring him in with his arms": five gallons of spirits. Wikipedia calls it a generous reward, and in the rum-soaked colony of the 1790s it was. Settlers and anyone else trusted with ammunition were warned what would happen if they were caught passing it to the runaways.

David Collins, the colony's Judge-Advocate, whose Account of the English Colony in New South Wales is the main record of Caesar's life. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Shot at Liberty Plains, February 1796

The reward worked. On Monday 15 February 1796, while a criminal court was sitting in Sydney, word came in that Black Caesar had been shot that morning. Collins tells it in a few lines:

"This man and another, allured by the reward, had been for some days in quest of him. Finding his haunt, they concealed themselves all night at the edge of a brush which they perceived him enter at dusk. In the morning he came out, when, looking round him and seeing his danger, he presented his musket; but before he could pull the trigger Wimbow fired and shot him. He was taken to the hut of Rose, a settler at Liberty Plains, where he died in a few hours."

The man who shot him was John Wimbow, an ex-highwayman who had served his time. The ADB places Liberty Plains at today's Strathfield, and the hut belonged to the settler Thomas Rose. Collins didn't name the second man. A 1936 article in The World's News said he was James Ruse, the ex-convict who Museums of History NSW says was the first person in NSW to get a land grant. That rests on one newspaper story written 140 years later.

Collins gave Caesar a cruel epitaph: "Thus ended a man, who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above the brute, and who had given more trouble than any other convict in the settlement."

Sydney Cove by Thomas Watling, painted between 1794 and 1796, the years of Caesar's last escapes. Thomas Watling, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

His Legacy

For a long time Caesar was a footnote, or a figure of fun. Wikipedia lists newspaper stories from the 1890s and 1930s about him, one headed "The First Great Bushranger", and Thomas Keneally put him in his 1987 novel The Playmaker, which became the play Our Country's Good. Wikipedia notes that the novel shows him as the "mad Madagascan" in leg irons, which isn't how historians see him now.

That changed with Cassandra Pybus's Black Founders in 2006, which told the stories of the black convicts and settlers of early Sydney, including Billy Blue of Blues Point. In 2021 Santilla Chingaipe's SBS documentary Our African Roots had the actor Mohamed Osman playing Caesar. Chingaipe told Carolyn Webb she thought stories like his were forgotten because of the White Australia years. They didn't fit our "myths about who we were and who we wanted to be". In 2024 she published Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia.

The American historian Kimberly Cheek points out, as Wikipedia quotes her, that Caesar's life crossed four continents, Africa, North America, Europe and Australia, and reflects "the broad global experiences of some Africans in the eighteenth century". Museums of History NSW puts it simply. He was one of many convicts "of all ages, races and religions" on the First Fleet, and he "became Australia's first bushranger when he fled the settlement in December 1795".

What I keep coming back to is the man under Collins's sneering. He was probably carried off from Africa as a youngster, crossed the Atlantic as a slave, came to London and then across the world in chains. He worked harder than anyone, was always hungry, would not be broken by the lash, and laughed at the idea of the gallows. He was finally shot for a few gallons of rum somewhere out around today's Strathfield. Ned Kelly gets the statues, but Caesar was first.

The convict establishment at Kingston, Norfolk Island, in 1848, half a century after Caesar's time there. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson, as imagined for the centenary in 1888 by E. Le Bihan. E. Le Bihan, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• About 1763 – Born, probably in Africa and possibly on Madagascar (ADB).
• Late 1770s – Enslaved in the Americas, probably Virginia or South Carolina (Enslaved.org; Wikipedia).
• 1783 – A 14-year-old "Caesar" sails from New York to Spithead. Pybus believes this was him.
• 13 March 1786 – Convicted at Maidstone, Kent, of stealing about £12. Seven years' transportation. Sent to the hulk Ceres.
• 6 January 1787 – Embarks on the Alexander at Woolwich.
• 19 January 1788 – The Alexander reaches Botany Bay with the First Fleet.
• 30 April 1788 – Accused of stealing 4 lb of bread from Richard Partridge.
• 29 April 1789 – Tried for theft and sentenced to transportation for life.
• 13 May 1789 – First escape, with a marine's musket and ammunition.
• 6 June 1789 – Caught by William Saltmarsh near Zachariah Clark's house. Sent to Garden Island in fetters.
• 22 December 1789 – Escapes from Garden Island in a canoe.
• 30–31 January 1790 – Gives himself up at Rose Hill, badly speared.
• March 1790 – Pardoned and sent to Norfolk Island in the Supply.
• 1 July 1791 – Supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough, Norfolk Island.
• 4 March 1792 – Daughter born to Ann Power.
• 1793 – Returns to Port Jackson in the Kitty.
• July 1794 – Third escape. Caught and severely punished.
• Late 1795 – Wounds Pemulwuy during an attack on a work party at Botany Bay.
• December 1795 – Final escape. Leads a gang of six or eight runaways.
• 29 January 1796 – Governor Hunter offers five gallons of spirits for his capture.
• 15 February 1796 – Shot by John Wimbow. Dies a few hours later in Thomas Rose's hut at Liberty Plains.
• 1806 – His daughter is baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power on Norfolk Island.
• 2006 – Cassandra Pybus publishes Black Founders.
• 2021 – SBS screens Our African Roots, with Mohamed Osman as Caesar.

Where the Sources Disagree

• Where he was born. Bradley in 1790 called him "a Native of Madagascar", and the ADB and Enslaved.org lean that way. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him "West Indian", and Wikipedia says early newspaper stories had him born in the West Indies.
• How old he was. His age was put at 23 in May 1787, which gives the usual "about 1763". If Pybus is right that he was the 14-year-old Caesar in the 1783 Book of Negroes, he would have been born about 1769.
• When he went to Norfolk Island. Collins wrote of it on 3 March 1790, and the ADB gives 4 March 1790. Kimberly Cheek's account on Enslaved.org says 6 March 1791.
• When he gave himself up after the canoe escape. Collins records it on 30 January 1790, while the ADB and Bradley say 31 January.
• All night or all day? The 1798 text of Collins on Project Gutenberg says Wimbow and his mate hid "all night" at the edge of the brush. The extract from Cobley's Sydney Cove on the University of Wollongong site reads "all day".
• Who was with Wimbow. Collins only says "another". A 1936 World's News article named James Ruse, as Wikipedia notes.
• Wimbow or Winbow. Collins and the ADB spell it Wimbow. Cheek's account spells it Winbow.
• Spirits or rum. Collins and the ADB say "five gallons of spirits". Enslaved.org says five gallons of rum.
• Did he kill Pemulwuy? Collins passed on the December 1795 report that Caesar had killed him. The ADB and Wikipedia say Caesar only wounded him, and the Dictionary of Sydney says the report "turned out to be false".
• How many escapes. Museums of History NSW says "no less than four". Counting the May 1789, December 1789, July 1794 and December 1795 runs gives four.
• How many black convicts came with him. Wikipedia says at least twelve on the Alexander alone. Carolyn Webb, reporting Chingaipe's research, says at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.
• When his daughter left Norfolk Island. The ADB says she went to Van Diemen's Land in 1813, and Wikipedia says 1814.
• Was he really the first bushranger? The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW say yes. Britannica, as quoted on Wikipedia, says he "probably became the first bushranger". The ADB and Museums of History NSW date it from his last escape in December 1795, while Carolyn Webb dates it from his first escape in 1789.

My Earlier Posts

• Pemulwuy – Bidjigal Resistance Leader of Botany Bay and Parramatta
• Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly
• Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales – Norfolk Island, the Rum Trade and the Sydney Gazette
• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• The First Gaol – George Street North, The Rocks
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour
• Sydney Past & Present – Chapter 1 – The Founding Of The City
• The Rum Corps – The New South Wales Corps, Rum, Land and Power in Early Sydney – 1789 to 1818
• Billy Blue – The Old Commodore of Blues Point – Convict, Ferryman and Macquarie's Harbour Watchman – c.1767 to 1834

Sources

• Chris Cunneen and Mollie Gillen, "Caesar, John Black (c. 1763–1796)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2005 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/caesar-john-black-12829
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg eBook 12565 – https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12565/pg12565.txt
• University of Wollongong First Fleet project, "John Caesar as the documents tell it" (extracts from Cobley, Sydney Cove) – http://firstfleet.uow.edu.au/s_caesar.html
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Caesar, John" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/caesar_john
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Alexander" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/alexander
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Pemulwuy" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/pemulwuy
• Museums of History NSW, "John 'Black Caesar'", 24 July 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-fleet-ships/john-black-caesar/
• Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, "John Caesar" (after Kimberly Cheek, African American National Biography) – https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-106179/
• Wikipedia, "John Caesar" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caesar
• Jeff Sparrow, review of Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders, The Age, 17 June 2006 – https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/black-founders-the-unknown-story-of-australias-first-black-settlers-20060617-ge2jae.html
• Carolyn Webb, "Australia's first bushranger – he may not be who you think", Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, 24 September 2021 – https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/australia-s-first-bushranger-he-may-not-be-who-you-think-20210922-p58tzj.html
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.

Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales – Norfolk Island, the Rum Trade and the Sydney Gazette – 1758 to 1808

Philip Gidley King, in a portrait the State Library of NSW dates to about 1798. Unknown artist, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Philip Gidley King is the governor most Sydneysiders only know from a street sign. King Street runs right through the city, and the man it's named after was there from the very start. He came out with the First Fleet as Arthur Phillip's hand-picked lieutenant, planted the settlement on Norfolk Island a few weeks after Sydney Cove, ran that island for most of the 1790s, then came back as the third Governor of New South Wales from 1800 to 1806. In those six years he took on the rum traders, shipped John Macarthur home, put down the Castle Hill rising, let George Howe start the Sydney Gazette, sent settlers off to the Derwent and Port Dalrymple and re-opened Newcastle. The officers of the New South Wales Corps wore him down in the end, and he died in England in 1808, aged just fifty. His family stayed on, though, and the Kings and their in-laws became one of the colony's big names.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography sums him up as a man whose reputation "stands today lower than is deserved". Here's his story, from Cornwall to Parramatta and back.

A Draper's Son from Launceston

King was born at Launceston in Cornwall on 23 April 1758. His father, Philip, was a draper, and his mother's father, Gidley, was a local attorney (Wikipedia names him John Gidley of Exeter). The ADB points out that the family weren't poor, but they weren't gentry either, and later on some of his enemies in Sydney sneered that he was "not a gentleman". The navy was a way up for a boy like that.

He went to sea at twelve, as a captain's servant in HMS Swallow, on 22 December 1770. Five years in the East Indies followed, then American waters when the War of Independence broke out in 1775. He became a midshipman in the Liverpool that July and was made lieutenant in the Renown on 25 December 1778. One of the officers who examined him told his mother he was "one of the most Promising young men I have ever met".

The meeting that shaped the rest of his life came in the Channel Fleet. From 1780 he served in the Ariadne under Captain Arthur Phillip, and in 1783 he sailed to India with Phillip in the Europe. Phillip, the ADB says, "formed a high opinion of his merits".

The First Fleet and HMS Sirius

So when Phillip was given command of the Botany Bay expedition, he picked King straight away. In October 1786 King was named second lieutenant of HMS Sirius, the flagship Phillip was sailing in himself. When Phillip shifted into the faster Supply to race ahead of the main fleet, he took King with him.

An anchor from HMS Sirius, King's ship on the First Fleet, on display in Sydney. Photo by sv1ambo, 2012, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A fortnight after the fleet arrived, Phillip chose him, "as a officer of merit … whose perseverance may be depended upon", to set up a second settlement on Norfolk Island out in the Pacific.

Norfolk Island, 1788 to 1790

King sailed from Port Jackson on 14 February 1788 with a party of twenty-three, fifteen of them convicts. Getting ashore was the first problem. The island has no proper harbour, and it took until 6 March to land. Then came the work of clearing the pines, building huts and fighting off grubs, rats, salt winds and hurricanes. Wikipedia adds that early in 1789 King stopped a planned mutiny, in which some convicts meant to seize him and the other officers and escape on the next ship to call.

For all that, his reports were upbeat. There was plenty of fish, the stock did well and the soil was good, and he told Phillip the island could support "at least one hundred families". Phillip was impressed enough to keep pushing for his promotion. London's answer, in December 1789, was to make King lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island at £250 a year.

Kingston on Norfolk Island today, looking down from Flagstaff Hill. Photo by Inas, 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ann Inett, Norfolk and Sydney

One of the women in that first small party was Ann Inett, a convict from Worcestershire. She and King had two sons. The first, born on 8 January 1789, was named Norfolk, after the island. The second, born in 1790, was named Sydney. The ADB says both boys "were well cared for" by their father, and both became lieutenants in the navy. Wikipedia says Norfolk King was the first Australian-born officer in the Royal Navy and went on to command the schooner Ballahoo.

King didn't marry Ann. When he left for England in 1790 she stayed in Sydney with the boys. Wikipedia says she married another man in 1792, a match King had probably arranged, and went on to lead "a comfortable and respected life in the colony". King arranged for the two boys to be educated in England.

A Flying Trip to London and a Wife

In March 1790, the month Sirius was wrecked on Norfolk Island, Phillip sent King to England to tell the government how bad things were in the settlements. He reached London just before Christmas, saw Lord Grenville and Sir Joseph Banks, and was promoted commander on 2 March 1791.

Nine days later, on 11 March 1791, he married Anna Josepha Coombe at St Martin-in-the-Fields. She was his first cousin, born at Hatherleigh in Devon in 1765, and she was twenty-six to his thirty-three. Four days after the wedding they sailed in HMS Gorgon for the Pacific. Young William Chapman, King's protégé, came along too.

Anna Josepha King (née Coombe), King's wife and first cousin, in an early-1800s portrait. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On the way out King did something typical of him. Hearing at the Cape that the colony was still short of food, he bought livestock there on his own say-so. Many of the animals died before reaching Sydney, and the Treasury dragged out the argument over who'd pay for them for years.

Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, 1791 to 1796

King was back on the island early in November 1791, and about six weeks later Anna Josepha gave birth to their son, Phillip Parker King, named after King's old captain. Their house, according to Marnie Bassett's biography of Mrs King (quoted on Wikipedia), was a "dilapidated little building twenty four feet by twelve, falling to pieces and unsafe to live in". Two daughters followed on the island: Anna Maria in 1793 and Utricia in 1795. Utricia died as a small child.

The island he came back to was a different place. Under Lieutenant-Governor Robert Ross the population had grown to nearly a thousand, and King found "discord and strife on every person's countenance". He issued new regulations in 1792, listened to the settlers (ex-marines and ex-convicts) on wages and prices, and by 1794 the island grew all its own grain and was sending surplus pigs to Sydney.

The old gaol at Kingston, photographed in 1898. These stone buildings come from the island's later convict days, long after King's time. Powerhouse Museum collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Maori Flax Men

London's great hope for Norfolk Island was flax, for sails and rope for the navy. Nobody on the island knew how to work the native plant, so while in England King talked the government into ordering Captain George Vancouver to bring flax-dressers from New Zealand. Two Maori men were duly kidnapped and brought to the island. The trouble was, as the ADB puts it, "they knew nothing about flax-dressing". All King could do was take them home.

He did it himself, making a ten-day visit to New Zealand in November 1793. For that he was reprimanded by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose and the Duke of Portland for leaving his post without permission, a reproof the ADB calls "unmerited". The same year he proposed a British settlement at the Bay of Islands.

Trouble with the Corps

This was also where King first locked horns with the New South Wales Corps. Some soldiers on the island claimed he punished them too hard and the ex-convicts too lightly. After a run-in with Mrs King's servants and a drunken soldier's insolence to King himself, things turned mutinous. King, backed by most of the Corps officers there, sent twenty of the men to Sydney for court martial. Grose, back in Sydney, censured King and gave the military illegal authority over the island's civilians. King obeyed while noting it was improper. Portland later overruled Grose, and Grose apologised, but it was a sign of things to come.

So was King's health. He had gout and chest trouble, and by December 1795 there was "much doubt" he'd recover. Governor John Hunter gave him leave, and in October 1796 he left Norfolk Island for England.

Waiting in England, 1796 to 1799

King needed a job. He told Banks his total worldly goods were little more than £1,500, and that he had "neither kept a shop or sold drams", which was a dig at the officers back in Sydney. With Phillip and Banks behind him, in 1798 he got a dormant commission to take over from Hunter if Hunter died or left the colony. He was made post-captain on 5 December 1798.

Getting there was another matter. He was meant to sail in a new ship built partly to Banks's design, with a "plant cabbin". She was hopeless, the ADB says, "utterly cranky", and when she finally sailed in August 1799 she turned back to Portsmouth at the first rough weather and was condemned. King finally left in the Speedy in November 1799 (the ADB gives 26 November; Mrs King's journal on the State Library list starts on 19 November), carrying the despatch that recalled Hunter.

Philip Gidley and Anna Josepha King with their children Elizabeth, Anna Maria and Phillip Parker, painted by Robert Dighton in 1799, the year they left for Sydney. Robert Dighton, 1799, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Only little Elizabeth came with them. Phillip Parker and Anna Maria were left at school in England. Anna Josepha kept a diary of the five-month voyage, full of storms and gales.

A page from Anna Josepha King's diary of the voyage out in the Speedy, 1799–1800. Anna Josepha King, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Third Governor of New South Wales, 1800 to 1806

The Kings reached Port Jackson in April 1800. Hunter was in no hurry to go, and the two old shipmates fell out badly. The ADB describes an "unseemly impatience" on King's side, in letters each man thought insulting. King finally took command on 28 September 1800. He'd already written that "nothing less than a total change in the system of administration" would do. He only became governor in full title in 1802; until then he was technically lieutenant-governor. He sent Major Joseph Foveaux to run Norfolk Island in his place.

Anna Josepha became the first governor's wife to live in the colony, since Phillip had left his wife in England and Hunter was unmarried.

Taking on the Rum Trade

King's first target was the officers' grip on trade, especially spirits. He came armed with a stack of orders and issued new port and price regulations the moment he took over. He still had to let surgeons William Balmain and D'Arcy Wentworth sell 4,359 gallons of spirits they had on hand, but he cut spirit imports to about a third of the rate in Hunter's last months. He asked Calcutta and the British consuls in America to stop sending liquor, and he started building a brewery so people would have something else to drink. It didn't produce until 1804. According to the ADB, he got spirit drinking down to about two and a half bottles a month per adult man between 1801 and 1804, but illegal stills kept popping up.

He also opened a public warehouse that sold goods at only 50 per cent over cost, and tried to fix prices, wages, hours, interest rates, weights and measures and the value of the jumble of coins in use. He cut the officers' servants on the government ration from 356 to 94. By 1806 only 56 out of 646 farmers were living off the government store, compared with 110 out of 401 in 1800.

Macarthur, the Duel and the Voyage Home

That kind of thing made enemies, and the sharpest was Captain John Macarthur of the Corps. In 1801 Macarthur fought a duel with his own commanding officer, Colonel William Paterson, after a quarrel that had begun with the governor. In November 1801 King did what Hunter had done before him and sent Macarthur to England to face a court martial.

John Macarthur, King's fiercest enemy in the Corps. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Colonel William Paterson, commander of the NSW Corps, who fought the 1801 duel with Macarthur. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It didn't go to plan. Macarthur was never court-martialled. He resigned his commission and came back in July 1805 "in triumph", the ADB says, with an order for 5,000 acres of the best land in the colony to breed sheep.

The bad blood kept coming. Early in 1803, right after King refused to let a cargo of spirits land from the Atlas, libellous verses called "pipes" mocking him and his officials went around the town. The courts martial that followed only showed how deep the hatred ran. In May 1803 King asked for leave while the colony was investigated. London read it as a resignation and accepted it.

The Castle Hill Rising, 1804

King was nervous of the Irish prisoners, many of them sent out after the 1798 rebellion. On the night of 4 March 1804 the convicts at the Castle Hill government farm rose, and next day Major George Johnston's troops broke them at what came to be called Vinegar Hill, near Rouse Hill. King declared martial law. The ADB says he was "rather over-excited" at the time but felt safer afterwards, splitting the ringleaders among the outlying settlements. I've told the whole story in my Castle Hill page, linked below.

'Convict uprising at Castle Hill, 1804', the only picture made at the time. Unknown artist, 1804, National Library of Australia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Castle Hill Government Farm about 1806, in a watercolour attributed to John Lewin. Attributed to John Lewin, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Newcastle

Some of those ringleaders went north. Convicts had been digging coal at the mouth of the Hunter, and in 1801 a camp called King's Town was set up there for coal and timber. It closed within a year. In 1804 King re-opened it as a place of punishment, and the name Newcastle first appears in his commission to Lieutenant Charles Menzies on 15 March 1804. That year King also started the citadel at Fort Phillip, but the ADB calls it "rather a white elephant".

The Sydney Gazette, 1803

In March 1803 King let the government printer, George Howe, start the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, using the government press and type. The first issue came out on 5 March 1803, and it was Australia's first newspaper. King explained to Lord Hobart that he wanted "useful information" spread among the settlers. Wikipedia also credits him with ordering the printing of Australia's first book, the New South Wales General Standing Orders.

The first issue of the Sydney Gazette, 5 March 1803. George Howe, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Orphans, Schools and Vaccine

King took a real interest in the Female Orphan School in Sydney. He was sorry he couldn't open one for boys too, but he took several day schools "under the protection of Government" and had convict boys apprenticed to trades. He paid for the orphan school, and the gaol, with a 5 per cent duty he slapped on imports in June 1802. It wasn't strictly legal, but nobody questioned it, and the ADB says it was the start of colonial revenue being spent on local needs. He also asked London to send smallpox vaccine, and that let the colony's surgeons carry out its first successful vaccinations.

He gave ex-convicts a go as well. He reminded Major Johnston that the government never meant prisoners to be consigned "to Oblivion and disgrace for ever", put men like James Meehan, Andrew Thompson and Father James Dixon into official jobs, and laid the groundwork for the ticket-of-leave system. For a time in 1803 he even let Father Dixon say Mass for the Irish convicts.

Farms, Sheep, Coal and Whales

Under King the government's flocks and herds grew five-fold. He bred the government sheep from hair to wool, imported cattle from India, started coal mining, and tried vines, tobacco, cotton, hemp and indigo. He backed the whalers and sealers, and in 1804 he encouraged the merchant Robert Campbell to ship oil and skins to London in the Lady Barlow in defiance of the East India Company's monopoly. The floods of 1806 wrecked his hope that the colony would feed itself.

At Parramatta, Wikipedia's Old Government House entry says King "appears to have set up Australia's first public botanic garden" under George Caley, Banks's plant collector.

Government House, Parramatta, painted by George William Evans in 1805, when the Kings were using it. George William Evans, 1805, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Old Government House in Parramatta Park today. The first part was built in 1799, and it was enlarged in 1815. It is the oldest surviving public building on the Australian mainland. Photo by BriMiDra, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Exploring and the French

King was a sailor, and he looked outward. In 1801 he sent Lieutenant James Grant to finish exploring Bass Strait and survey Western Port, and Lieutenant John Murray on the voyage that found Port Phillip. On land he sent Francis Barrallier on two trips, slipping round Barrallier's army duties by appointing him ambassador to the "King of the Mountains", and he backed George Caley's expeditions. King Island in Bass Strait was named in 1800 by John Black, a privateer.

Then the French turned up. On 18 June 1802 Nicolas Baudin sailed Géographe into Port Jackson with most of his crew down with scurvy, and Naturaliste came in about ten days later. King, warned by Banks that Baudin was coming, nursed the men and helped fix the ships. Baudin was moved enough to write to the French colonial governors that "Governor King has given the whole of Europe the example of a benevolence which should be known". Baudin sailed out in November 1802 and wrote warmly to King from King Island that December.

Captain Nicolas Baudin, the French explorer King looked after in 1802. State Government Photographer, from an engraving, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Van Diemen's Land

King moved quickly. In 1803 he sent Lieutenant John Bowen to start a settlement on the Derwent. Bowen picked Risdon Cove on the east bank, on George Bass's advice, and the Lady Nelson anchored there on 8 September 1803. The site had poor soil and little water, and when David Collins arrived in 1804 he moved the settlement across the river to Sullivans Cove, which became Hobart. In 1804 King also sent Paterson to found a settlement at Port Dalrymple on the Tamar in the north.

Pemulwuy and the Aboriginal People

King's record with Aboriginal people is mixed. He told William Bligh that he had "ever considered" them "the real Proprietors of the Soil", refused to let them be worked as slaves, and tried to keep a "good understanding". But he also called them "very capricious" and "treacherous".

The Bidjigal warrior Pemulwuy had been resisting the settlers around Parramatta and Prospect for years. On 22 November 1801 King issued an order for him to be brought in dead or alive, with a reward. Pemulwuy was shot dead just before 2 June 1802, possibly by Henry Hacking. King lifted the order against harming Aboriginal people and let them back into the Parramatta and Prospect districts. He also had Pemulwuy's head preserved in spirits and sent it to Banks in England, with a letter calling him "a terrible pest to the colony" but "a brave and independent character".

He liked his Pacific visitors too, and welcomed Maori and Tahitian guests to Sydney.

'Pomarre, King of Otaheite', engraved in 1807 from a drawing owned by Governor King. Unknown artist, 1807, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Recall, Bligh and the Last Voyage

King got London's acceptance of his "resignation" in June 1804, and after that, the ADB says, "his activities slowed down". He wasn't relieved until August 1806, when William Bligh arrived. Before he left, King granted Bligh 1,345 acres, and a week later Bligh granted Mrs King 690 acres in return, described as "Thanks". Both grants were improper, though the ADB says that by the standards of the day King was still "a pillar of rectitude" next to most of his officers. Eighteen months later the same Corps officers who'd beaten King overthrew Bligh in the Rum Rebellion.

William Bligh, who took over from King in August 1806. After J. Ruffell, engraved by J. Condé, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

King boarded the Buffalo on 15 August 1806 and "completely collapsed". The ship didn't sail until 10 February 1807, and after a stormy run round Cape Horn they reached England in November. He pushed the Colonial Office hard for a pension but died on 3 September 1808 before it came through. He was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Lower Tooting, in London. His estate came to about £7,000, little more, the ADB notes, than the value of the cattle he'd claimed from the government herds.

The Family He Left Behind

Anna Josepha stayed in England until 1832, when she came back to New South Wales with Phillip Parker and went to live with Anna Maria and Hannibal Macarthur at The Vineyard. She died in 1844 and was buried at St Mary Magdalene Church there in 1844, on land Phillip Parker King had given for it.

Anna Josepha King's grave at St Mary Magdalene, St Marys. Photo by Maypm, 2009, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Phillip Parker King, born on Norfolk Island in 1791, became a naval surveyor whose charts of the Australian coast were still being published by the Admiralty decades later. He commanded HMS Adventure with the Beagle surveying South America. In 1855 he became the first Australian-born rear admiral in the Royal Navy. He died at North Sydney on 26 February 1856.

Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, about 1855. Unknown photographer, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Of the daughters, Anna Maria married Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur in 1812, and they settled at The Vineyard near Parramatta. Mary, born in Sydney in 1805, married Robert Lethbridge in 1826. Elizabeth married the artist Charles Runciman and stayed in England.

Anna Maria Macarthur (née King) in 1826. Unknown artist, 1826, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mary, the youngest King daughter, born in Sydney in 1805, about 1855. Unknown photographer, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

King was also a decent amateur artist. One of his watercolours was the basis for the William Blake engraving A Native Family of New South Wales in Hunter's 1793 journal. And there's King Street, running from Queens Square down to Darling Harbour, so the name's still under our feet every day.

King as he appeared in Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery's 1899 book. From Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery, 1899, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 23 April 1758 – Born at Launceston, Cornwall
• 22 December 1770 – Joins the navy as captain's servant in HMS Swallow
• 25 December 1778 – Commissioned lieutenant in the Renown
• 1780–1783 – Serves under Arthur Phillip in the Ariadne and the Europe
• October 1786 – Named second lieutenant of HMS Sirius
• January 1788 – Arrives with the First Fleet
• 14 February 1788 – Sails for Norfolk Island with 23 people
• 6 March 1788 – Lands on Norfolk Island
• 8 January 1789 – Son Norfolk born to Ann Inett
• 1790 – Son Sydney born; King sails for England in March
• 11 March 1791 – Marries Anna Josepha Coombe at St Martin-in-the-Fields
• November 1791 – Back on Norfolk Island as lieutenant-governor
• December 1791 – Phillip Parker King born on Norfolk Island
• November 1793 – Ten-day trip to New Zealand to take the two Maori men home
• October 1796 – Leaves Norfolk Island sick with gout
• 5 December 1798 – Promoted post-captain
• November 1799 – Sails for NSW in the Speedy
• 28 September 1800 – Takes command of New South Wales
• November 1801 – Sends Macarthur to England after the duel with Paterson; orders Pemulwuy taken dead or alive
• June 1802 – Pemulwuy killed; Baudin arrives in Port Jackson; 5% import duty
• 5 March 1803 – First Sydney Gazette
• September 1803 – Bowen's party lands at Risdon Cove
• 4–5 March 1804 – Castle Hill rising and Vinegar Hill
• 15 March 1804 – Newcastle named in Menzies' commission
• 1804 – Port Dalrymple settlement founded
• July 1805 – Macarthur returns with a 5,000-acre order
• August 1806 – Bligh takes over
• 10 February 1807 – The Buffalo finally sails
• 3 September 1808 – King dies in England
• 1844 – Anna Josepha King dies at St Marys
• 26 February 1856 – Phillip Parker King dies at North Sydney

Where the Sources Disagree

• Which ship took him to Norfolk Island. Wikipedia says the party left Sydney on 14 February 1788 "on board HMS Sirius". The ADB gives the same date but doesn't name the ship.
• His grandfather. The ADB calls Gidley "a local attorney" in Launceston; Wikipedia names him John Gidley, an Exeter attorney-at-law.
• When the Speedy sailed. The ADB has King sailing on 26 November 1799. Anna Josepha's journal, as listed by the State Library and cited on Wikipedia, begins on 19 November, and Wikipedia's Anna Josepha King article says they sailed in August 1799, which is when the condemned ship first left.
• Who killed Pemulwuy. Wikipedia says he was shot "possibly" by Henry Hacking. It isn't settled.

My Earlier Posts

• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• Arrest of Governor Bligh – The Rum Rebellion – 26 January 1808
• The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta
• Robert Campbell – Campbell's Cove – The Rocks
• The Orphan School – George St
• Governors Of New South Wales From 1788 To 2016
• First Fleet & The Colony Of New South Wales
• Arthur Phillip – First Fleet – King George III's Instructions
• House Of Mary Putland – Governor Bligh's Daughter

Sources

• A. G. L. Shaw, 'King, Philip Gidley (1758–1808)', Australian Dictionary of Biography: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/king-philip-gidley-2309
• Wikipedia, 'Philip Gidley King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gidley_King
• Wikipedia, 'Anna Josepha King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Josepha_King
• Wikipedia, 'Phillip Parker King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Parker_King
• Wikipedia, 'Pemulwuy': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemulwuy
• Wikipedia, 'Nicolas Baudin': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Baudin
• Wikipedia, 'The Sydney Gazette': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sydney_Gazette
• Wikipedia, 'Old Government House, Parramatta': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Government_House,_Parramatta
• Wikipedia, 'Risdon Cove': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risdon_Cove
• Wikipedia, 'History of Newcastle, New South Wales': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Newcastle,_New_South_Wales
• Wikimedia Commons, image pages linked under each picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Philip_Gidley_King

John Knatchbull and the Murder of Ellen Jamieson – Sydney, 1844

On a Saturday night in January 1844, a widow named Ellen Jamieson was keeping her little shop open late on the corner of Kent Street and Margaret Place in Sydney. Her two young children were asleep upstairs. Just before midnight a man came in asking for vinegar, and a few minutes later a neighbour across the road heard a terrible noise from inside. The man was John Knatchbull, a former Royal Navy commander from one of the best-known families in Kent, by then a ticket-of-leave convict with a long record behind him. Ellen died of her injuries twelve days later. Knatchbull was tried, found guilty, and on 13 February 1844 he became the first man hanged at the new Darlinghurst Gaol, in front of one of the biggest crowds Sydney had ever seen.

I've mentioned Knatchbull briefly in my post on Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court, and he heads the list in my page on the Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol, but his story deserves a page of its own. It takes in a baronet's household in Kent, the Napoleonic Wars, a pickpocketing charge at Vauxhall Gardens, the Bathurst road, Norfolk Island, and finally a courtroom where his barrister tried a defence no colonial judge had heard before. Most of all, though, it is about Ellen Jamieson and the two children she left behind, and I've tried to keep them in view the whole way through.

John Knatchbull, from an 1844 lithograph now held by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Credit: Unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Baronet's Son from Kent

Even Knatchbull's birth year isn't settled. The Australian Dictionary of Biography gives "1792?" and says he was probably the John Knatchbull baptised on 24 January 1793 at Norton, near Provender, in Kent. His biographer Colin Roderick, whose 1963 book is the standard account, puts his birth in 1789. The plate on his coffin in 1844 read "aged fifty-six". So take your pick, but somewhere between about 1787 and 1793.

His father was Sir Edward Knatchbull (1758–1819), 8th Baronet, of Mersham Hatch in Kent, and his mother was Sir Edward's second wife, Frances, daughter of Thomas Graham. The ADB describes Sir Edward as "a rollicking squire who married three times and had at least twenty children". John was a younger son in a very crowded house. According to Roderick (as summarised on Wikipedia), his mother died in 1799, and the children were left in the care of a governess. He went to school at Ashford and later to Dr Charles Burney's school at Greenwich, and the ADB says he also went to Winchester.

John Singleton Copley's oil sketch for his big portrait of Sir Edward Knatchbull, 8th Baronet, with his children, painted between 1800 and 1803. John was still a boy then and is probably one of them, though I can't tell you which figure he is. Credit: John Singleton Copley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When Sir Edward died in 1819 the baronetcy went to John's elder half-brother, also Sir Edward Knatchbull, who followed his father into Parliament. That half-brother's name will come up again, right at the end of the story, on the papers found in John's pockets.

The Navy, and How It Ended

In August 1804, as a boy, Knatchbull joined the Royal Navy as a volunteer, the usual way in for a gentleman's younger son. Over the next few years he served in a string of ships: the ADB lists the Ardent, Revenge, Zealand, Sybille, Téméraire, Leonidas, Cumberland, Ocean and Ajax. He passed his lieutenant's examination in November 1810 and served in the Shearwater off Spain until he was invalided home in August 1812.

In December 1813 he was commissioned to command the sloop Doterel in the West Indies, but he missed the ship. Roderick's research found that he went down with yellow fever in Barbados while trying to catch up with her. He was reappointed to the Doterel in September 1814, and in 1815 he brought her from Bermuda by way of the Azores back to Portsmouth. Then came Waterloo, the navy was cut back hard, and Knatchbull was retired on half-pay.

What finished his naval career wasn't a battle. It was a wine bill. While the Doterel was at the Azores in April 1815 he had run up a debt with the British vice-consul at Fayal, Thomas Parkin, and the bills he gave in payment were not honoured. Parkin complained to the Admiralty, and in 1818, as the ADB puts it, his pay "was stopped by the Admiralty because of a debt he had incurred in the Azores". Roderick found that the Admiralty decided his "conduct was unbecoming the character of an officer" and took his name off the navy list. I couldn't find any record of a court-martial. For what it's worth, the Sydney paper The Australian told a different story in 1844, claiming he was dismissed from the service for tyranny. I've found nothing in the official record to back that up.

"John Fitch" at Vauxhall Gardens

Not much is known about his life between 1818 and 1824. In his own memoir he claimed he fought in South America, but there's no proof of it. What is certain is that on the evening of 30 June 1824, at a crowded fireworks night at Vauxhall Gardens in London, a gentleman named de Dompierre found that his coat pocket had been cut and his pocket-book taken. A man calling himself John Fitch was already in police hands on suspicion of picking pockets, and he had a blank cheque and several sovereigns on him.

"Fitch" was tried at the Surrey Assizes in Guildford in August 1824. The ADB and The Times report give the date as 21 August, while the ship's muster for the convict transport (quoted by Museums of History NSW) says 19 August. The Times reported that the judge, Justice Burrough, "perfectly knew who" the prisoner really was. He was found guilty of what the ADB calls "stealing with force and arms" and was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.

Transported to New South Wales

Knatchbull sailed on the convict ship Asia and arrived in Sydney in April 1825; Roderick gives the date as 29 April. He was sent to Bathurst, where official records called him "John Fitch" or "John Fitch, alias Knatchbull". In November 1826 he was made a constable to the mail service, carrying the mail on foot between Bathurst and Mount York. He was given a ticket-of-leave on 24 August 1829 after helping to catch eight runaway convicts. His ticket was then moved to Liverpool, and by 1831 he was an overseer on the Parramatta Road.

For a while it looked as if he might settle down. He didn't. In December 1831 he paid for clothes at Charles Bailey's shop in George Street with a cheque signed, supposedly, by Judge James Dowling. The cheque was a forgery. Bailey later spotted him in the market and had him arrested. On 22 February 1832 the Supreme Court found him guilty and sentence of death was recorded against him. It was commuted to seven years at Norfolk Island.

The forged cheque, made out in Judge James Dowling's name, that was used as evidence against Knatchbull in February 1832. Credit: State Records of New South Wales (now Museums of History NSW), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Norfolk Island: Poison and Mutiny

Knatchbull spent several months on the prison hulk Phoenix in Sydney Harbour before sailing for Norfolk Island on the Governor Phillip in October 1832. During the voyage some of the convicts plotted to poison the crew and guards and seize the ship, with Knatchbull, the one man aboard who could navigate, meant to sail her to South America. The plot was betrayed and failed. The ADB records it simply as "a conspiracy... to poison the ship's company".

On the island he had a stroke in 1833 that left him partly paralysed. In January 1834, when a large group of convicts rose against the guards, Knatchbull said he was too ill to take part, though he had offered to command a ship if they captured one. When the rising was put down, he turned informer for the acting commandant, Captain Foster Fyans. At the trials that followed, twenty-nine men were sentenced to death, and the judge, William Burton, gave Fyans a serve for taking Knatchbull's confession. The ADB quotes him:

"He was the chief of the mutineers, the man you should have named first in the Calendar. You have saved his life, or prolonged it. He never can do good."

Keep Justice Burton in mind. Ten years later, he would be the judge at Knatchbull's murder trial.

Port Macquarie, the Ticket-of-Leave, and Back to Sydney

Knatchbull's Norfolk Island sentence came on top of his original fourteen years, so when he got back to Sydney in May 1839 he still had time to serve. He was in poor health and was sent to Port Macquarie as an invalid. Roderick says he was later put in charge of the punt across the Hastings River. On 8 July 1842 he received a new ticket-of-leave, and in July 1843 it was altered to Sydney so he could work on the coaster Harriet for its owner, Thomas Lewis.

Hyde Park, Museum, Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney Grammar School, Burdekin's and Lyons' Terraces, 1842, by John Rae. This was the Sydney Knatchbull came back to. Credit: John Rae, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By the end of 1843 Lewis was insolvent and Knatchbull was out of work. He was lodging with Charles Hollowell in Clarence Lane, and he told Hollowell he owned the Harriet and was only waiting for her to be sold to pay his rent. He had also become engaged to a young widow named Harriet Craig, who had introduced him to Hollowell as a free man. The wedding was very close. His barrister said in court that it was to be the next morning; The Dispatch, as quoted by the Dictionary of Sydney, said the Monday. Either way, he had no money to pay for it.

Saturday Night, 6 January 1844

Ellen Jamieson ran a small shop from her home on the corner of Kent Street and Margaret Place, a few streets back from the harbour. That's how the Sydney Morning Herald described the location in its trial report. The Dictionary of Sydney puts her home in Erskine Street, which is close by, but I've gone with the address given in the 1844 papers. She had been widowed just over a year earlier, when her husband Robert, a steward on the Rose steamer and a native of Glasgow, died in December 1842. She had two small children, Mary, known as Polly, and Robert, known as Bobby. Her age isn't certain: the Herald reporter at the inquest thought she was about 30, while Wikipedia, citing her NSW death record, gives 35. Neighbours said she did a good trade, and one woman told the inquest that Ellen often changed banknotes for her. People knew she had money in the house.

John Shalless, a builder who lived opposite in Margaret Place, wasn't well that night. At about ten o'clock his wife warned him that a boy had seen a suspicious-looking man hanging about. Shalless went out onto his verandah and watched him walk up and down outside Mrs Jamieson's shop for more than an hour and a half. He saw the man go in and out, sit on the kerb, and throw something at her little white dog. At about twenty to twelve a customer, Mrs Elizabeth Brown, went into the shop and found a man behind the door "getting some vinegar". He bade them both good night and left.

A few minutes later Ellen came to her door, wiping her hands, and the man stepped up, spoke to her and followed her in, pushing the door shut behind him. Shalless told his wife, "I hope he does not mean to rob her." Then he heard the door slam and something fall. He ran across the road and found the door locked, and from inside he heard what he described as "some strokes given as of some one breaking a cocoanut with a hammer". He saw a light moving upstairs and the man pulling back the blind to look out.

Shalless asked a private watchman for help and was told, "Well, what is that to me?" So he roused the neighbours himself. While some watched the front, others broke in the back door. They found Ellen lying unconscious and bleeding heavily from wounds to her head, and the man standing behind the front door. He didn't fight. As they grabbed him he called out, "O! don't strike me." Constable Bryan Norton took him to the watch-house. Upstairs, the neighbours found Ellen's two children in bed, crying.

The weapon took a while to find. About two hours later Mrs Jaques, a neighbour, lifted the mattress on Ellen's bed and found a tomahawk hidden between the mattress and the battens, with fresh blood on it. Charles Hollowell knew it at once. It was his, and it had been lying in his back yard, where his lodger could get at it.

At the station Inspector Molloy searched the prisoner. In his trousers and pockets were a woman's pocket, which looked as if it had been torn from her clothes, and money totalling £17 2s 8d. He also had three bills of exchange for £50 each, made out to be drawn on his half-brother, Sir Edward Knatchbull, along with three blank ones. There was blood on his trousers and on his boots.

Twelve Days

Ellen Jamieson didn't die that night. The surgeon, Mr Jones, found several fractures of her skull. Her neighbours nursed her for twelve days, and she died between seven and eight o'clock on the morning of Thursday 18 January 1844. Mrs Brown, who used to do her mangling and mending, was with her at the end.

The inquest was held the same day at M'Kenzie's public house on the corner of Clarence Street and Margaret Place. Knatchbull was there and cross-examined the witnesses himself. The jury took about a minute to return a verdict of wilful murder, and the coroner made a point of praising Shalless "for the praiseworthy manner in which he had acted". The Herald said four or five hundred people waited outside. When Knatchbull was bundled into a hackney coach to go back to gaol, the crowd hooted and hissed.

The Trial: 24 January 1844

Knatchbull came to trial in the Supreme Court only six days after the inquest, on Wednesday 24 January 1844, before Justice William Burton, the same judge who had dealt with him on Norfolk Island. The Attorney-General, John Plunkett, prosecuted. His barrister was Robert Lowe, a newcomer to the colony who would later become a well-known figure in British politics.

"Knatchbull, as he appeared on his Trial", a woodcut from the booklet The Life of J. Knatchbull, published in Sydney in 1844. Credit: Unknown artist, H. Evers (publisher), State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lowe started on the indictment itself. Knatchbull had been charged as "John Fitch alias John Knatchbull", and Lowe objected to the name. The court amended the indictment to "John Knatchbull" only, and he pleaded not guilty. Lowe then asked for the trial to be put off, saying a settler from the Clarence River named John Tattersal could give Knatchbull an alibi. Justice Burton refused, as the affidavit didn't say clearly what Tattersal could prove.

The Crown's witnesses told the same story they had told at the inquest. Then Lowe did something unusual. He didn't really argue that Knatchbull hadn't done it. Instead he told the jury that even if every witness was right, Knatchbull was one of those people "for whom laws had not been made". Insanity, he said, could affect the will without touching the intellect, so that a man could know perfectly well what he was doing and still be driven to it by something he couldn't resist. He pointed to the recent M'Naghten case in England. He asked how a man born into a noble family, with every advantage, could have "fallen, step by step, into the lowest depths of disgrace, unless urged on by some resistless demon of insanity". And he asked why a man about to be married would do such a thing, when he had bills on his brother in his pocket that he could have cashed.

This was what came to be called the plea of "moral insanity". The ADB says Lowe raised it "for the first time in a British court", and the Dictionary of Sydney calls it the first time insanity ideas like these were tested in an Australian court. What we do know for sure is what Justice Burton said. He told the jury it was "the first time he (the Judge) had ever heard a doctrine of this kind broached in a Court of Justice", and that it had no place in the law of England, "nor... either in common sense or morality". Lowe had no witnesses to back it up. The two men he called, the Colonial Surgeon Patrick Harnett and a priest who had known Knatchbull in 1817 and 1818, both said they had never been in a position to judge his state of mind.

On motive, Burton told the jury that the money found on the prisoner, if they believed it came from Ellen's house and person, gave them "a probable motive for his conduct". In other words, robbery.

Robert Lowe, Knatchbull's barrister, as Vanity Fair saw him in 1869, by which time he was a big name in British politics. Credit: Carlo Pellegrini, Vanity Fair, 27 February 1869, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verdict and Sentence

The jury found him guilty without even leaving the box. Asked if he had anything to say, Knatchbull spoke of his upbringing and his naval service, claiming he had been in "twenty-one general engagements" and received "eleven wounds", and asked whether such a man would murder "a defenceless woman". Justice Burton sentenced him to death. He told Knatchbull that he had complained of too little time to prepare for his trial, yet he had given the woman he killed far less time to prepare for hers before her Maker.

Before the court rose, Plunkett suggested that the money found on Knatchbull should go to Ellen's children, and Burton agreed to recommend that it be placed in the Savings Bank for them. He also had harsh words for the police, who hadn't marked the tomahawk or the pocket as evidence, and for the watchman who had refused to help. "The public were mainly indebted to Mr. Shalless," he said.

The Appeal and the Plea for Mercy

Lowe wasn't finished. A few days after the trial he went back to the Supreme Court arguing that the sentence was illegal, because the judge hadn't directed that Knatchbull's body be dissected after execution (or, as Wikipedia summarises the petition, buried within the prison). The ADB says the appeal failed, and Wikipedia says the judges gave their decision on 1 February 1844.

There was one more try. According to Roderick, an attorney named Parry Long put a submission to the Governor, Sir George Gipps, on 8 February asking that a petition go to Queen Victoria. On 10 February Knatchbull was told it had failed. The Australian also reported that his two nephews in Sydney had kept him supplied with comforts in gaol and had "used every exertion" to save him. The Sheriff's Office, meanwhile, was writing to the Colonial Secretary on 6 February asking for extra armed guards for the execution. That letter is now in the NSW State Archives collection.

The Confession

Right up to the last weekend, Knatchbull denied the murder. Then he signed a short written confession, which The Australian printed:

"Condemned Cell, Woolloomooloo Gaol, 10th February, 1844. In the name of the Almighty God, Amen. I am guilty of the horrid deed for which I am to suffer death; and may the Lord have mercy on my soul. Amen. JOHN KNATCHBULL."

The papers didn't agree on exactly when or to whom he confessed. The Australian linked it to the "condemned sermon" on the Sunday, while The Dispatch said he confessed fully to Henry Keck, the keeper of the gaol, on the Monday night. The Dispatch added that he said he could not account for what had driven him to it. He also spent his last weeks writing the story of his life, finishing it on the morning of his execution and handing the manuscript to the gaol's governor.

Henry Keck, Governor of the gaol at Darlinghurst, drawn in 1847. Knatchbull wrote his life story in Keck's gaol and gave him the manuscript. Credit: William Nicholas, National Library of Australia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

13 February 1844: The Hanging at Darlinghurst

The gaol at Darlinghurst had only been taking prisoners since 1841, and Knatchbull was the first man hanged there, and the first to go to a gallows built outside its walls, in full public view. Hangings had been public in Sydney for decades, but this was a new stage for them. The Dispatch said it stood "in front of the north gate", on ground so high it "could be seen from almost any part of Sydney". The ADB entry for the hangman puts it "outside the main gate". In my Darlinghurst Gaol post I placed the early public hangings at the main gate on Forbes Street.

People began walking across the Racecourse (today's Hyde Park) from six in the morning: men, women and children, on foot and in carts and carriages. Mounted police and soldiers kept the crowd back behind a chain. The crowd figures vary even within a single newspaper. The Australian's main report estimated "about ten thousand", but a second account printed in the same issue reckoned "between four and five thousand". Later writers, including the Dictionary of Sydney, have gone with more than ten thousand. Either way, it was an enormous number of people for a town the size of Sydney in 1844.

"Woolloomooloo Gaol", Execution of John Knatchbull: the crowd outside the gaol on 13 February 1844. Credit: Artist unknown, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Just before nine the Sheriff, Keck and Captain Innes went to the condemned cell. Knatchbull walked out between the gaol chaplain, the Rev. Mr Elder, and the Rev. Mr Sharpe of Bathurst, joining in the burial service as it was read. He was dressed in a mourning suit with black gloves and held a white handkerchief. At the foot of the scaffold he knelt and prayed for about five minutes. Then he climbed up, helped by the executioner, Alexander Green, the colony's long-serving hangman. The ADB entry on Green calls this the most famous of the executions he carried out at Darlinghurst.

The cap was drawn over his face. The Australian heard him saying, "Lord have mercy on my soul! Christ have mercy on my soul!" when the bolt was drawn. The two papers don't agree about what happened next. The Australian's second account suggests death came quickly, but The Dispatch reported that the knot had slipped round to the back of his neck, "and the struggles of expiring strength were long and painful". Both said the crowd was quiet throughout. There was no jeering, and afterwards people simply went home.

The scaffold outside Darlinghurst Gaol for Knatchbull's hanging, as drawn for the Truth newspaper more than fifty years later, on 8 August 1897. Credit: Unknown artist, Truth (Sydney), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Afterwards

Before his body was handed over to his family, a cast was taken of his head and face "for phrenological purposes", watched by many of Sydney's doctors. On 28 February The True Sun printed a woodcut of the cast. Early on the Wednesday morning a hearse and mourning coach took the coffin to what The Dispatch called "the Dissenting burial ground". The plate on it read "John Knatchbull, aged fifty-six". The Rev. Dr Ross of the Independent Chapel read the service. The mourners were two gentlemen and two ladies in deep mourning, and one more woman in black who stood apart from them.

What Became of Ellen Jamieson's Children

This is the part of the story I find hardest to read. Polly and Bobby Jamieson had lost their father in December 1842 and their mother in January 1844. A committee was formed to collect money for them, and its members included the Presbyterian minister Dr John Dunmore Lang and John Shalless, the neighbour who had raised the alarm. Lists for donations were left at the banks and on board the Hunter's River steamer.

Then, on 8 March 1844, Robert Lowe, Knatchbull's own barrister, applied to the Supreme Court to be made the children's guardian. The application was unopposed and was granted by the Chief Justice, Sir James Dowling, the same judge whose name Knatchbull had forged on that cheque back in 1831. Lang was furious that the man who had tried to save the murderer was now raising the victim's children, and he attacked Lowe in print.

The children lived in the Lowe household, and Wikipedia's account, drawing on Lowe's biographers, says their place there was somewhere between adopted children and servants. When the Lowes sailed for England on the Kate in January 1850, Polly and Bobby went with them. After that the accounts don't agree. A biography of Lowe from 1893 says Polly died young, soon after reaching England, and that Bobby went on to serve in New Zealand. A later biography from 1976 says Bobby died young in an asylum, and that Polly probably married and came back to Australia. I can't tell you which is right, and I'd rather leave it there than guess.

How Sydney Remembered Him

Sydney couldn't get enough of the story at the time. In the days before the execution a King Street printer advertised a lithograph of "John Knatchbull, the Murderer; and Mrs. Ellen Jamieson, his Victim" for a shilling. The Sydney Morning Herald grumbled that "the sooner he is forgotten the better". Four days after the hanging a booklet called The Life of J. Knatchbull was on sale, and the State Library of NSW still holds a copy. Roderick later wrote that many of the versions that followed painted Knatchbull "as a monster of bloody appetites". His own manuscript life story was eventually published in Roderick's 1963 biography, John Knatchbull: From Quarterdeck to Gallows. More than fifty years on, in 1897, the Truth newspaper was still printing pictures of his scaffold.

For the law, Lowe's "moral insanity" defence is still the part people write about, and it has been studied as an early attempt to bring that idea into an Australian courtroom. For Darlinghurst, Knatchbull was the first of the many people hanged at the gaol. The walls are still there in Forbes Street, and these days they're full of art students rather than prisoners.

The sandstone entrance of the former Darlinghurst Gaol, now the National Art School. Credit: Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For me, the people worth remembering from that Saturday night are John Shalless, who wouldn't look away when the watchman did, the neighbours who broke down the back door, the women who nursed Ellen for twelve days, and Ellen Jamieson herself, a hard-working widow trying to keep a roof over two little children in 1840s Sydney.

Timeline

• c.1789–1793 – John Knatchbull born in Kent; the ADB says probably baptised at Norton on 24 January 1793, while Roderick gives 1789.
• August 1804 – Joins the Royal Navy as a volunteer.
• November 1810 – Passes his lieutenant's examination.
• 1814–1815 – Commands the sloop Doterel; retired on half-pay after Waterloo.
• 1818 – Half-pay stopped over the Azores debt, and his name is removed from the navy list.
• 30 June 1824 – Arrested at Vauxhall Gardens, London, as "John Fitch".
• August 1824 – Convicted at the Surrey Assizes and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation.
• April 1825 – Arrives in Sydney on the Asia; sent to Bathurst.
• 24 August 1829 – First ticket-of-leave.
• 22 February 1832 – Convicted of forging Judge Dowling's name; death recorded, commuted to seven years on Norfolk Island.
• October 1832 – Poison plot on the Governor Phillip fails.
• January 1834 – Norfolk Island rising; Knatchbull turns informer.
• May 1839 – Returns to Sydney; later sent to Port Macquarie.
• 8 July 1842 – New ticket-of-leave, altered to Sydney in July 1843.
• Saturday 6 January 1844 – Ellen Jamieson attacked in her shop near midnight; Knatchbull caught inside.
• Thursday 18 January 1844 – Ellen Jamieson dies; inquest returns wilful murder.
• Wednesday 24 January 1844 – Trial before Justice Burton; guilty; sentenced to death.
• 1 February 1844 – Appeal over the wording of the sentence rejected.
• 10 February 1844 – Petition for mercy fails; written confession signed.
• Tuesday 13 February 1844 – Hanged outside Darlinghurst Gaol.
• 8 March 1844 – Robert Lowe appointed guardian of the Jamieson children.
• January 1850 – The Lowes leave for England with Polly and Bobby.

Sources

• Australian Dictionary of Biography, "Knatchbull, John (1792–1844)", Vol. 2, 1967: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/knatchbull-john-2313
• Ken Macnab, "Green, Alexander (1802–?)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, 2005: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/green-alexander-12949
• Australian Dictionary of Biography, "Lowe, Robert (1811–1892)": https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lowe-robert-2376
• Museums of History NSW, "Convict case study – John Knatchbull": https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/convict-case-study-john-knatchbull/
• Museums of History NSW, "John Knatchbull" (Convict Sydney): https://mhnsw.au/stories/convict-sydney/john-knatchbull/
• Rachel Franks, "A huge crowd for a hanging: the end of John Knatchbull", Dictionary of Sydney blog, 2021: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/blog/a_huge_crowd_for_a_hanging_the_end_of_john_knatchbull
• Wikipedia, "John Knatchbull (Royal Navy officer)" (summarising Colin Roderick, John Knatchbull: From Quarterdeck to Gallows, 1963): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Knatchbull_(Royal_Navy_officer)
• "Death" (Robert Jamieson), Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1842, p. 3: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12423195
• "Domestic Intelligence", Weekly Register (Sydney), 13 January 1844, p. 373: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228135480
• "Inquests", Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January 1844, p. 2: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12412784
• "Supreme Court – Criminal Side", Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1844, p. 2: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12411912
• "Criminal Sessions", Sydney Record, 27 January 1844, p. 131: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228141580
• Advertisement, "John Knatchbull, the Murderer; and Mrs. Ellen Jamieson, his Victim", Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 1844, p. 3: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12426132
• "Execution of John Knatchbull", The Australian, 15 February 1844, p. 3: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/37123826
• "Execution of John Knatchbull the Murderer of Mrs. Jamison", The Dispatch, 17 February 1844, p. 2: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228250767
• "Funeral of Knatchbull", The Dispatch, 17 February 1844, p. 3: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228250769
• "The Late Mrs. Jamison" (subscription committee notice), Sydney Morning Herald, 17 February 1844, p. 3: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12422462
• "Cast of Knatchbull's Head", The True Sun and New South Wales Independent Press, 28 February 1844, p. 154: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228133935
• "Law Intelligence – In the Matter of the Orphans Jamieson", Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 1844, p. 2: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12415103
• National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, "Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke": https://portrait.gov.au/people/robert-lowe-1811
• All images: Wikimedia Commons, with the original holding institutions credited under each picture.