On a Sunday afternoon in September 1834, one of the best-known men in Sydney rode out across his own paddocks at Petersham and never came home. Dr Robert Wardell was a barrister, a newspaper man and a thorn in the side of Governor Darling. With William Charles Wentworth he started The Australian, the colony's first independent newspaper. He also owned a huge sweep of bush that ran from Parramatta Road all the way down to the Cooks River. Down near the river he came across three runaway convicts camped on his land, and one of them shot him dead. This page tells his story and the story of the suburb that grew up on his estate. The murder gets the most room, because it's one of the great Sydney crime stories of the 1830s.
First, a quick word on the name. The Petersham Wardell was Robert Wardell (1793–1834). People sometimes mix him up with William Wardell, the architect of St Mary's Cathedral, and there's a short note on him further down.
Petersham Before Wardell
Gadigal and Wangal country
Long before any land grants, this was Aboriginal country. Inner West Council says the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora Nation are the Traditional Custodians of the inner west. Nobody can draw the exact boundaries, but the council's description puts Petersham right on the line between them. Gadigal country is believed to have run along the south side of Port Jackson "from South Head to about Petersham", and the Wangal lived along the southern shore of the Parramatta River "from about Petersham to about Rosehill". Wikipedia's Petersham article just calls the area Gadigal territory.
The Dictionary of Sydney's history of the Cooks River people points out that spear points found along the river show people hunted land animals as well as fishing. It also says that the area north of the river around Petersham "came to be known to early European settlers as the kangaroo ground". The Dictionary still lists "Kangaroo Ground" as an old name for Petersham.
Grose, the food crisis and the name
In the hungry early years of the colony, Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose began handing out farms to get more food grown. Garry Wotherspoon writes in the Dictionary of Sydney that in 1793 Grose started granting land to military men. The first grants went west of town at Kangaroo Ground, now Petersham. By late 1793 a stockade stood halfway to Parramatta for the convict work gangs, and in October that year Grose sent men out to set up a timber yard.
Grose named the district after Petersham, his home village in Surrey, England. That's the old village beside the Thames near Richmond, which is now part of London. Wikipedia says 520 acres were granted to several people, including the chaplain Richard Johnson, the surgeon John White and the bricklayer James Bloodsworth. For years afterwards Petersham was farming land, and good farming land at that.
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Who Was Robert Wardell?
John Edwards's Dictionary of Sydney entry says Wardell was born on 11 May 1793 at Healaugh in Yorkshire. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) says he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took an LL.B. in 1817 and an LL.D. in 1823. He was a barrister of the Middle Temple. In London he edited the Statesman, an evening paper, and it was there in 1819 that he met young Wentworth.
In February 1823 Wardell applied for the new job of Attorney-General of New South Wales and missed out. The job went to Saxe Bannister. ADB's C.H. Currey makes a dry little remark about this: if Wardell had got the job, Governor Darling "may have been spared much vexation".
In 1824 Wardell sailed for Sydney on the Alfred with his mother. Wentworth and Dr and Mrs William Redfern were on the same ship. Wardell being Wardell, he sued the ship's owner over "a wet and comfortless cabin" and won £200. He and Wentworth were admitted to practise on 10 September 1824.
The Australian, 1824
The pair had brought printing gear out with them. On 14 October 1824 the first issue of The Australian went on sale. It was a weekly and cost a shilling. They never asked Governor Brisbane's permission. As he complained, "These gentlemen never solicited my permission to publish their Paper." The first editorial set the tone:
"A free press is the most legitimate, and, at the same time, the most powerful weapon that can be employed to annihilate influence, frustrate the designs of tyranny, and restrain the arm of oppression."
Currey says that until he stepped down as editor on 27 June 1828, "Wardell was the Australian". He wasn't a fan of the writing, though. He found it long-winded and sarcastic, but sharp when it counted.
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Clashing with Governor Darling
Things were friendly enough at first. ADB says Darling's brother-in-law, Henry Dumaresq, made a point of cultivating Wardell. That didn't last. The paper wanted an elected assembly and an end to military juries, and when Private Sudds died in 1827 The Australian joined in the uproar. Darling tried to rein in the press and prosecuted Wardell for criminal libel. Both big trials ended with the jury unable to agree.
Wardell was called out to duel twice: once by Saxe Bannister and once by Dumaresq. Nobody was hurt either time. Wikipedia says the Dumaresq duel came in 1827 after an article titled "How-e to live by plunder". Darling himself grumbled to London that "Mr Wentworth and Dr Wardell…keep the Court and the Bar, by their effrontery and their talent, equally in subjection".
The twist came later. When Darling found his own Attorney-General wasn't up to the job, he hired Wardell for the government. Currey says the fees Wardell charged startled the Secretary of State.
The Petersham Estate and Sara Dell
Wardell made good money and spent it on land. The Dictionary of Sydney says he built his Petersham estate by buying up the land grants between Petersham and the Cooks River, including Thomas Moore's old estate, until it covered more than 2,000 acres. Wikipedia says that in 1831 he bought land from Wentworth among others. ADB puts the estate at some 2,500 acres. The Sydney Gazette of 29 May 1830 reported that his timber alone had been valued at £40,000. ADB adds that 25 cultivated acres gave him 500 bushels of good wheat in 1830.
His house was Sara Dell, on Parramatta Road, where Fort Street High School stands today. John Edwards has a lovely bit of detective work on the name. Wardell was living with Sarah Rowe, the estranged wife of a Sydney solicitor, and the 1828 census lists her at the house as "Miss S Wardell". Edwards reads the name as a play on "Sarah Wardell", the wife she could never legally be, joined to "dell", a small valley.
Wardell played the English squire. Chrys Meader's Dictionary of Sydney history of Marrickville says he fenced the whole property, stocked it with imported English deer under a gamekeeper and led hunting parties down to the Cooks River. Another Dictionary entry says those parties often included the governor. He guarded the place fiercely, too. When the assistant government architect Joshua Thorp tried to force a right of way through Petersham in 1829, Wardell sued him for trespass and won.
The Murder of Dr Wardell
The day of the ride: Sunday 7 September 1834
ADB, Chrys Meader's Marrickville history and John Edwards's entry all give Sunday 7 September 1834. The one odd date out is another Dictionary of Sydney entry, "Bark huts and country estates", which says 8 September. That's most likely the day the body was found. ADB tells it simply: early in the afternoon, "astride his hack, he left his cottage at Petersham to inspect his estate."
Who was with him?
From everything I could read, nobody. None of the accounts mentions a servant or friend riding with him, and his body lay out overnight until his own people found it the next day. He was a man alone on horseback, a long way down his own paddocks from the house.
The runaways' camp on the estate
Ironically, the privacy Wardell had fought so hard for in court made his estate a perfect hiding place. The "Bark huts" entry puts it this way: three runaway convicts "found Petersham an excellent hiding place to escape capture." Near the Cooks River boundary Wardell spotted "an unauthorized little humpy", in ADB's words. Out of it came three men he rightly took for escaped convicts: John Jenkins, Thomas Tattersdale and a teenager, Emanuel (or Emmanuel) Brace.
The shooting
ADB says that "after a few inflamed exchanges, John Jenkins, the leader of them, shot him." Rachel Franks, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, says Wardell had tried to talk the three into giving themselves up. Jenkins feared Wardell would turn them in, so he shot him.
Jenkins's confession in the cells, printed in The Sydney Times on 14 November 1834, made it worse still. He knew who Wardell was when he fired. And:
"not satisfied with discharging the contents of his piece at him, he pursued him, and when the unfortunate gentleman fell exhausted from his horse, from loss of blood, he struck him with the butt end of his piece, and a short struggle took place between them. This accounts for the breast of the Doctor's coat being torn."
Finding the body
ADB says the body was found the next day. The "Bark huts" entry adds that it "was stiff and cold when discovered by his servants many hours later." John Edwards worked out that it was about three-quarters of a mile, just over a kilometre, from Sara Dell. He says many accounts exaggerate the distance, and that the spot was no further from the house than today's Marrickville Park or Newington College.
The Australian, Wardell's own old paper, sent someone out to the scene. Its report of 9 September, quoted by Rachel Franks, is raw with grief:
"imagine a human being crimsoned over with his own heart's blood; a fearful wound on the left side of the throat, immediately under the ear, and another gaping wound sufficient for the escape of a hundred lives, immediately between the left shoulder and the breast…The blood stained corpse, of which was once Robert Wardell, was here before us."
The inquest
A coroner's inquest was held, and ADB's reading list includes a report of it in the Sydney Monitor of 10 September 1834. I couldn't get through to Trove to read that report myself, so I can't give you the inquest's wording.
The manhunt and the arrests
The government offered a reward and a pardon for information about the killers. ADB lists the Sydney Herald of 15 September 1834 reporting it. The three men were picked up about a week after the murder. By 17 September, the Sydney Monitor was reporting that Tattersdale and Jenkins had been committed for trial (again from ADB's list). Young Brace turned approver, which meant he gave evidence for the Crown against his mates.
The accused
John Jenkins was the ringleader and the man with the gun. The Dictionary of Sydney's record shows him as a convict on the ship Asia, arriving in Sydney on 27 June 1833, barely fifteen months before the murder. Franks calls him "a man with a really dodgy past". On the scaffold he owned up to a string of robberies, at Kissing Point, on the Liverpool road and at Liverpool, where he said he'd stabbed a man.
Thomas Tattersdale came out on the same ship, the Asia, and also arrived on 27 June 1833. He was charged with aiding and abetting.
Emanuel Brace was the youngest. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was born in Hertfordshire in September 1816, which made him about 17 or 18. The Marrickville history calls him "a boy of 16". He testified for the Crown and received an absolute pardon. His later life was no fairytale either. In 1858 he was tried at Darlinghurst for murdering his wife Esther at Eden and was acquitted. He died an alcoholic in Newcastle in 1880.
The sources I could read don't say which masters or road gangs Jenkins and Tattersdale were assigned to before they bolted, so I've left that out.
The trial in the Supreme Court
Jenkins and Tattersdale were tried for murder in the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Sir Francis Forbes on the bench. Rachel Franks writes that the trial "was quite an event, and the courthouse was packed". The jury was sworn, the indictments were read, and both men pleaded not guilty. Young Brace gave evidence against his former companions.
I couldn't load the full court record, so I can't tell you for sure who prosecuted or the details of the evidence. The jury didn't take long. In the words Franks quotes from the report, the jury retired, "but the door, was hardly shut, when they came back into Court" with guilty verdicts against both men.
The sentence and Jenkins's outburst
Forbes sentenced both men to "be hung by the neck until they were dead, and their bodies delivered over to the surgeons for dissection." Tattersdale took it quietly. He asked that Brace be made to watch the execution and asked for time to repent.
Jenkins was another story. Franks's account, drawn from The Australian, says he had "a good deal to say, and throwing himself into a threatening and unbecoming attitude". He swore at everyone, said he hadn't had a fair trial, blamed his lawyer and declared he could shoot everyone in the room. He offered to confess to other robberies, and Forbes told him "he had better apply to the clergyman of his own religion". Then Jenkins turned on Tattersdale and punched him twice in the face, knocking him down in the dock. It took about a dozen constables to get him into handcuffs, and he fought and shouted all the way back to the cells. Through all this, The Australian reported, the judge "sat in mute astonishment".
The artist John Gardiner Austin was sketching in court. The Sydney Times said his lithograph of Jenkins caught him "at the moment Jenkins was putting a question to one of the witnesses called on his behalf". The Dictionary of Sydney holds a copy, credited to the National Library of Australia.
The hangings
Jenkins and Tattersdale were hanged on Monday 10 November 1834. That's the date in the Dictionary of Sydney's record for Tattersdale and in Rachel Franks's account, and the Sydney Herald of 13 November spoke of "Monday morning last". (The Marrickville history says 7 November, which looks to be a slip.) A third condemned man, McCormack, went to the gallows with them. Brace, who had turned approver, was not hanged.
The Sydney Herald said the crowd around the gaol was "crowded to a degree never before observed on any similar occasion". Tattersdale came in first with the Rev. W. Cowper, "the most sincere repentance and devotion". Jenkins followed "staring wildly around". He ran up the ladder, struck one of the ropes "in a playful manner", and spoke to the prisoners in the yard:
"Well, good bye my lads, I have not time to say much to you; I acknowledge I shot the Doctor, but it was not for gain, it was for the sake of my fellow prisoners because he was a tyrant… if any of you take the bush, shoot every tyrant you come across…"
When the others shook hands, Jenkins turned away from Tattersdale and said something like "let every villain shake hands with himself." At the urging of the Rev. Mr McEncroe, he relented, and shook Tattersdale's hand with: "come, come my lad, none of that crying, it's no use crying now; we'll be all right in ten minutes time." Then the platform fell. The Herald used the story to argue for "an unrelaxing system of restraint on the Convict population".
Public reaction and the funeral
Meader writes that the murder "caused a huge outcry and calls for increased penalties and police to protect the citizenry of Sydney", coming as it did when people were already worried about convict lawlessness. She adds that there have been "several conspiracy theories about who really wanted him dead" ever since. ADB's reading list includes a poem about Wardell printed in the Sydney Gazette on 18 September 1834.
Edwards says Wardell was given a grand funeral and buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery, the old Sandhills burial ground where Central Station is now. The Sydney Gazette reported the funeral on 13 September 1834. He didn't stay there. His family insisted his remains be dug up and shipped to London to lie beside his father in the family vault.
In 1839 a marble tablet went up in St James' Church, King Street, with his profile modelled from his death mask. ADB says it is "said to be a good likeness". It's still there on the southern wall.
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What Happened to the Estate
Wardell never married. His will left everything to his mother, but she had died in 1830 and he never made another one. Wentworth was granted administration on 16 October 1834. Edwards writes that the estate was settled in London in 1840. Because Wardell's three married sisters couldn't legally own property in their own names, each of their husbands got a third: Charles Priddle, John Fisher and John Frazer. Sarah Rowe stayed on at Sara Dell. She died at Petersham in December 1837, aged only 38.
Meader says the "demise of Wardell opened the way for the first great era of subdivision in Marrickville". In the 1840s the estate was opened up to market gardeners, quarrymen and dairy farmers. A patch of it stayed bush long enough to be called "Wardell's Bush". According to another Dictionary entry, Wardell's heirs carved Petersham into garden and dairy farm blocks in the late 1840s. In 1857 the merchant Thomas Holt bought part of the estate and built his house, The Warren.
Petersham Grows Up
Wikipedia says Petersham's first inn, the Cherry Tree, was opened by Thomas Weedon on land bought from Wardell's estate. A racetrack opened in the 1840s and soon closed, and the first post office came in 1855.
The railway changed everything. Petersham station opened on 6 January 1857, at first just a halt. The big station building and the iron footbridge came in the 1880s, designed by George Cowdery. Wikipedia quotes the description of the old building as "the largest and grandest of the surviving 19th century railway stations in the Sydney area". The station went on the State Heritage Register in 1999.
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Petersham_Station.jpg)
The Municipality of Petersham was incorporated in 1871. Wikipedia says it had 750 people living in 153 houses at the time. The first town hall in Crystal Street, designed by Thomas Rowe, opened on 19 April 1882, and it was the scene of Australia's first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore in 1908. It was knocked down in 1937 and replaced by the Art Deco town hall by Rudder & Grout, finished in 1938. Inner West Council notes that this hall was the backdrop for the dancing scenes in Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom (1992). Petersham Council lasted until it merged into Marrickville in 1948–49.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, well-off families came out to Petersham for the parks and the train line, and their big Victorian and Edwardian houses still cluster around Petersham Park. Fort Street boys' school moved to Taverner's Hill in 1916, onto the old Sara Dell site. In 1947 the Petersham Odeon opened with crowds out the front.
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From the late 20th century, Portuguese families moved in from Paddington looking for cheaper housing, and Petersham became the heart of Sydney's Portuguese community. You can still see it in the charcoal chicken shops and the Bairro Português festival on Audley Street. Wikipedia makes an interesting point, though: only about 1.9 per cent of locals were actually born in Portugal. And Wardell Road still carries his name, running south from Petersham.
Federation_cottage_Wardell_Road_Dulwich_Hill.jpg)
A Note on the Other Wardell: William, the Architect
It's an easy mix-up. William Wilkinson Wardell (1823–1899) was born in Poplar, London, a generation after Robert. He was a Gothic Revival architect and a friend of Augustus Pugin. He came to Victoria in 1858, became chief architect of the Victorian Public Works Department, and designed St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney and St John's College at Sydney University. He died at North Sydney in 1899 and was buried at Gore Hill. None of the sources I read link him to Petersham or to Robert.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Gadigal and Wangal country; settlers later call it the Kangaroo Ground.
- 1793 – Lieutenant-Governor Grose begins land grants at Kangaroo Ground; a timber yard is set up in October.
- 1793/1794 – Grose names the district Petersham, after his home village in Surrey.
- 11 May 1793 – Robert Wardell born at Healaugh, Yorkshire.
- 1819 – Wardell, editor of the London Statesman, meets W.C. Wentworth.
- 1824 – Wardell and Wentworth reach Sydney on the Alfred; admitted to practise on 10 September.
- 14 October 1824 – First issue of The Australian.
- 1826–27 – Duels with Saxe Bannister and Henry Dumaresq; libel prosecutions under Darling.
- 27 June 1828 – Wardell gives up the editor's chair.
- 1829 – Wins the trespass case against Joshua Thorp.
- 1830 – His timber is valued at £40,000; his mother dies.
- 27 June 1833 – Jenkins and Tattersdale arrive in Sydney as convicts on the Asia.
- Sunday 7 September 1834 – Wardell is shot near the Cooks River end of his estate.
- 8 September 1834 – His body is found by his servants.
- Mid-September 1834 – Reward offered; Jenkins, Tattersdale and Brace arrested about a week after the murder.
- Late September–October 1834 – Trial before Chief Justice Forbes; both men found guilty; Jenkins attacks Tattersdale in the dock.
- 16 October 1834 – Wentworth granted administration of the estate.
- Monday 10 November 1834 – Jenkins and Tattersdale hanged, along with McCormack; Brace pardoned.
- December 1837 – Sarah Rowe dies at Petersham.
- 1839 – Memorial tablet installed in St James' Church.
- 1840 – Estate divided among his sisters' husbands; subdivision follows in the 1840s.
- 6 January 1857 – Petersham railway station opens.
- 1871 – Municipality of Petersham incorporated.
- 1882 – First Petersham Town Hall opens.
- 1916 – Fort Street boys move to the old Sara Dell site.
- 1938 – Art Deco town hall completed.
- 1948–49 – Petersham merges into Marrickville.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When Petersham was named: the Dictionary of Sydney says Grose named it in 1794. Wikipedia ties the naming to the 1793 settlement.
- Size of the estate: the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say about 2,000 acres or more. ADB says some 2,500 acres. The 1830 Sydney Gazette said "two or three thousand acres".
- How he built it: the Dictionary says he bought up grants including Thomas Moore's estate and dates his ownership from 1824. Wikipedia says he bought land from Wentworth and others in 1831.
- Date of the murder: ADB, Edwards and Meader say 7 September 1834. One Dictionary of Sydney entry says 8 September, which is the day the body was found.
- Distance from the house: John Edwards says about three-quarters of a mile and warns that many accounts stretch it.
- Brace's age: "a boy of 16" according to the Marrickville history. A Hertfordshire birth in September 1816, so about 17 or 18, according to the Dictionary's record.
- Date of the hangings: 10 November 1834 in the Dictionary's Tattersdale record, in Franks and in the Sydney Herald's "Monday morning last". Chrys Meader's Marrickville history says 7 November, and the Dictionary's record for Jenkins also gives 7 November.
- When the estate was carved up: Wikipedia says "subdivided in 1834 upon Wardell's murder". The Dictionary entries put the settlement in 1840 and the subdivision in the late 1840s.
- Jenkins's last words: the Sydney Herald and The Australian gave slightly different versions of his gallows speech.
My Earlier Posts
- The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse – Vaucluse House, the Wentworth Mausoleum and a Full Family Tree
- Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
- The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery
- Tresillian – 2–4 Shaw Street Petersham
- St Mary's Cathedral – College Street & Art Gallery Road (William Wardell's cathedral)
- Names Of Railway Stations In New South Wales – Including Aboriginal Names & Meanings
Sources
- C.H. Currey, "Wardell, Robert (1793–1834)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 2, 1967 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wardell-robert-2773
- John Edwards, "Wardell, Robert", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/wardell_robert
- Rachel Franks, "Order in the Court! The Trial of Two Murderers", Dictionary of Sydney blog – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/blog/order_in_the_court_the_trial_of_two_murderers (quoting The Australian, 9 Sept and 11 Nov 1834)
- Chrys Meader, "Marrickville", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/marrickville
- "Bark huts and country estates", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/bark_huts_and_country_estates
- "The first people of the Cooks River", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/first_people_of_the_cooks_river
- "Urban growth in the Cooks River valley", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/urban_growth_in_the_cooks_river_valley
- Garry Wotherspoon, "The road west", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_road_west
- Dictionary of Sydney records: Petersham, Petersham estate, Sara Dell, John Jenkins, Thomas Tattersdale, Emmanuel Brace – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/place/petersham (and linked records)
- Marrickville Heritage Society, "The Hanging of the Bushrangers who Murdered Dr Wardell" (2012), reproducing the Sydney Herald, 13 November 1834 – https://marrickvilleheritage.org.au/2012/09/26/the-hanging-of-the-bushrangers-who-murdered-dr-wardell/
- The Sydney Times, 14 November 1834, p.2, transcribed by Australian Prints + Printmaking – https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/references/9790/
- Inner West Council, "Traditional custodians and how to acknowledge" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/aboriginal-community/traditional-custodians-and-how-acknowledge
- Inner West Council, "Land and suburbs" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/our-community-history/land-and-suburbs
- Inner West Council, "Petersham Town Hall" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/town-halls-100-people/petersham-town-hall
- Wikipedia: "Robert Wardell", "Petersham, New South Wales", "Petersham Town Hall", "Petersham railway station", "Fort Street High School", "William Wardell"
- Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture