AUSTRALIA'S BLOODY MASSACRE
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” -Oscar Wilde.
When gold was first discovered by 75-year-old John Dunlop in the creeks of Ballarat, in Victoria, in August, 1851, the news spread quickly to all parts of the world, and soon sailing ships were being abandoned in the port of Melbourne as captain and crew walked or rode the hot, dusty track to the goldfields.
Thousands of people, including most of the police, deserted their jobs in Melbourne and travelled in search of their Eldorado. During the next four years, Ballarat’s population increased markedly from a few diggers to 45,000 hopeful prospectors in search of quick wealth.
Most of these adventurers were not Australian-born, but reasonably young men from many different countries. From the first days of digging in the hard Ballarat soil, good finds were reported by solitary searchers, but it soon became evident that shallow alluvial gold was becoming scarce.
This was extremely hard work under a fierce summer sun and thousands of gold seekers soon lapsed into disappointment and frustrattion.
By 1854 in Ballarat, the easy surface gold was exhausted, and a population of some twenty five thousand, including immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, North America, Europe and China, were engaged in tracing the ancient buried river beds or “deep leads” across the hillsides and gullies east of the Ballarat Flat. This necessitated the slow, expensive and uncertain process of sinking exploratory shafts down through layers of clay and treacherous waterlogged silt and gravels to the bedrock, and with luck, to the elusive “gutter”, up to 50 metres below the surface, where the precious metal lay concentrated. As the sinking proceeded, the surrounding hillsides were progressively denuded of trees to provide timber for supporting and lining the shafts. In their place rose the tents of the miners and the businesses, which provided them with materials, food, grog and entertainment.
The new colonial government had many difficulties. Resources were extremely limited. Services for post, roads, hospitals, schools, etc., were urgently required. To finance these facilities, the government brought in a taxing system on the gold diggers: 30 shillings (about $3) per month, imposed in the form of a licence to search for gold, which, it was claimed by the reigning authorities, actually belonged to the British monarch and not to common mortals.
The “miner’s licence” entitled the holder to work a single 3.6 metre square “claim”. The licence was a labour tax on male diggers only (females were excluded), and was democratically shared by those who found gold and those who failed to do so. The imposition of the licence came without parliamentary representation. The arresting policeman was granted 50 per cent of each fine which enhanced his miserly pay of six pennies per day, giving him great incentive to pursue and prosecute offenders. Policemen at that time, sometimes former convicts, were usually assisted in their unpopular pursuits by bayonet-wielding soldiers. Together, they enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, and were frequently cruel, unjust and irresponsible.
Gold tallies by 1854 were in decline, thus making the licence fee a heavy monetary burden. Corruption was evident everywhere in the goldfields. Sir Charles Hotham, the newly-installed governor, did not personally endorse the licence fee, but had been instructed from his British peers to enforce it, even if it meant bloodshed.
Social disquiet was manifest everywhere on the Ballarat goldfields. It exploded when, on October 7, 1854, a young Scottish immigrant, James Scobie, was killed in the vicinity of the Eureka Hotel. Scobie’s digger mates firmly believed his murderer was the hotel proprietor, James Bentley. When tried before a magistrate (O’Ewes) who was known to be Bentley’s friend and business partner, the publican was exonerated without blame or penalty. The outraged diggers organised a huge public meeting. Soon afterwards the Eureka Hotel was mysteriously burnt to the ground.
Political agitation erupted when a group of former Chartists formed a Charter passed at Bakery Hill on November 11th, supported by an estimated mob of 10,000 irate diggers. The Ballarat Reform League Charter attempted to thoroughly reform the Hotham government, together with the goldfield’s administrative practises. Their basic premise was fundamental to the essence of every democracy: “the people are the only legitimate source of all political power.”
Governor Hotham, on November 27, rejected a digger’s group who requested a peaceful solution to their grievances. Instead, he increased police numbers and ordered further hunts for unlicenced gold seekers. On November 29, the diggers organised yet another meeting at Bakery Hill which was well attended. For the first time their newly-created Southern Cross flag was displayed. Many diggers deliberately burnt their licences by way of protest for their treatment by officialdom. Licences were burned and the rebel flag was unfurled, as the miners swore an oath of allegiance to it. Pikes were forged by friendly blacksmiths, and firarms, provisions and horses were donated or requisitioned.
The next day another intentionally provocative licence hunt angered the diggers even further. Meeting again, with the Irishman, Peter Lalor, accepting leadership of the rebels, the aggrieved diggers took a stand at the Eureka lead by constructing a stockade of logs and over-turned waggons which was intended to be their fortress in case of attack.
With the Southern Cross flag waving overhead, and about 500 diggers gathered around with up-raised right arms, they pledged: “We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”
The famous Southern Cross flag was hand-sewn by three women – Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Elizabeth Hayes. It measured 12 feet by 8 feet, and had five stars on a cross, sewn on a blue background. The blue section was made of a woollen mohair type of fabric, and the white stars and cross were fashioned from petticoat material. The stars only had eight points because the women who sewed the flag were pressed for time and folded the material in four when they cut out the stars. When the flag was first raised at Bakery Hill on November 29, 1854, the Italian journalist, Raffaello Carboni, climbed up on a tree stump beneath the Southern Cross and called on everyone “irrespective of nationality, religion and colour,” to salute the flag “as the refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth.”
Raffaello Carboni reported: “Timothy Hayes … with ability and tact, spoke like a man, as follows: ‘Gentlemen, many a time I have seen large public meetings pass resolutions with as much earnestness and unanimity as you show this day; and yet, when the time came to test the sincerity, and prove the determination necessary for carrying out those resolutions, it was found then that ‘the spirit, indeed, willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Now, then, before I put this resolution from the chair, let me point out to you the responsibility it will lay upon you …”
‘Hear, hear,’ cried the crowd.
‘And so I feel bound to ask you, gentlemen, to speak out your mind. Should any member … be dragged to the lockup for not having the licence, will a thousand of you volunteer to liberate the man?’
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Will two thousands of you come forward?’
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
‘Will four thousand of you volunteer to march up to the camp, and open the lockup to liberate the man?’
‘Yes, yes!” “Hurrah!’”
With the leadership of the Chartists relinquished, more radical elements replaced them, although it was never the policy of Lalor to become involved in action again the military or police, much less to overthrow the government. The gold diggers at the Eureka Stockade were determined to resist additional licence hunts and, hopefully, to influence the government against corrupt practises of its bureaucracy.
Their stand nonetheless suited the goldfield’s authorities who wanted to quash once and for all the reform initiative.
Ballarat’s most senior authority, Commissioner Robert Rede, corresponded with the governor on December 2 expressing concern that the Eureka Stockade, on a steep slope bordering the Melbourne Road, was populated and its occupiers fully armed for warfare. Rede pointed out that the rebelling forces needed to be apprehended with “arms in their hands”, justifying action by the authorities in smashing “the democratic movement at one blow.” The commissioner was, indeed, totally correct in his belief that the diggers were taking a stand for the establishment of a democracy, for their human rights and dignity, and for their freedom to express themselves as they chose.
Added to the numbers were 200 American diggers, of the Independent Californian Rangers, under the leadership of James McGill, all armed with revolvers and Mexican knives.
On the goverment side there were 182 mounted and foot soldiers, accompanied by 94 mounted and foot police. The police and soldiers were issued with 1842 muskets and carried about 60 rounds of ammunition. Bayonets were secured to the muskets. The 17 officers leading the assault were armed with regulation pattern 1845 swords. Such weaponry in the hands of government representatives made the old-fashioned rifles and metal pikes of the miners look like toys.
On Sunday, December 3, 1854, about 3am, as the first light of dawn spread over the Ballarat goldfields, a heavily-armed contingent of 296 government representatives attacked about 100 diggers camping inside the stockade. The bloody skirmish is said have only lasted for about 20 minutes. Lalor, standing on the top of a shaft, exposed to the full fire of the advancing troops, and using his revolver freely, suddenly fell away and collapsed, grasping his left arm. A bullet had shattered the bone.
Running towards a group of his supporters, Lalor cried: “Get away, boys, as quickly as you can!”
“Come with us,” said one of the men.
“I can’t go,” Lalor shouted back. “Get away and save yourselves.”
Between 5-7am, when the sunlight revealed the carnage, the police and military continued their mindless butchery unrestrained. The police were the main culprits, burning everything and shooting at anything that moved. A Catholic priest who arrived to assist his Catholic parishioners was ordered away at pistol point by a mounted policeman. A second-in-command of the British forces, Captain Pasley, who was sickened by the sadism of his men, threatened to execute any policeman or soldier who persisted with the indiscriminate slaughter. About 114 diggers, many wounded, were rounded up and all were forced to march to a camp about two kilometres away. Two diggers collapsed and died along the way, their bodies left by the roadside. The others were crowded into a lockup and left there.
An anonymous digger, writing on December 3, 1854, in the “Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer,” recalled: “ … The scene was awful … All felt stupefied … The tents all around were in a blaze … I counted fifteen dead … They all lay in a small space with their faces upwards, looking like lead; several of them were still heaving, and at every rise of their breasts, the blood spouted out of the wounds, or just bubbled out and trickled away. One man … about 40 years old, lay with a pike beside him: he had three contusions in the head, three strokes across the brow, a bayonet wound in the throat under the ear, and other wounds in the body. I counted 15 wounds in that single carcase. Some were bringing handkerchiefs, others bed furniture, and matting to cover up the faces of the dead … Poor women crying for absent husbands, and children frightened into quietness … My soul revolted at such means being so crully (sic) used by a government to sustain law. A little terrier sat on the breast of the man I spoke of, and kept up a continuous howl; it was removed, but always returned to the same spot; and when his master’s body was huddled, with the other corpses, into a cart, the little dog jumped in after him, and lying again on his dead master’s breast, began howling again … I could not breathe the blood-tainted air of the diggings, and I have left them for ever …”
A. Arnold, writing in “The Ballarat Courier,” in 1904, recalled: “ … We went up to the Stockade, and just as we got over the slabs, I saw one man lying on his stomach, wounded, kicking and throwing his arms about. A soldier was standing over him, and I saw the latter put his bayonet right through the Stockader’s back, who kicked no more … Our white trousers were covered with blood, and I kept mine for years as a memento … Whenever I go to Ballarat I always visit the Old Cemetery and take off my hat at the graves of those who fell …”
Hotham tried to blame the rebellion on the Irish and other “foreigners.” Southern newspapers, such as “The Age,” published critical articles, one stating: “There are not a dozen respectable citizens in Melbourne who do not entertain an indignant feeling against it for its weakness, its folly and its last crowning error. They do not sympathise with injustice and coercion.”
Weakened by a shoulder wound, Peter Lalor dropped onto a slab near a shaft ; his companions, knowing it was impossible to get him away under the barrage of fire, made him get into the shaft and covered him with slabs. When the soldiers had left, Lalor was smuggled away and hidden in a hut. Later still, his arm was amputated. He remained in hiding for six months.
An observer later wrote: “After the soldier and police retired, Lalor was put on Father Smyth’s horse, and he rode into the ranges and got shelter in a tent at Warrenheip. In the afternoon of the day of the fight, the woman of the tent told him she had to go to Ballarat and left him alone. He feared that the woman was going to inform the police of his whereabouts, and at once made up his mind to leave. I was on the look-out. Towards sundown on the Sunday I saw a strange figure coming across from the direction of the ranges … wearing a belltopper – a most unusual thing in those days, and a long tail coat. It was Lalor disguised in Father Smyth’s clothes …”
Mrs Anastasia Hayes, the wife of Timothy Hayes, was present at the amputation of Peter Lalor’s arm, in Father Smyth’s house.
A witness wrote: “Mrs Timothy Hayes was bright and quick in speech, as became the woman who told the police, when they arrested her husband, that they would not have had their way so easily if she was a man.
She assisted at the amputation. Two tables were set side by side, and Lalor was laid upon them. Fasther Smyth was going to hold the basin, but he was so nervous that he said to me: ‘Can you hold it?’
“I said: ‘Yes, I can.’
Dr. Doyle seemed timid also, and Lalor cried out: ‘Courage, courage. lop it off!’
And so it was done.
After that Lalor was put in Father Smyth’s bed, and three sacks were filled with blankets, sheets and things that were soaked with blood from the arm and the wine given to him to drink. The arm was put in with the clothes, and I saw McGrath and Phelan bury it all down a deep hole. I could show you the spot now.”
This was believed to have been an alluvial shaft near the corner of Mair and Princess Streets. The priest’s servant (Armenian-born, Johannes M’Gregorius) afterwards retrieved the arm and it was buried in a place where it was not likely to be disturbed.
When an amnesty was proclaimed, Lalor re-emerged. In due course, he was elected first member for Ballarat in the Legislative Assembly of Victoria. The way was paved for constitutional government; the despised Executive Council resigned en masse, the Ballarat officials were either dismissed or transferred elsewhere and all digger hunts stopped. Lalor, his left arm amputated at the shoulder joint, later stood unopposed and was elected to the Legislative Council. Laster still, he stoof for the seat of Grant in 1857, holding this position for 30 years until his retirement on October 4, 1887. During this time Lalor served as a cabinet minister and as a speaker of the parliament. Peter Lalor, aged 62, died in his son’s (Joseph Lalor) house, on February 9, at Richmond, Melbourne, in 1889.
Of the 30 or so rebels armed only with pikes against the soldier’s rifles, only about 6 survived to tell the take of the slaughter.
Several hours later the troop commander, Captain J. Thomas, reported that “the number of the killed and wounded on the side of the insurgents was great … there were not less than 30 killed on the spot, and I know that many have since died of their wounds.”
In truth, the soldiers maliciously and without mercy or decency butchered many wounded diggers and innocent onlookers. On the troop’s side, Captain Henry Wise (shot in the right thigh and upper part of the fibula tibia) and three privates (Michael Rooney, Joseph Wall and William Webb) were killed or died later of wounds received. Twelve soldiers were wounded.
R. M. Serjeant recorded that he saw the troops returning to camp with their prisoners several of whom were wounded, and dragged along in the greatest agony. Entering the Stockade, he “saw nearly a score of dead diggers, and every man of them, though previously shot or sabred, was bayoneted through the neck as he lay on the ground. No blood oozed from these wounds, for the men were dead when they were inflicted.”
Samuel Lazarus was even more descriptive: “Stretched on the ground lay eighteen or twenty lifeless bodies. Some were shot in the face, others riddled throughout. One had the whole side of his body roasted by the flames from his burning tent, while another, his brains protruding through his opened head, lay in his last agony.
“Powell was very badly wounded, and his wounds got no attention from the authorities. Hundreds of maggots were crawling in and out of the festering sores, which were disgusting to behold; but the puppets of the camp had no pity. Death put an end to his misery and suffering …”
Raffaello Carboni later recalled: “The howling and yelling was horrible … Those who had laid down their arms and taken refuge within the tents were kicked like brutes and made prisoners … The troopers, enjoying the fun within the stockade, now spread it without. The tent next to mine was soon ablaze … An infernal trooper, trotting on the road to Ballarat, took a deliberate aim at me, and fired his Minie rifle with such a tolerable precision that the shot whizzed and actually struck the brim of my cabbage-tree hat and blew it off my head …”
Lalor estimated that 22 stockaders were either killed immediately or died soon afterwards, and a further dozen were wounded and survived.
Many of the rebels were taken prisoner and the remainder fled to conceal themselves throughout the goldfields. Martial law was declared by the authorities.
Although the largely one-sided “battle” was fairly quicky over, the butchery of the soldiers continued for long afterwards. Today their behaviour is classified as a “massacre”. Although the evidence of the atrocities perpetrated by the police annd soldiers had been lying among official documentation for almost 140 years, very few researchers have been interested in exposing it to the public.
Only three months after the Eureka massacres, Peter Lalor wrote: “As the inhuman brutalities practised by the troops are so well known, it is unnecessary for me to repeat them. There were 34 digger casualties of which 22 died. The unusual proportion of the killed to the wounded is owing to the butchery of the military and troopers AFTER the surrender.”
In reality, the murdering of diggers continued for up to an hour after their surrender, and they occurred up to a kilometre from the stockade site. People were killed who had not even been involved in the rebellion. Bodies were maliciously mutilated by the troops. One digger’s corpse had 16 bayonet wounds. Henry Powell, a digger who had his tent 300 metres OUTSIDE the stockade, by surrounded by 20 mounted police, then he was shot by the clerk of the peace (?), Arthur Akehurst. The police then amused themselves by galloping their horses over the lifeless body.
An eye-witness reported how three soldier jumped on a digger after he had been shot in the legs; one knelt on his chest, one tried to choke him, while a third went through his pockets looking for gold. Two Italian miners who had not been involved in the rebellion were killed by mounted police and troopers. One was shot as he attempted to enter his tent, the other was shot in the thigh. Lying helpless on the ground, the Italian told the police that he would give them all of his gold if they did not murder him. After taking the gold, the miner was bayoneted through the chest, killing him instantly.
One of the more unlikely victims was an innocent journalist, Frank Hasleham, of the “Melbourne Morning Herald.” Ironically, Hasleham had consistently supported the government in its struggles against the diggers. About 300 metres outside the stockade, the journalist was confronted by mounted police who, without questions or warnings, shot him through the chest. It was said that as Hasleham lay badly wounded, he hoped the “diggers would desist from their madness.”
Among the Eureka dead on Bakery Hill that morning were ten Irishmen, three Englishmen, two Scotsmen, two Canadians, a Prussian, a Hanoverian – and only one Australian (William Quinlan).
Lieutenant Henry Ross, the designer of the Southern Cross flag, fell asleep that night by the flag pole in the stockade. When the first gunshots sounded, he moved to the foot of the pole, a pistol in his hand, ready for combat. He was shot soon afterwards. As Ross lay dying at the base of the pole, Constable John King, a 24 year old Irishman, clambered up the flagpole and tore down the Southern Cross. It is now considered high likely he souvenired the flag as a trophy. In other words, he stole it! The flag remained in the possession of his descendants, who lived at Ararat (Victoria) until 1895; it was at that time loaned (?) to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. While in the galleries hands, pieces of the flag were cut off as gifts for various dignitaries. Thereafter, the flag remnant lay forgotten in a drawer until about World War 2. The remaining part of the Southern Cross was painstakingly restored in 1973 by Valda D’Angri without knowing at the time that her great great grandmother, Anastasia Withers, was one of the three women who created the original flag in 1854. Ownership of the flag still continues as a source of heated debate. In 2001 the King family “donated” the flag officially to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery who now claim ownership and asks that the King family and the gallery be acknowledged every time a replica of the original flag is displayed. It is logically argued that the Southern Cross flag was stolen by John King and is therefore not the property of his descendants to give away or loan.
The military victory soon became a defeat. Of the 114 prisoners taken, 13 were charged with “high treason.” Three of the detainees were Americans. Two of them, Captain James McGill and Charles Ferguson, were freed within 48 hours of their arrest. The third American citizen, John Joseph, an Afro-American, was of no interest to the American Vice Consul, and he was left to be fully prosecuted without support. John Joseph was accused of firing the shot that killed Captain Wise. Two privates from the 40th regiment claimed they observed Joseph firing the first shot. The defence lawyers did not call any witnesses and made much of the point that “a riotous nigger” or a “political Uncle Tom” could have “treasonable intent,” leaving it up to the jury to decide if Joseph had any intention to commit treason. The jury quickly returned a verdict of not guilty. The court erupted into pandemomium. The “Ballarat Star” reported: “On emerging from the court house, he (Joseph) was put in a chair and carried round the streets of the city in triumph.”
The Italian journalist, Carboni, recalled John Joseph, like this: “ … Under a dark skin (he) possessed a warm, good, honest, kind, cheerful heart; and that is more than … can be said of some half-a-dozen grumbling, shirking, snarling, dog-natured state prisoners.”
Those scheduled for trial were Timothy Hayes, chairman of the Ballarat Reform League, James McFie Campbell, a black man from Jamaica, Raeffello Carboni, a journalist and anarchist sympathiser, Jabob Sorenson, a Jew, John Manning, a “Ballarat Times” journalist, John Phelan, a business colleague of Lalor, Thomas Dignum, of Sydney, John Joseph, an Afro-American, James Beattie, who was almost shot dead by Trooper Rivell, William Molloy, Jan Vannick, from Holland, Michael Tuohy, of Ireland.
The so-called “victory” of the soldiers was short-lived, however. In the following weeks there was a groundswell of public indignation in Melbourne and Ballarat against what was seen as a brutal over-reaction by the commissioner and government officials. When 13 of the rebels were tried for treason early in 1855, all were acquitted to great public acclaim. The promised commission of inquiry into the goldfield’s administration took place; it was scathing in its condemnation of the handling of the affair. In the months ahead, most of the miner’s demands were acceded to. The Miner’s Licence was replaced by an export duty on gold and a miner’s right, which cost a small annual fee, was introduced. A system of mining wardens replaced the gold commissioners, and police numbers were cut dramatically.
Within 17 years of the Eureka Stockade the following important laws were passed in Australia ahead of their introduction in Britain:
- 1856 – Australia introduces Secret Voting at elections. England did not follow until 1872.
- 1857 – Australia introduces the right for every man to vote. England followed in 1884.
- 1857 – In Australia a man no longer had to own property to vote. England followed in 1858.
- 1858 – Australia introduces a short period of Parliament for every three years. England introduces a five-year Parliament in 1911.
- 1871 – Australia introduces payment of Members of Parliament allowing workers and other in the community equal opportunities to stand. England follows suit in 1911.
The events of Eureka in 1854 were pivotal in Australia’s history for democratic rights and a Fair Go for all.
