Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. As we promised last Saturday, today we
Speaker 1: have another episode on bush Rangers from previous hosts Sarah
Speaker 1: and debilin in Him and this first came out on
Speaker 1: September and it covers the early years of bushrangers in Australia.
Speaker 1: And as a note, similar lease last time this episode,
Speaker 1: it's eight years old at this point and if we
Speaker 1: were recording it today, we'd probably update some of the
Speaker 1: language about things like incarceration and criminal justice. Otherwise, enjoy,
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Debling a chalk Rewarding and I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy. And over the summer we did a podcast
Speaker 1: on Ned Kelly and we talked about this mystery of
Speaker 1: a skull that was turned in by It was turned
Speaker 1: into Australian authorities by a farmer named Tom Baxer in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and Boxer wouldn't say how he came
Speaker 1: to have it, but he claimed that it was the
Speaker 1: skull of Ned Kelly, a notorious bush ranger who was captured,
Speaker 1: convicted and hanged back in the eighteen hundreds after getting
Speaker 1: into a now famous shootout with the police, which we
Speaker 1: covered in our episode Ned Kelly's Last Stand. We also
Speaker 1: speculated it's a little shady to not mention how you
Speaker 1: come across the head. I don't know that sounds it
Speaker 1: was suspicious. Yeah, there's still more to know. They're especially
Speaker 1: in light of recent news. But the skull had been
Speaker 1: stolen from Melbourne jail in ninety eight, so there was
Speaker 1: a chance that the one Backs returned in could have
Speaker 1: been authentic. But experts at the Victorian Institute of Forensic
Speaker 1: Medicine had trouble I deing it, and so by the
Speaker 1: time of that last podcast we did, the story had
Speaker 1: kind of gone cold. But then just the other day,
Speaker 1: September one, another Ned Kelly story broke and we heard
Speaker 1: from listeners all over the world about this. Immediately, we
Speaker 1: had so many emails. Anyway, I feel like I arrived
Speaker 1: at work and I my entire inbox was filled with
Speaker 1: Ned Kelly related emails. It was really a he was
Speaker 1: a shining moment for stuff you missed in history class. Listeners.
Speaker 1: Clearly everyone was on alert for Ned Kelly news and
Speaker 1: I was. I was touched that everybody thought of us too,
Speaker 1: so that news wasn't about the skull, but the rest
Speaker 1: of ned Kelly's remains had been identified. His body had
Speaker 1: been moved from Melbourne Jail to Penridge Prison back in
Speaker 1: nine and buried there in a mass grave with thirty
Speaker 1: three other prisoners, So after the skull surface, the remains
Speaker 1: had been exhumed in two thousand nine and the v
Speaker 1: i f M was able to identify those remains thanks
Speaker 1: largely to a DNA sample that was taken from a
Speaker 1: Melbourne school teacher named Lee Oliver, who is the great
Speaker 1: grandson of Kelly's sister. So a little modern science coming
Speaker 1: into play here, yea. And how cool is that? I mean,
Speaker 1: he must be like the most famous person in Australia
Speaker 1: at the moment. Can you imagine being one of his students.
Speaker 1: But any the remains, they're an almost complete skeleton with
Speaker 1: a lot of wear and tear, as you might imagine
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the Ned Kelly story, and
Speaker 1: it's missing most of a skull. So there's definitely more
Speaker 1: to come on the story, and we'll pick up with
Speaker 1: that a little more later on. But of course hearing
Speaker 1: about this exciting discovery reminded us how fascinated we are
Speaker 1: by the stories of bush rangers, who are of course
Speaker 1: Australian outlaws or bandits who robbed stage coaches, banks and
Speaker 1: small settlements for about one hundred years, starting in the
Speaker 1: late seventeen hundreds. And in our last podcast we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about bush rangers, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of them, thousands in fact, during the time that
Speaker 1: we talked about they even outnumbered the number of Wild
Speaker 1: West outlaws in America, just to give you kind of
Speaker 1: an idea for comparison's sake, But we also mentioned that
Speaker 1: there are two distinct sub periods of bush ranging, right,
Speaker 1: Sarah YEA. So there's one from about seventeen eighty nine
Speaker 1: to the eighteen fifties, and those bush rangers were mostly
Speaker 1: escaped convicts, and that's the group that for the most
Speaker 1: part we're going to be talking about today, that first
Speaker 1: wave of bush rangers. But we've got to discuss the
Speaker 1: convict situation a little bit too, because, in case some
Speaker 1: of you don't know, there was a very strange prisoner
Speaker 1: deal going on in Australia during the eighteen hundreds or
Speaker 1: even the seventeen hundreds. So just some background information for
Speaker 1: you here Australia was settled by Britain in the late
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, and most of the first settlers who came
Speaker 1: over in seventeen seven were convicted British felons, and some
Speaker 1: of them had been stuck on prison ships for years
Speaker 1: and years because after the American Revolution that had put
Speaker 1: a stop to the practice of dumping criminals in the
Speaker 1: American colonies to work as indentured servants. So the first
Speaker 1: bushrangers were convict bolters who were transported felons who escaped
Speaker 1: prison or the settlements and turned to crime, turned to
Speaker 1: bush rangering, and and like I said, that's the group
Speaker 1: that we're going to mostly talk about today. Yes, But
Speaker 1: then fast forward to eighteen fifty three when British Parliament
Speaker 1: passes the Penal Servitude Act and this ends almost all
Speaker 1: transportation sentences, and that really changes things. Many bush rangers
Speaker 1: after that are native born or at least free settlers
Speaker 1: who had broken the law. So very distinct difference in
Speaker 1: these bush rangers that we're going to be talking about today. Consequently,
Speaker 1: two distinct podcasts, Yes, which are very excited about because
Speaker 1: we love this topic. We really hope that you guys
Speaker 1: do too, because we're gonna be talking about it for
Speaker 1: a couple episodes. Judging by the volume of emails, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure most of these folks like bush rangers Australian history.
Speaker 1: So fingers crossed, hope you all liked us. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you like the Ned Kelly story, then you should
Speaker 1: like something about these two, because it wasn't just about Ned.
Speaker 1: It started way before him. And the man who's actually
Speaker 1: believed to be Australia's first bush Ranger was one of
Speaker 1: those transported convicts that Sarah just talked about. His name
Speaker 1: was John Caesar, but he was are known as Black Caesar,
Speaker 1: and he was of African descent and was probably born
Speaker 1: in either the West Indies or in Madagascar. It's kind
Speaker 1: of uncertain. Yeah, we're going to pick up with him
Speaker 1: about seventeen eighty six when he was living as a
Speaker 1: servant in England and in March of that year he
Speaker 1: was charged with stealing twelve pounds from a dwelling house
Speaker 1: and was sentenced to transportation for seven years. So he
Speaker 1: arrived in Australia in January of seventeen eighty eight and
Speaker 1: he set about working as a laborer in the colony.
Speaker 1: Because It wasn't just like you were transported to Australia
Speaker 1: and then you could remake your life. It was hard
Speaker 1: work waiting on the other side exactly. And from what
Speaker 1: we know of Black Caesar, he was no criminal mastermind.
Speaker 1: He was actually thought of I think is kind of
Speaker 1: a hard worker. But he was definitely someone that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to mess with. He was very tall, some
Speaker 1: sources say maybe as much as seven feet where although
Speaker 1: that maybe an exaggeration, We're not sure, but he was
Speaker 1: very muscular and he was known to be a fierce fighter.
Speaker 1: He was also known, and this interesting, for his big appetite.
Speaker 1: All sources seemed to mention that what gets him in
Speaker 1: trouble here because in the colony there was often a
Speaker 1: shortage of food and all of the convicts were on
Speaker 1: really strict rations, and it was said that Caesar could
Speaker 1: often polish off two days worth of rations in one day.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like I said, this gets him into trouble eventually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be part of the reason that
Speaker 1: led him into what comes later. Some sources suggest that
Speaker 1: at least because I mean, we joke about a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's a funny thing to bring up about somebody in Huy.
Speaker 1: Historical sources, Yeah, that he was a hungry guy, but
Speaker 1: with as we said, the shortage of food, it could
Speaker 1: have been a serious situation. Actually, there's another later bush
Speaker 1: ranger called Matt Gambit. He came around in around eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, and we're not going to talk about him
Speaker 1: in depth, but he was known as the cannibal bush
Speaker 1: ranger because when he went off with his gang and
Speaker 1: there weren't enough settlers to steal from and they ran
Speaker 1: out of food, he would actually eat his gang members.
Speaker 1: Oh God, and yet he continued to be able to
Speaker 1: recruit them. No, I don't think he was after that.
Speaker 1: I think he kind of ate up his entire gang,
Speaker 1: put an end to his bush rangering. Getting back to
Speaker 1: Black Caesar, that was just sort of an aside um.
Speaker 1: But he got caught stealing again in seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: which earned him a life sentence, this time of transportation.
Speaker 1: But of course he didn't just sit around and accept
Speaker 1: that fate. In seventeen ninety he escaped to the countryside
Speaker 1: outside of Sydney with a stolen musket and this was
Speaker 1: just the first in a series of escapes that Caesar
Speaker 1: would pull off over the next few years, from about
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety to seventeen ninety six. While he was on
Speaker 1: the lamb, he would survive by stealing from the settlement
Speaker 1: and from government garden still had food on his mind, definitely,
Speaker 1: But it was after his final escape in seventeen ninety
Speaker 1: five that his bush ranging activities really commenced. At that
Speaker 1: point he led a gang of absconders and aagabonds in
Speaker 1: the Port Jackson area and they'd raid settlers and rob
Speaker 1: lone travelers. Yeah, and it's funny, we've talked about criminals
Speaker 1: like this before. Everything seems to be blamed on but
Speaker 1: it was said that Caesar was blamed for pretty much
Speaker 1: every crime that was committed around that time. The seven
Speaker 1: foot top, potentially striking man just seemed to be a
Speaker 1: person who captured the public's imagination even then. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: as you want to imagine, the governor wanted him caught,
Speaker 1: and so he offered five gallons of rum for his capture,
Speaker 1: and Caesar was shot dead consequently by a man named
Speaker 1: John Wimbo at Liberty Planes in seventeen nine six. Just
Speaker 1: a little side note on rum too. It must have
Speaker 1: been a pretty big motivator at the time for act
Speaker 1: much like food these criminals. Yeah, twenty gallons of rum
Speaker 1: was offered as a reward for the capture of another
Speaker 1: bush ranger named Matthew Brady in the eighteen ten So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk maybe in the next episode about the
Speaker 1: legal options of capturing these bush rangers. But I like
Speaker 1: that rum was a prime motivator in the early years
Speaker 1: at least, so our next bush ranger pushes us into
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. His name is buld Jack Donna who
Speaker 1: and sometimes he's known as the Wild Colonial Boy. More
Speaker 1: on that later, but he was born in Dublin, John
Speaker 1: Donna who probably around eighteen oh six, but by April
Speaker 1: three he had already run afoul of the law in
Speaker 1: his home country for something described as intent to commit
Speaker 1: a felony, and for that he was sentenced to transportation
Speaker 1: for life, which of course meant going to Australia. And
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in Black Caesar section there, it didn't
Speaker 1: mean just a free ticket to Australia. It meant a
Speaker 1: lot of hard work. And Donna, who was first assigned
Speaker 1: to work for a man named John Pagan and then
Speaker 1: work on a road gang, and then finally for a
Speaker 1: guy named Major West who was a surgeon. Consequently, he
Speaker 1: started running into some fellow convicts. Yeah, so they started
Speaker 1: hanging out together and they began robbing wagons traveling west
Speaker 1: of Sydney. And when he and two of his buddies,
Speaker 1: men named Smith and Kilroy or maybe Gilroy, got caught
Speaker 1: finally in eight they were found guilty of two counts
Speaker 1: of robbery each and sentenced to die two times each,
Speaker 1: two death sentences just to be sure. So Kilroy and
Speaker 1: Smith met their ends at the noose. But Donna, who
Speaker 1: somehow escaped between the courthouse and the jail and he
Speaker 1: didn't sulk off into hiding. After that though, he rounded
Speaker 1: up a gang of English and Irish convicts and just
Speaker 1: expanded his range. So he kind of doubled his efforts
Speaker 1: there across the countryside. So Donna, who is a real
Speaker 1: ballad type of guy, a robin Hood type bush ranger
Speaker 1: who people like to romanticize. Later, he would distribute stolen
Speaker 1: items to the poor. He would let some people go,
Speaker 1: and to go along with this, he had an appropriately
Speaker 1: robin Hood like Rakish style also made him sort of popular,
Speaker 1: made settlers like him. He'd wear a black hat. He'd
Speaker 1: wear this fine blue coat lined in silk and lace
Speaker 1: up boots. So he really must have cut quite a
Speaker 1: figure out among all of these rough and tumble looking men. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know, though, he sounds more button cute than
Speaker 1: rakish to me. Posters announcing the twenty pound reward on
Speaker 1: his head described him as twenty two years old, five
Speaker 1: ft four, with freckles, flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a
Speaker 1: scar under the left nostril. Yeah, he sounds like you
Speaker 1: might mistake him for a teenager, but well, you know,
Speaker 1: he's coming at a disadvantage right after Black Caesar. Probably
Speaker 1: that's true, And he does have the scar, which is
Speaker 1: kind of scary. He does have the scar. Finally, though,
Speaker 1: on September first, eight thirty, a group of soldiers employees
Speaker 1: found the gang hiding in scrub near Campbellstown and Donna,
Speaker 1: who was said to have urged them on with some
Speaker 1: real fighting words, but he was soon struck down by
Speaker 1: a guy named Trooper Muggleston. We'll just let that let
Speaker 1: that name slide up. He lived on though, even even
Speaker 1: after death quite obviously. Yeah, so first, unlike many of
Speaker 1: our later Bush Rangers, who's surviving images are usually heavily
Speaker 1: bearded post mortem photographs. Donna, who had a rather elegant
Speaker 1: death drawing done by Sir Thomas Mitchell, who added some
Speaker 1: Byron lines at the end to complete the effect. They
Speaker 1: were no matter I have bared my brow fair and
Speaker 1: death's face before and now. He also has something maybe
Speaker 1: a little more appropriate than romantic poetry, though. He was
Speaker 1: likely the inspiration for a very famous outlaw anthem, The
Speaker 1: Wild Colonial Boy, which was popular in Australia until it
Speaker 1: was banned finally as being seditious, and it stayed popular
Speaker 1: after that. That probably only helped its reputation. The song
Speaker 1: is about a fictitious bush ranger who goes by different
Speaker 1: games in different versions of the song, it is, after
Speaker 1: all a ballad. Sometimes it's Jim Douelan, sometimes Jack Dubbins,
Speaker 1: sometimes John Dowling, but it always sticks to those j
Speaker 1: D initials, just like Jack Donahue. So the next bush
Speaker 1: ranger on our list wasn't a convict, but he was
Speaker 1: born abroad in Scotland. His name was originally Francis or
Speaker 1: Frank Christie, and he moved to Sydney with his parents
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty four when he was about four years old.
Speaker 1: He started his life of crime fairly young and got
Speaker 1: caught stealing horses in eighteen fifty when he was around
Speaker 1: twenty years old. He was sentenced to five years of
Speaker 1: hard labor for this, but he escaped to New South
Speaker 1: Wales after only serving about six months, and he went
Speaker 1: right back to stealing horses. So in eighteen fifty four
Speaker 1: he was caught again and convicted again under this name
Speaker 1: Francis Clark this time, and this time he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to seven years, but he was given a ticket of leaves,
Speaker 1: so basically released in eighteen fifty nine. He didn't play
Speaker 1: by the rules after that though, he broke parole and
Speaker 1: went south where he opened a butchery as Frank Gardner,
Speaker 1: which is how most people know him today, and Landing Flat,
Speaker 1: and he was probably trading and stolen meat there, so
Speaker 1: not even that was on the up and up sounds
Speaker 1: so gross to me. I'm sure it's like legitimate, but
Speaker 1: stolen meat for sale, you know, buy it here at
Speaker 1: my store. I don't know. Anyway, a warrant was issued
Speaker 1: for Gardener's arrest, and rather than face yet another trial
Speaker 1: and possibly more jail time, Frank took to the Bush
Speaker 1: and there he teamed up with a couple other outlaws
Speaker 1: when named Ben Hall, we're going to talk about him
Speaker 1: in the next episode, and another guy named John Gilbert,
Speaker 1: and he became known and feared for his highway robberies
Speaker 1: in particular along the trade routes of New South Wales,
Speaker 1: and the police couldn't catch his gang because they just
Speaker 1: moved so quickly and they used a kind of bush
Speaker 1: telegraph system to help them get along. Frank was actually
Speaker 1: called King of the Road around this time for his
Speaker 1: highway robber reputation. But on June fifteenth, eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: Frank's gang pulled off their biggest robbery yet, and it's
Speaker 1: actually what's said to be the biggest bush ranger robbery ever.
Speaker 1: And this crime was when they bailed up or held up,
Speaker 1: that's what that that's what bailed up means. They held
Speaker 1: up the Lachland gold Escort and made off with fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand pounds worth of gold in cash, which is worth
Speaker 1: about one and a quarter million U S. Dollars today.
Speaker 1: And after this, Frank took off with his mistress Kate
Speaker 1: and they opened a little store in Shanty in Queensland
Speaker 1: and as Mr and Mrs Christie, so he had kind
Speaker 1: of a business streak to him and they lived there
Speaker 1: until the New South Wales police finally tracked him down
Speaker 1: in February eighteen sixty four. So Frank was sentenced to
Speaker 1: thirty two years hard labor, which was considered a pretty
Speaker 1: harsh sentence at this time. Fortunately, though, he had a
Speaker 1: good attorney, William Daley, who petitioned the governor to use
Speaker 1: his prerogative of mercy, and the governor really did release
Speaker 1: Frank in eighteen seventy four under the condition that he
Speaker 1: leave the country. There was some controversy over this decision,
Speaker 1: but ultimately Frank Gardner left Australia in July eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and by the beginning of eighteen seventy five he was
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. I mean, just the perfect place for
Speaker 1: for this guy. He opened a saloon there, it was
Speaker 1: called the Twilight Saloon on the waterfront, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: he avoided trouble for the rest of his life. He
Speaker 1: really did have a business streak, like you mentioned, even
Speaker 1: though he was pretty open about his past. He'd like
Speaker 1: to tell tales about his time as an outlaw, which
Speaker 1: I would imagine that would make you a successful saloon owner.
Speaker 1: People loved here stories. I feel like that's almost a
Speaker 1: requirement to have a good storytelling streak, if not at
Speaker 1: least good stories to tell. But Frank was also just
Speaker 1: a really rare case among bush Rangers and that he
Speaker 1: lived to a ripe old age, and he's since been
Speaker 1: called the father of bush ranging. So Frank seems like
Speaker 1: the perfect guy to leave off on, at least for
Speaker 1: this first part of our bush Rangers series. And I
Speaker 1: feel like he's kind of a good transition between those
Speaker 1: convict vultures we talked about and then the later Bushrangers
Speaker 1: generation second generation. Yeah, so while we're going to leave
Speaker 1: that generation behind, we do have one more piece of
Speaker 1: information about that mystery ned Kelly head. And this came
Speaker 1: out just the other day, September seven, and again it's
Speaker 1: from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. So well, they
Speaker 1: did identify the body. They also recently said that that
Speaker 1: mystery head might be that of a notorious serial killer
Speaker 1: named Frederick Deeming. So Deeming was born in England. He
Speaker 1: was a thief, a serial big amis, and he set
Speaker 1: out on this wandering sort of life and he was
Speaker 1: also a murderer. He was supposed to have buried his
Speaker 1: first wife and four children beneath the floor of their
Speaker 1: rented home and then murdered a second wife Melbourne. So
Speaker 1: what a weird connection here, a very strange twist to
Speaker 1: the story. And I think it's interesting that it's the
Speaker 1: head of another criminal, but someone who has just a
Speaker 1: very different connotation to them than Ned Kelly. You know,
Speaker 1: you say Ned Kelly and he's kind of a folk
Speaker 1: hero and this guy was definitely the opposite. And I
Speaker 1: encourage you guys to look up this story and read
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Frederick Deeming because he had
Speaker 1: a very controversial trial and and like you mentioned, it
Speaker 1: was partly because there was nothing redeeming about him. He
Speaker 1: was not a folk hero. He was a serial killer.
Speaker 1: The public did not like him. And I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting story for people outside of Australia too, because
Speaker 1: he was kind of all over the place. He lived
Speaker 1: in England before and I think that's where he murdered
Speaker 1: his original family. He has some South America, all kinds
Speaker 1: of places, um, but I mean, of all of all
Speaker 1: the people's heads, it could be a random serial killer
Speaker 1: go figure. Thank you so much for joining us today
Speaker 1: for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind
Speaker 1: of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l
Speaker 1: during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
Speaker 1: It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
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Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com, and we're all
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