Speaker 1: Happy Saturday everyone. Today is the last installment in our
Speaker 1: three episodes on Australia's Bush Rangers, which originally came from
Speaker 1: hosts Sarah and Deblina in This one first came out
Speaker 1: on September twenty one of that year, and it covers
Speaker 1: later bush Rangers and changes to the law that changed
Speaker 1: the way the legal system was working in Australia. We
Speaker 1: said this on the prior to Classics, but we'll say
Speaker 1: it again. This episode is eight years old. If we
Speaker 1: were recording it today, we would use different, more modern
Speaker 1: language in terms of talking about criminal justice and incarceration
Speaker 1: as well as Australia's Aboriginal people. But otherwise, just keep
Speaker 1: that in mind and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to Blaine,
Speaker 1: a Chuck rebording, and I'm and the news of Ned
Speaker 1: Kelly's now I identified remains has us all excited about
Speaker 1: bush Rangers again, and that's mostly because our listeners are
Speaker 1: so fired up about it. When the news of his
Speaker 1: remains being identified came out, as we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: first part to this podcast, we got emails from all
Speaker 1: over the world. Our inboxes exploded with Ned Kelly subject lines. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so last time we started out by talking about Ned's
Speaker 1: remains being found and the news about that, but we
Speaker 1: also talked about guys who weren't Ned, the earliest bush
Speaker 1: rangers in Australia who laid the foundation for later gangs
Speaker 1: like the Kelly Gang. And these men were mostly convict bolters,
Speaker 1: which means they were transported felons who escaped prison or
Speaker 1: the settlements and turned to a life of crime. But
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three the British Parliament passed the Penal
Speaker 1: Servitude Act, which ended most transportation sentences, and after that
Speaker 1: the typical bushranger went from being a foreign born convict
Speaker 1: to being a native born in Australian complete with a
Speaker 1: thorough knowledge of the land. And that is pretty important.
Speaker 1: But another thing that's important is to to figure out
Speaker 1: the motivation for this new generation of bush rangers, since
Speaker 1: they weren't just already convicted criminals. There were really a
Speaker 1: few things that play and the first one was gold.
Speaker 1: So the discovery of gold in Australia, specifically in Victoria
Speaker 1: and New South Wales, was a really big motivator of
Speaker 1: bush rangers in the eighteen fifties. It gave them access
Speaker 1: to great wealth that they could convert to cash really
Speaker 1: pretty easily, and it helped that the gold fields were
Speaker 1: easy to bail up. Essentially, they were isolated and the
Speaker 1: police were often neglecting their duties. Many were jumping ship
Speaker 1: to join the gold rush themselves, and because gold had
Speaker 1: to be shipped across these lonesome, long stretches of territory,
Speaker 1: they were really the perfect target for ambushes. But there
Speaker 1: was another factor at play too besides just gold, which
Speaker 1: seems pretty obvious. Yeah, it was land. So while the
Speaker 1: Aborigines had probably one of the most peaceful attitudes towards
Speaker 1: landholding that you can imagine things changed dramatically when the
Speaker 1: first European settlers arrived, and by the time the period
Speaker 1: were discussing world around, a real beef had developed between
Speaker 1: the two subgroups of white Australians who were rural and
Speaker 1: that was the rich squatters on one side and poor
Speaker 1: selectors on the other. So just a little background on that.
Speaker 1: So initially, squatters in Australian history were just like squatters
Speaker 1: anywhere else. They were illegal occupiers of land in this
Speaker 1: case grazing land outside of the legitimate crown settlements. But
Speaker 1: by the eighteen forties it was clear that squatters were
Speaker 1: developing the country's wool industry and becoming a political force
Speaker 1: of their own. They were allowed leases at that point
Speaker 1: and many grew very, very rich. But we end up
Speaker 1: with an influx of new immigrants and miners who were
Speaker 1: arriving every day, and finally the colonies started to pass
Speaker 1: selection acts so that these newer arrivals could buy some
Speaker 1: land themselves that auction, and they were of course competing
Speaker 1: against the power full squatters. So it's really no surprise
Speaker 1: that these two groups of people didn't much care for
Speaker 1: each other. They had conflicting interests. So our first bush ranger, though,
Speaker 1: now that we've established the motives for this later generation,
Speaker 1: we're going to start with a bushranger who really epitomized
Speaker 1: the later generation, even though he was a compatriot of
Speaker 1: Frank Gardner, who was the last ranger we included on
Speaker 1: our earlier list. Yeah, his name was Brave Ben Hall
Speaker 1: or just Ben Hall that they call him Brave Ben Hall,
Speaker 1: and he knew the countryside really well. He knew horses,
Speaker 1: and he was Australian born. He was born May nine,
Speaker 1: thirty seven in New South Wales and he was the
Speaker 1: son of two ex convicts. His father actually met his
Speaker 1: mother when she was at the female convict factory. And
Speaker 1: I like starting with him too, because he is really
Speaker 1: truly the second generation here, the son of convicts. How
Speaker 1: perfect exactly, And he grew up working with horses and
Speaker 1: cattle while his father ran a successful farm and worked
Speaker 1: as an overseer and ben. The interesting thing about him, though,
Speaker 1: was and though he was the child of two convicts,
Speaker 1: he seemed initially on track for this kind of hard
Speaker 1: working agricultural life, the same life that his parents were
Speaker 1: leading at the time basically, or that they were at
Speaker 1: least cultivating. Right. He took on a lease on land
Speaker 1: in Sandy Creek and he married his neighbor Bridget Walsh
Speaker 1: on Leap Day in eighteen fifty six in a Catholic ceremony.
Speaker 1: But then, just like a Western movie, poor treatment in
Speaker 1: the hands of the law is what made him abandoned
Speaker 1: this peaceful life, or at least that's what we think.
Speaker 1: Evidence about this part of his life is a little
Speaker 1: bit sketchy, but there are two wrongful arrests, and the
Speaker 1: first occurs April eighteen sixty two on the orders of
Speaker 1: Sir Frederick Pottinger, and the charges were armed robbery and
Speaker 1: being an accomplished too none other than bush ranger Frank Gardner.
Speaker 1: Not a guy who you want to be associated with
Speaker 1: if you're on the right side of the law. So
Speaker 1: then Hall spent several weeks in jail, but there was
Speaker 1: really no evidence and he was let go. Then comes
Speaker 1: another arrest, this time for a gold robbery, and again
Speaker 1: there was no evidence. It didn't even go to trial,
Speaker 1: and uh. He comes back home and finds that his
Speaker 1: house has been burned down and perhaps potting Tri did it.
Speaker 1: His stock is dead from thirst, and because of legal expenses,
Speaker 1: he has to give up his lease. So he's suddenly
Speaker 1: a ruined man. And to make matters worse, at some
Speaker 1: point in the middle of all this trouble, his wife
Speaker 1: left with their infant son, maybe for a former policeman.
Speaker 1: So twenty two year old Hall at this point teams
Speaker 1: up with Frank Gardner for real and starts robbing the countryside.
Speaker 1: Their exploits were really in your face type tactics. They'd
Speaker 1: steal race horses in eighteen sixty three, they bailed up
Speaker 1: the entire town of Canundra, putting everybody up in a
Speaker 1: local hotel and treating them to a three day feast
Speaker 1: and bender. The party was only cut short because they
Speaker 1: got word that the river was rising and they'd be
Speaker 1: trapped if they'd stay longer. And one thing to note
Speaker 1: too about Ben Hall. Even though they were really well
Speaker 1: armed and really well organized, Hall would stop members of
Speaker 1: his own gang from committing acts of violent revenge or
Speaker 1: cruelty if he could. He'd prefer a ransom over death.
Speaker 1: Even though by eighteen sixty four a gang member had
Speaker 1: shot a sergeant and by eighteen sixty five another member
Speaker 1: shot a constable. It's easy to see how violence would
Speaker 1: pretty quickly become the norm for for these bush rangers.
Speaker 1: But the exploits of the gang and the ineptitude of
Speaker 1: the police force eventually caught higher ups attention, as as
Speaker 1: you would expect them to. His old enemy. Hall's old enemy,
Speaker 1: Frederick Pottinger, was even recalled to Sydney in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: five for neglecting his duty. He had been out riding
Speaker 1: in some races and he didn't notice that Hall's gang
Speaker 1: was also right there. You think he'd recognize them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd think so. Maybe he was like wearing a different,
Speaker 1: differed something, a disguise for him. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: that same year things change a little bit. The government
Speaker 1: put out a new law, the Felons Apprehension Act. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to the Gold and the land disputes we discussed,
Speaker 1: this is really the third piece of the puzzle for
Speaker 1: understanding later generations of bush Rangers. Under the new rules,
Speaker 1: individuals could be proclaimed as outlaws and then shot without warning.
Speaker 1: So this was basically martial law, and anyone harboring a
Speaker 1: felon could be considered a felon as well. Pretty bad
Speaker 1: news for the bush Rangers with Robin Hood type reputation, because,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the Ned Kelly episode and in
Speaker 1: our earlier Bush Rangers episode, these people really were indulged
Speaker 1: by townspeople sometimes, I mean, depending on how good or
Speaker 1: bad they were. I mean, I have to imagine some
Speaker 1: of it was fear. You don't want to insult the
Speaker 1: bush Ranger. But these three day Benders, the three day Feast,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Townspeople like them to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: So with this new law in a one thousand pound
Speaker 1: or reward on his head. Hall decided that he was
Speaker 1: going to call it quits, but he was betrayed by
Speaker 1: a friend and troopers showed up at his hiding place.
Speaker 1: May five, shot him in the back, then shot him
Speaker 1: thirty more times, and that was pretty much the end
Speaker 1: of the notorious Hall Gang. The last two members of
Speaker 1: his gang were also shot or executed within the next
Speaker 1: few months. But he did get some valid immortality though,
Speaker 1: courtesy of Hall's brother in law. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: force the rhymes here to make this work dark and
Speaker 1: he was chosen to shoot the outlaw dead. The troopers
Speaker 1: then fired madly, filled him full of lead. They rolled
Speaker 1: him in a blanket and strapped him to his proud
Speaker 1: and led him through the streets of Forbes to show
Speaker 1: the prize they had had. But you know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make it work. So that was the end of Ben Hall.
Speaker 1: But we have another bushranger who's not such a cheery
Speaker 1: sounding fellow, and he's not quite as likable. So first
Speaker 1: we should say that the notoriety of Ben Hall's gang
Speaker 1: and the ineptitude of the police are often credited as
Speaker 1: the reason behind the Felon's Apprehension Act of eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: But not all of the bush Rangers of the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixties were these robin Hood type characters hosting three day parties.
Speaker 1: One in particular, Mad Dan Morgan was known for meaningless murders,
Speaker 1: cruelty and violence. Mad Dan, as he was called, was
Speaker 1: born John Fuller in New South Wales in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: and he was the illegitimate child of Mary Owen and
Speaker 1: George Fuller. And unlike Ben Hall Dan Morgan, he didn't
Speaker 1: start out on the straight and narrow. Pretty much as
Speaker 1: early as his teens, he was suspected of stealing stock,
Speaker 1: but his actual arrest record began in eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: when he was sentenced to twelve years of hard labor
Speaker 1: for a highway robbery in Victoria. He always claimed he
Speaker 1: was innocent of this original crime though, that's the interesting
Speaker 1: what made him a bitter man. So after six years
Speaker 1: he was released on a ticket of leave for good
Speaker 1: behavior and didn't report back. He was on the lamb
Speaker 1: and from that point became known as down the River
Speaker 1: Jack and he started work as a horse breaker in
Speaker 1: a station hand So maybe kind of getting into legitimate work,
Speaker 1: except that he got into bush rangering pretty fast when
Speaker 1: he stole the prize horse of the family he worked for,
Speaker 1: and one member of that family, Evan Evans, along with
Speaker 1: another squatter, tracked Jack back to his camp and badly
Speaker 1: hurt him, but he did manage to escape, and from
Speaker 1: then on he changed his name yet again and became
Speaker 1: known as Daniel Morgan Billy the Native. And this is
Speaker 1: when he really gets into serious bush rangering. He was
Speaker 1: tied to the bailing up of a police magistrate into
Speaker 1: robberies across northeast Victoria. He even gets a two pound
Speaker 1: reward put on his head dead or alive. By the
Speaker 1: next year, in eighteen sixty four, he drove up the
Speaker 1: price on his head considerably by shooting the overseer, John McLean,
Speaker 1: and just a few days later a police sergeant too,
Speaker 1: so now there's a one thousand pound reward on his head.
Speaker 1: And by September another sergeant was killed and Morgan claimed
Speaker 1: responsibility for that too, So he just kept just kept snowballing.
Speaker 1: Morgan was quite different from some of the other rangers
Speaker 1: we've discussed. He usually worked alone, for example, or if
Speaker 1: he had accomplices, they'd change from job to jobs, so
Speaker 1: he didn't have one crew or gang that he worked
Speaker 1: with the entire time. He'd sometimes be remarkably cruel too.
Speaker 1: He would force groups of Chinese workers to sing and
Speaker 1: dance before shooting one in the arm. He also forced
Speaker 1: the wife of a homesteader against a fire until her
Speaker 1: skirt caught fire. And after bailing up coaches, he'd stampede
Speaker 1: the horses and once tied squatter Isaaca Vincent to a
Speaker 1: fence and then set fire to a nearby shed. So
Speaker 1: not a very nice guy, very bad but he really
Speaker 1: really hated squatters, and it's good that we gave that explanation,
Speaker 1: so you know what squatters are, and you're not just like,
Speaker 1: what do you have against squatters? Illegal landholders? But he
Speaker 1: hated those who had bad reputations as employers especially, and
Speaker 1: during raids he'd pull these stunts that kind of sound
Speaker 1: like Robin Hood but kind of bad to you, like
Speaker 1: Robin Hood with a dark twist. In one case, he
Speaker 1: made one squatter right more than four pounds worth of
Speaker 1: checks to his employees while he was bailing him up,
Speaker 1: and during another he made the employer give food and
Speaker 1: drink to all of his employees and his temper was
Speaker 1: really unpredictable to it could shift on a dime, turning
Speaker 1: from courtly. That's how you'll often see it described and
Speaker 1: consider it too violent. And thus his name Mad Dan
Speaker 1: sometimes mad Dog. And it's this element of his personality,
Speaker 1: that unpredictable temper, plus his five foot ten frame, his
Speaker 1: dark beard, and this very hooked, birdlike nose that made
Speaker 1: people seriously afraid of him, and he worked on that fear.
Speaker 1: He would kill informants without question. I mean, that's probably
Speaker 1: part of why he part of the reason why he
Speaker 1: worked alone and switched up his partners so frequently. But
Speaker 1: he was a scary guy eventually, though, his reputation did
Speaker 1: catch up with him. In the early months of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, Morgan pulled six major robberies before the passing
Speaker 1: of the Felon's Apprehension Act, and the day that it
Speaker 1: did pass, April eighth, eighteen sixty five, he committed his
Speaker 1: last crime. And what timing right exactly. He built up
Speaker 1: a homestead in northeast Victoria. Pretty standard stuff from Morgan, right,
Speaker 1: But what he didn't know was that the co owner
Speaker 1: of the station, a man named George Rutherford, lived really nearby,
Speaker 1: and a nurse at the station, Alice Keenan, managed to
Speaker 1: get word to Rutherford about what was going on and
Speaker 1: he rounded up a posse of workers, local men and
Speaker 1: police to wait from Morgan's appearance in the morning. So
Speaker 1: when Morgan emerged in the morning to steal a horse,
Speaker 1: he was shot in the back and he died by
Speaker 1: that afternoon. But they didn't just bury him, No they didn't.
Speaker 1: They cut his beard, skin and all off of his
Speaker 1: space and sent his severed head to a Melbourne anatomy professor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the beard thing is usually described as being flayed off
Speaker 1: his face, which I think is so so horrible. What
Speaker 1: a what a gross souvenir. But um, kind of a
Speaker 1: grizzly end for Dan Morgan. We'll definitely a grizzly end.
Speaker 1: But these bush Rangers have obviously continued to capture the
Speaker 1: imagination of Australians and really people around the world. And
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about Ned Kelly movies and
Speaker 1: spinoffs and things, but fortunately they're spinoffs regarding other bush
Speaker 1: Rangers too. It's not all about Ned, as I hope
Speaker 1: we've proved with this podcast series. Yeah, just an example
Speaker 1: of a few of the films that are out there
Speaker 1: about other bush Rangers. There was a nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: film called mad Dog Morgan starring Dennis Hopper. He sounds
Speaker 1: like a really good mad Dog Morgan. Yeah, definitely red
Speaker 1: There was another movie called Captain Thunderbolt, made by Cecil Holmes,
Speaker 1: and there are several movie adaptations of the novel Robbery
Speaker 1: under Arms by Ralph Boulderwood and those feature bush Ranger
Speaker 1: Captain Starlight, whose real name I believe was Harry Redford.
Speaker 1: And finally there's a movie called Ben Hall Notorious bush Ranger,
Speaker 1: which was made in nineteen eleven, and there were also
Speaker 1: Ben Hall TV shows. There was a series I think
Speaker 1: on Ben Hall in seventy five, which was a collaboration
Speaker 1: between the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. So those
Speaker 1: are just a few of the options that are out
Speaker 1: there if you want to see some other bush Ranger movies.
Speaker 1: But there are so many, and I would invite all
Speaker 1: our listeners to send us some recommendations because everyone was
Speaker 1: so good about sending us Ned Kelly movie recommendations. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we heard all about the Heath Ledger Ned Kelly,
Speaker 1: the two three one one which everyone says you shouldn't
Speaker 1: see because it's so terrible. A few people who said
Speaker 1: you should just see it because I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: because yeah. 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
Speaker 1: email address again. You can now reach us at History
Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com, and we're all
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