So this ended up with a big legislative change twelve years later in eighteen sixty five that leads to bodies.
Being buried at Old Melbourne Jail.
There were anything from thirty four to fifty odd bodies buried here. And Alfonsine and George are the reason why.
I'm Jen Kelly from the Herald Son and this is in Black and White a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters. Today's story is about notorious bush ranger George Melville, who was part of an audacious robbery of a gold escort heading from the Goldfields to Melbourne in the eighteen fifties. Incredibly, after George was executed at Old Melbourne Jail, his wife put his body on display in her oyster shop in the heart of Melbourne for the public to come and view.
To tell us the story, we're talking with Damian Beard, a tour guide at Penridge Prison Tours, for part one of the story today. Make sure you return tomorrow for part two. And just a warning, this episode contains discussion about self harm. If you or anyone you know needs help, you can contact a lifeline on one three double one one four and you can find more helplines in the show notes to this episode. Welcome back to the podcast, Damien.
Well, thank you for having me.
Now. I don't know about you, but the weird fact that fascinated me about the story of George Melville is that after he was executed, his wife put his body on display in her oyster shop. What was that all about.
It's a little bit complicated to kind of guess we're going to run across the problem a lot today of the fact that there are no real.
Sources for this.
This was incredibly controvert at the time what his wife, Alfonsine did, and I found one newspaper article describing it. A lot of the court records are gone, a lot of that stuff, but what it was about was essentially Alfonsine, his wife, was incensed at what happened to her husband and basically put his body on display in her shop to draw attention to the fact of what happened, and possibly maybe to make a little bit of money as well.
I'm not sure.
Ah, so people had to pay to see the body.
I don't know. This is what kills me in my mind.
She takes the body to her shop and then walks out because Alfonsine I just love her. From everything I've read about her, she seems like absolute girl boss energy. In my mind, she takes the body to a shop, you know, puts it on display because when you sell a lot of fresh projects back then, you need a lot of ice to keep it fresh. Guess what else Ie can keep fresh?
George.
So she decorates him with ribbons and flowers, puts him on display, and in my mind, she walks out into Burk Street.
It's like right I was to see a dead body and then start selling tickets to her shop.
I do know that one of the reasons why the public or the authorities, I should say the public were very interested. There were lines all the way at Burk Street to come in and see this, And the whole time Alfonsine was standing behind the counter and her shop just non stop tire rate about the police and the authorities. So, you know, possibly quite incense to what happened to her husband.
But I do know one of the reasons that it became so controversial was because she did make quite a bit of money off it, either from people paying tickets or getting hungry and getting oysters out from underneath George. So you have this twofold thing one a woman did something without the permission of a man in eighteen fifty three,
how dare she? But also quite possibly that she made a lot of money And the only people who make money off prisoners alive or dead is the prison So this ended up with a big legislative change twelve years later in eighteen sixty five that leads to bodies being buried at Old Melbourne Jail. There were anything from thirty four to fifty odd bodies buried here, and Alfonsine and George are the reason why.
So before that you could just take the body and do whatever you wanted.
You could apply to have it released to you and show up at the gate which is on Russell Street. Now just inside that gate there was the death house, which was where executed prisoners were taken. And men they shaved their heads and their beards. Women they tied their hair back and they took a plaster cast of their
head to make a death mask. Because of the pseudoscience of phrenology that believed you could tell everything about a person by the shape of their head, they figured if all these people are having their lives ended on their gallows for crimes, they must have something in common with their shape of their heads, right, and guess what they found? Absolutely nothing, because it's nonsense. But family could then apply
to have the body released to them. They could come and collect the body and take it and have it buried.
In consecrated ground. I believe.
I don't believe there was anything about it being buried in unconsecrated ground or anything like that. There's stories about how prisoners were meant to be buried in cemeteries so that they never left the jail even in death. I don't believe that's true. I believe it's much more of a prosaic factor for what's going to happen to the bodies is someone else going to put it on display sort of thing.
So now that we've heard about the gruesome end of George Melville's life, perhaps we talk about the beginning of his life. So he came from Glasgow, is that right.
And he started work at the age of twelve to supplement the family income. But he was actually quite a bright kid, and his mother had insisted that he learned to read and write, and apparently he picked it up quite easily. He was caught stealing when he was a teenager I have not found the exact day, and sentenced to fourteen years transportation. In eighteen thirty six, he was transported to Australia on the Lady Kenaway and arrived in Port Jackson and was quickly sent out to work as
an indentured servant, a farm laborer, basically slavery. He chafed on the restrictions and at one point he was enterence to hard laboring chains on a road gang. Obviously he'd sort of tried to abscond or you know, had to go at his oversea or something like that, not really sure, but while on this road gang he absconded and he stowed away on a whaling ship named the Fame. He was caught and the captain was like, you know, I you wouldn escaped convictor bolter as though were called back then.
He said no, and the captain was like, oh, okay, you can work. But then he realized that the ship was turning around and heading back to Port Jackson, and one of the mates said, yeah, the captain's going tow you in. Because if masters of ships were found with bolters in their crews at the time, they could be fined really quite severely. So they're heading back to Port
Jackson and he's within side of shore. He jumps overboard and swims for it, spend some time in the bush, but eventually finds himself in Melbourne in eighteen forty seven. When he's in Melbourne, he worked as a laborer. He took on clerical jobs because he could read and write, which was unusual for someone of his background at the time. And apparently it was quite the ladies man quite quite had a captivating wit.
It's one of the things that I read.
And working at the markets, he met a French woman named Alfonsine Barbelet, and she owned her own fruit and oyster shopping Berke Street, and it seemed to be genuinely really love at first sight. They really did seem to really care for each other. This really does come across in the documents when you work in my position and you sort of see this sort of historical stuff a lot of the time. Quite often you tend to view
these marriages. Often they can be a little bit cynical, a bit like you know, let's just do this, or you're pregnant, we better do this kind of thing. They actually appeared to really really care for each other. She came from Caledonia. She was from a French family, and he actually ended up learning quite a bit of French, which got him the nickname Frenchie. But in eighteen fifty one he headed up to Mount Alexander.
Okay, so they've headed up to the goldfields.
Together by himself. I believe she's got a shop. Why she can abandon this shop. She's probably making way more money than it.
So now this story takes place during the Victorian gold Rush. Can you set the scene a little for us? What do we need to know about that era before we plunge right into Melville story.
Yes.
So in eighteen fifty one, a man named James Esmond, he's walking through the bush outside plunes out near Balarat, trips over bloody big rock, turns around to shake his fist and swear at it, and notices the sun shining through the trees is making the big rock sparkle. And he's found gold. And the gold rush begins. Now we go from about seventy seven thousand white settlers in eighteen fifty to over half a million in the space of eight to ten years. And as these people come here,
there is absolutely nothing for them. There are no jobs, in no houses, no provision for this at a time where being unhoused or unemployed was could technically have you charged with vagrancy or idleness and put in jail. Up at the Goldfields, at one point nearly forty people a month sting to death. They were turning to crime to
stay alive. The roads from the goldfields are super dangerous because lots of people have come here and realized that digging up gold's really really hard work, and do you know, it's a lot easier you let someone else do the hard work, and then when they're bringing the gold back you rob them. None of that helped by the fact that over ninety five percent of the police force deserted their posts to.
Go become gold miners.
They were meant to be forty policemen on gidy on Year's Day eighteen fifty two, two showed up for work. Wow, out of thirty eight, all up at Sovereign Hill. So the government is looking at this huge crime wave and they're like, we need to do something about this. You know, let's tackle the causes of this with social housing and free I'm just kidding.
They're like, we need more jails for poor people.
So they cut the masks off a bunch of ships, they paint them yellow, they fill them full of prisoners. They keep cramming people into the stockade up at Penridge and they start expanding the site of the old Melbourne Jar or the same you're back then, the new Melbourne Jail, and this is where George ends up ending here life as well.
Now, one job I hadn't heard much about is these gold escorts, and this is pretty relevant to this story. So can you explain what they were?
Yeah, so when you find gold, you can't well, you can go and trade it in at the pub and things like that, and people quite frequently did.
But what you really want to do is convert it to currency.
And the best exchange rate for this currency was from the government at the Treasury. The exchange rates up to the gold fields, where you don't have to go through all the hassle of transporting it to Melbourne, they're obviously not as favorable to the gold miners. So what gold miners want to do is they want to go and they want to sell it directly to the government where the exchange rates are much better. However, to do this you have to get to Melbourne. Remember what I said
about the roads. Now, the government doesn't want this happening law and order, but also they want the gold, so pretty quickly on they established these gold escorts, which were literally armed escorts that would take the gold once a week from the gold fields. What ends up happening is as the goldfields expand out from Ballarat and Bendigo, people start their own private escorts. A company stumps up the
money and the cart and the driver. They're provided with troopers government personnel to guard it, and then they leave from these various other diggings and meet the government escort at a place like Bendigo or Ballarat, join up with that government escort and then are sent on through to Melbourne.
So there was one such escort, a private one that was starting in eighteen fifty three for the Makaiva diggings, which is east of what's now today Heathcott, and this one ended up encountering a few men who had a bit of a plan.
Ah, So tell us about some of these.
Men, Yes, so some of them I have more information on than others, particularly the Francis brothers. John Francis under the name of John Fern He is sentenced aged nineteen for theft. Here now he's already done time in England in jails with his brother George for poaching, and once they got out they'd work together and what they would do is George would bump into a target in the
street and well distracted, John would pick their pockets. John was caught doing this, apprehended by a constable and in December eighteen forty three he was sentenced to ten years transportation to Van Demon's Land. He arrived in Van Demen's Land on the Maria Solmes on the thirtieth of July eighteen forty four. He was quite good conduct prisoner and released on the thirtieth of January eighteen forty six, given
a pass to head out and work. Eighteen forty six, now under the name William Fern, he was working as a laborer and associating with other what the newspapers called low types, and in May eighteen forty seven he's involved in a robbery of silverware from a man named Charles McLaughlin. He was the managing director of the bank of Van Demon's Land. They stole a bunch of items, a bunch of silverware, candlesticks and.
Things like that.
They were quite unhappy to find out that it was actually plated silver, not solid silver, but they stole them all and stashed them in a brothel in Hobart.
They're all caught quickly.
John turned evidence against his compatriots and he was given three months on a road gang and forbidden from residing in Hobart. At the end of his sentence, he was joined in Hobert by his brother George. George was a year younger, five inches shorter, and allegedly had a much much shorter temper. A few months after George's conviction, back in England, he was caught stealing beeswax worth ten shillings sixpence in Pontefract and was given a seven year sentence
of transportation. He arrived in Van Diemen's Land on the fifth of September eighteen forty four on the ship Barossa with three hundred and twenty one other convicts, and he was marked as a bad conduct prisoner when arriving. He spent a lot of time going absent from work gangs without leave, got six months hard laboring chains for stealing a blanket, probably committed other infractions.
Haven't been able to find anything.
Else but both George and John received their tickets of leave in eighteen forty eight and eighteen forty nine respectively, and as John was barred from living in Hobart, they eventually made their walue to Melbourne following the gold rush. By eighteen fifty two, both married to women in Melbourne. George was married to a woman named Ellen. In Melbourne, Ellen introduced George to her friend Agnes and her husband Bill.
Bill Atkins was a former convict who had served his time in New South Wales, and they became friends together and they drank quite frequently together along with his brother John, and at a pub in autumn eighteen fifty three, William Atkins introduced John and George to his friend George Melville.
So it's quite a little gang that's forming.
Now, it is absolutely And in fact there was a fifth member as well, a man named George Wilson, where we don't know a whole lot about him, as allegedly an ex convict. Most of these men were. He arrived at bendy Go in eighteen fifty two to try his hand at gold mining, leaving behind a wife in Melbourne, but apparently quite successful. But he was a gambler, so I didn't hold on too much of what he found.
But at Bendigo he met another man named Joe Gray or John Gray, I don't know, because we know absolutely nothing about this man. He is allegedly the mastermind behind the whole plot, but we just don't know who he is.
There is one.
Author who has a belief as to who he is. I'll be honest, I'm not sure I believe him, but we'll get to that later. But Joe John, I'm going to call him Joe, the mastermind behind the pole plot. He's the one who's seen the gold Escorts and thinks, okay, there's quite a lot of money going on in that, and he starts sort of sussing it out, camping out and watching it, trying to get friendly with the guards and figure out what their routine is, that kind of stuff.
He approaches George Wilson, who brings in all the others, essentially Melville, who brings in Atkins and the Francis brothers, and they allegedly met at the house of John Francis in Collingwood which was called Collingwood Flat back then, in June eighteen fifty f to plan their robbery.
We'll be back soon. Do you hear what happened the day the bush Rangers stage their daring robberies? They stay with.
Us, so tell us how the day of the robbery went down?
Yeah? Sure.
Now I will have to credit especially Deb from Old Geelong Jail Crime and Justice Museum. Her podcast Locked Up in History has a really good episode about this, and I just want to thank Deb. I know Deb and Rob from Old Gelong Jarl they're lovely people, but Jed, I'm cribbing a lot of Deb's research here, So thanks Deb.
But on the twentieth July eighteen fifty three, the Private gold Escort, I have been able to actually find the name of it, whether it was you know, the so and so gold Escort or whether it was literally called Private gold Escort does what it says on the tin, But anyway, it leaves the Makaiva Diggings carrying two two hundred and twenty three ounces of gold and cash in two strong box.
I mean, I'm not very familiar with ouncers, but it sounds like an extraordinary amount of gold.
It is, yeah, I mean a lot of it's small tiny nuggets, dusts and things like that, but it totals about eighty seven hundred pounds in value, which is nearly three million dollars today. So they're heading for Keinton and then Bendy go to join the government escort. At the head of the column is Superintendent Robert Warner with Sergeant George Dowan's and the cart carrying the actual gold is driven by a driver named James Fooks. Troopers Samuel Benham,
Davis John Morton, and Davis Beswater. There's a few different pronunciations of his name. I'm going to go with that one. They're also escorting it. They're all quite heavily armed. They're armed, in fact, with a sword, a carbine, and pistols. Warner and Dowan are also carrying revolvers. Only Fooks, the driver is he's the only one who's unarmed. Now, just outside Maya, Maya, Gray, Melville, Wilkson, Atkins,
Francis Brothers and allegedly others lay in wait. What they've done is they've found a spot where there's a sort of a bend in the road and off to one side there's a bit of a culvert with a drop off off to the other side quite a steep incline with a lot of bush Now just around the bend in the road, they've cut a bunch of branches off. They've barricaded the road to make it look like a tree's fallen down, but also provided a bit of a barricade for a couple of the bushrangers to hide behind.
They've picked this spot really, particularly because there's no escape, hemmed in by a drop off on one side, a larger sort of escarpment on the other side, and then coming around the corner and seeing this barricade without much time to stop and investigate. But Duance, he's riding up front. He did see the screen and he called a holt to investigate it. There's men hiding behind the screen and off to the side, and they suddenly appeared and opened fire.
Now there is a lot.
Of dispute over who shot first. The bushrangers said that the guards shot first. The guard said the bush rangers shot first. One account I read of the article of the incident, I'm sorry, said that, you know, one of the bush rangers misfired.
They're gone.
The bush rangers later claimed that they had not intended to shoot anyone. Of course, they're claiming this in the dock when they're on trial for their life, so you know what exactly can you trust? But the end result is someone shot and there is a gunfight the troopers all full. Morton receives a ball in the shoulder, Davis is shot in the cheek. Bears Water is shot in the leg and fell from his horse, dislocating his arm. Fuchs is shot in the knee and received a graze
on the temple. Dewan's horse received bullet runs which made a bolt, but it bolted straight ahead and went crashing through the barricade. So Diwans has effectively escaped this ambush and he brings his horse under control and he heads to a government camp three miles away to raise a arm. They keep everyone at bay at gunpoint. Now most of the troopers are injured on the ground. The only one who is not his warner, but they keep him at
bay at gunpoint while they're taking the strong boxes. And then Superintendent one, he sort of just stands around watching and then as the bush rangers head off into the bush, he sort of just follows about fifty meters behind, you know, kind of hiding behind trees, poking his head out that kind of thing, trying to see where they're going, until eventually they notice him and they start firing at him until he's driven away. He retreats to nearby Patterson Station to get assistants and Damien.
There were hundreds of people involved in the hunt.
Yes, so Dowan's returns to the scene with troopers and a bunch of miners as well. He can imagine all the miners they're like, maybe my gold was on that escort. I want to find this, you know. So they're quite motivated. Now, Generally, the troopers, the traps as they were known, we're not popular around the goldfields. They're in forcement arm of the
government up there checking licenses and stuff like that. Famously, that all boiled over at Eureka a few years later, but in this instance, the miners had a bit of self interest. So eventually nearly four hundred miners were scaring the bush trying to find them. In the meantime, the bushrangers went into the bush and remove the contents of
their strong boxes, putting it in their settle bags. Now it's interesting describing as people as bushrangers to my mind, because this is the first and only time they do these things together. It's almost like a heist movie. You know, you put together the gang to do this one job, and then they're all absolutely intending to go their separate ways. It's not like they're going to go maroud in the
bush like Ben Hall or anything like that. But they did head into the bush and spend the night in the wild, and the following morning they divided the gold and the cash up and they headed into Kilmore and then to a place called Rocky water Holes which is now Calcallo. It's from there that they split into two groups and headed for Melbourne.
What's happened next?
So there's news spreads very very quickly. There's rumors everywhere, including the trooper Morton had died and rewards offered. The private gold escort company offers a reward, and not long after the government does a five hundred pounds reward and passage out of the colony.
Now Damien. That must have just been an extraordinary amount of money. An extraordinary reward.
Yeah, it's over seventy eight thousand Australian dollars in today's money. That's not one hundred percent accurate. Money changes value over time, but that's what the calculators say. It's more than any individual share that any of the bush Rangers would have received from the amount of gold and money that they were dividing up. But more importantly is this passage out
of the colony. This is really calculated move because this way they're trying to offer it to someone who's part of the gang more than your share, and also secure passage away from anyone who's going to want to have a bit of a word with you about you turning informa on them.
So it's a really calcul related move.
You know, they're offering a reward, but it's a reward that has really calculated to appeal to members.
Of the game themselves.
So did it work?
Eventually?
It did, But there were some difficulties in this, one of which is who actually was Joe great Now, there is one author that believes Joe Gray was actually Frank Christi or Frank Gardner, he was a famous Bushranger. About ten years later, I said before I don't think I believe this, and this is because he's really basing it on a couple of things. Number one is a article in Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, dated August
eighteen fifty three. Now I've already told you how many rumors have spread about this place within the last twenty four hours of it happening. That's just in the Goldfields. Imagine how distorted that game of telephone has got by the time we get up to Sydney. But this article says, and I really want to read in the British pathe
of ice. But anyway, it will be some gratification to learn the leader of the gang who attempted the whole sale and cold blooded slaughter of the private escort yesterday week has been captured and recognized, and that he admits himself to have been one of the party. The wretch was taken in bed on the following Saturday at Makaiva Diggings where he was lying booted and spurred with a
female as a bandit, as himself a sex worker. He was an ill looking fillo named Christie, about twenty six years of age, and whose life has been one scene of crime for.
First to last.
He had not long escaped from Penry Stockade, and it was the lookout for him as a runaway convict which led to his detection as one of the would be murderers. Frank Christy had escaped from pantridge at the time Pantry stockade at the time. The wall around the stockade was only a meter high. Yeah, can you see the problem with a meter high wall around a prison? Penridg Prison opened December fifth, eighteen fifty with thirty prisoners inside the stockade.
By March eighteen fifty one, just three months later, forty eight prisoners had escaped from the place. I've seen more than were there on the first day, including Frank Christi alias Frank Gardner. There is absolutely no proof that this is the same man, particularly because he was never heard from, since there's just this one article about the arrest of this man who police arrested believing him to be the
escape prisoner. And then according to the book I read, this man was confused and thought he was being arrested for the MACKAIV Gold escort robbery and confessed to that. And now according to this book, he allegedly bribed the policeman to let him go. Never heard anything else, no convictions in said. The only other thing this author has to back up this theory is Frank Gardner. Frank Christy was definitely involved in a robbery in eighteen sixty two
at Ygara, which used very, very similar tactics. But I mean, honestly, if you're going to rob a gold escort in the book in the Bush, the best way is to set up an ambush like that. It's pretty obvious. Obviously I don't really believe it, but Joe Gray is the key to the whole thing, and he like much of the information is missing. I'm going to go for the next bit based off entirely on the facts that we've been able to ascertain. Either Deb's been able to find out,
I've been able to find out from newspapers. There are a few authors who've sort of offered a bit of interpretation of these facts, but I'm not sure. At around two pm on the afternoon of the robbery, Detective Tucker receives word of it at the Mackaiva Diggings, and at the same time a young man comes into his office and a report's theft of a revolver from his tent, and he suspects his neighbor. The authorities search the tent.
The man is long gone, but what was left behind was a map of the ship Madagascar, which was then currently mout in Hobson's Bay preparing for a journey to England and on the Map was written Jay Francis, Cabin Passenger.
We'll leave part one of the story of George Melville there and we'll re turn tomorrow with part two to hear how the police closed in on the gang. Thanks for listening. This has been In Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Harry Hughes, and produced by John Tyburton. You can find all the stories and photos associated with our episodes at haroldsun dot com dot
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