1873.
ARCHIVE Clendinning-Rede Papers, SLV 10102
Government oppression and negligence were getting serious—sometimes a matter of life
and death. The word tyranny rolled easily off tongues.
To add to the administrative problems, Ballarat was dealing with a new boss, the
incoming Resident Commissioner Robert Rede. Trying to make himself look good with
his own superiors, he used his reports to give an appearance of peace and order.
When a prisoner was rescued from the lockup by his mates, Rede reported the incident
but assured HQ the incident arose from drink and not from any ill feeling against
the authorities .
Some members of the goldfields administration could see that the discontented rumblings
would not be kept down. On 3 July 1854, Magistrate John D’Ewes wrote to the Colonial Secretary in Melbourne to warn about the lack of basic services available to the
diggers and townsfolk at Ballarat. He mentioned in particular the non-existence of
any hospital or asylum, except the small one belonging to the Camp and restricted
to Government servants . The people were taking matters into their own hands, he reported.
A meeting at the Ballarat Hotel on 1 July took donations for a new hospital. The well known liberality of the diggers when it came to these public ‘subscriptions’
meant that £270 was donated by 24 people that night. D’Ewes worried that there was
a toxic sense of ‘us and them’ creeping in: he thought it would be a bad look if
the government was seen to be contributing in some way.
The police were uniformly despised. The Victorian Government paid peanuts and, of
course, it got monkeys. The police force was young, ill-trained, inexperienced and
frequently drunk. When the ‘traps’ gave Frances Pierson ‘a call’ in her store on
St Patrick’s Day (a sure sign she was selling sly grog) her husband Thomas said, a more proud, lazy, ignorant, tyrannical set of vagabonds could not easily be found .
Storekeepers who sold grog paid the police to look the other way (and since Frances
Pierson didn’t sustain a conviction, she probably did too). The system simply invited
corruption.
Punishments for sly grog were severe: a £50 fine or four months’ jail for a first
offence; a second offence would get you six to twelve months with hard labour. These
were mandatory sentences and local magistrates had no power to soften them: only
the Governor could interfere. What’s more, when a police officer recorded a conviction
he received a portion of the fine—a situation also set up to encourage fraud.
The cards were stacked in favour of the police. They either pursued known sly-groggers
relentlessly or extracted hush money—and no doubt other ‘favours’. Samuel Huyghue,
a public servant living at the Government Camp, believed this system of rewards for
sly-grog arrests was to blame for the demoralisation of the police force.
Meanwhile, other aspects of law enforcement were a joke. A miner might disappear
down a shaft in the black of night never to be seen again, and the police would be
useless. Claim jumping was rife, but it was more often sorted out by fists and knives
than police intervention. Henry Mundy said that if a digger was killed in a mining
accident, assuming a policeman deigned to turn up at all, he would simply say he’s
dead right enough , then slip a hand into the dead man’s pocket to help himself to
any money or valuables.
If you wanted to safeguard yourself against crime, you kept a dog on a chain or a
pistol under your pillow. No one had a shred of confidence in Victoria’s finest.
LICENCE HUNTERS
But the biggest grievance—the focal point of daily complaints—was the way these tyrannical vagabonds went about checking licences.
Licences had to be renewed monthly, and nothing , wrote William Howitt, could exceed
the avidity, the rigidity and arbitrary spirit with which the licence fees were enforced
on the diggings . Cries of ‘Joe’ could be heard around the diggings when a hunt
ARCHIVE Clendinning-Rede Papers, SLV 10102
Government oppression and negligence were getting serious—sometimes a matter of life
and death. The word tyranny rolled easily off tongues.
To add to the administrative problems, Ballarat was dealing with a new boss, the
incoming Resident Commissioner Robert Rede. Trying to make himself look good with
his own superiors, he used his reports to give an appearance of peace and order.
When a prisoner was rescued from the lockup by his mates, Rede reported the incident
but assured HQ the incident arose from drink and not from any ill feeling against
the authorities .
Some members of the goldfields administration could see that the discontented rumblings
would not be kept down. On 3 July 1854, Magistrate John D’Ewes wrote to the Colonial Secretary in Melbourne to warn about the lack of basic services available to the
diggers and townsfolk at Ballarat. He mentioned in particular the non-existence of
any hospital or asylum, except the small one belonging to the Camp and restricted
to Government servants . The people were taking matters into their own hands, he reported.
A meeting at the Ballarat Hotel on 1 July took donations for a new hospital. The well known liberality of the diggers when it came to these public ‘subscriptions’
meant that £270 was donated by 24 people that night. D’Ewes worried that there was
a toxic sense of ‘us and them’ creeping in: he thought it would be a bad look if
the government was seen to be contributing in some way.
The police were uniformly despised. The Victorian Government paid peanuts and, of
course, it got monkeys. The police force was young, ill-trained, inexperienced and
frequently drunk. When the ‘traps’ gave Frances Pierson ‘a call’ in her store on
St Patrick’s Day (a sure sign she was selling sly grog) her husband Thomas said, a more proud, lazy, ignorant, tyrannical set of vagabonds could not easily be found .
Storekeepers who sold grog paid the police to look the other way (and since Frances
Pierson didn’t sustain a conviction, she probably did too). The system simply invited
corruption.
Punishments for sly grog were severe: a £50 fine or four months’ jail for a first
offence; a second offence would get you six to twelve months with hard labour. These
were mandatory sentences and local magistrates had no power to soften them: only
the Governor could interfere. What’s more, when a police officer recorded a conviction
he received a portion of the fine—a situation also set up to encourage fraud.
The cards were stacked in favour of the police. They either pursued known sly-groggers
relentlessly or extracted hush money—and no doubt other ‘favours’. Samuel Huyghue,
a public servant living at the Government Camp, believed this system of rewards for
sly-grog arrests was to blame for the demoralisation of the police force.
Meanwhile, other aspects of law enforcement were a joke. A miner might disappear
down a shaft in the black of night never to be seen again, and the police would be
useless. Claim jumping was rife, but it was more often sorted out by fists and knives
than police intervention. Henry Mundy said that if a digger was killed in a mining
accident, assuming a policeman deigned to turn up at all, he would simply say he’s
dead right enough , then slip a hand into the dead man’s pocket to help himself to
any money or valuables.
If you wanted to safeguard yourself against crime, you kept a dog on a chain or a
pistol under your pillow. No one had a shred of confidence in Victoria’s finest.
LICENCE HUNTERS
But the biggest grievance—the focal point of daily complaints—was the way these tyrannical vagabonds went about checking licences.
Licences had to be renewed monthly, and nothing , wrote William Howitt, could exceed
the avidity, the rigidity and arbitrary spirit with which the licence fees were enforced
on the diggings . Cries of ‘Joe’ could be heard around the diggings when a hunt
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