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Magistrate Thomas Nicholl's statement about Mary Ann Bugg

7/12/2011

One of the most important documents that has survived regarding Mary Ann Bugg is the letter written by Magistrate Thomas Nicholls in 1866 about her family and activities. Nicholls was a previous employer of the Australian Agricultural Company (as was Mary Ann's father), a magistrate in the Stroud district, and a worthy in the community.
   For Mary Ann's early years, Nicholls provided information about her family background and schooling. For her later years, he provided extremely important information about her activities while Fred Ward was incarcerated on Cockatoo Island prior to his escape in 1863 (see the second last paragraph).

                              Go to Statement of Magistrate Thomas Nicholls

    In view of Nicholls' statement and the confirmatory evidence from other contemporary records (see Did Mary Ann Bugg help Fred Ward escape from Cockatoo Island?), it is difficult to understand why Thunderbolt myth-propagators keep declaring that Mary Ann helped Fred escape from Cockatoo Island. Where is their evidence?

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"Fred Ward swims to Balmain"

29/11/2011

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As mentioned yesterday, I am exploring the genesis of many of the Thunderbolt myths, with Dr David Andrew Roberts of UNE, for articles to be published in scholarly journals. One long-accepted myth is that Mary Ann Bugg helped Fred Ward escape from Cockatoo Island. We’ve found an anonymous and undated “ballad” published by the Armidale and District Historical Society in 1969 that adds details to the story of Mary Ann’s involvement in the escape. The ballad says that Mary Ann took ‘a job at Long-Nose point’ (Birchgrove on the Balmain peninsula) to ‘be near her lover’, that she swam to the island three nights in a row ‘disguised as a dog’ until on the fourth occasion she found Ward and slipped him a file. On the ‘next night the boys swam back to freedom and Balmain’.
    Stephan Williams’ in A Ghost called Thunderbolt (p.165) attributes the ballad to Annie Rixon, author of many fictional works about Thunderbolt. Rixon, in her earlier novel Captain Thunderbolt (1951, pp.73-77), also mentioned Mary Ann’s employment at Long Nose Point, the dog disguise that allowed her to swim unnoticed to Cockatoo Island (interestingly, the dog disguise has not passed into Thunderbolt mythology), the file required to cut off Fred’s irons, and the escapees’ swim to Balmain.
    Rixon’s novel obviously takes its cue from A.R. Macleod’s The Transformation of Manellae (self-published in 1949 two years prior to Rixon's Captain Thunderbolt) in which Macleod wrote (p.23):

At this stage Mary Ann accepted domestic service in Sydney and proved herself a very capable servant. After a time she discovered the whereabouts of Ward and contacted him by swimming across to the island at night and returning before daylight. Suddenly Ward disappeared from the island. Many thought that he swam the dangerous water with legirons on … Before her death Mary Ann revealed to [Police Inspector] Langworthy how the thing was done. She had provided the tools and a sympathiser among the prisoners had removed the irons. Ward had hidden in a disused boiler for several days, Mary Ann bringing him food. On the fourth night he made his famous swim.

    However, Rixon’s writings contain some important additions to the Macleod account that have since become accepted as fact. For example, Macleod states that Mary Ann found work in Sydney, whereas Rixon – and the well-entrenched Thunderbolt myth – says that she found work at Balmain and that Ward and Britten swam to Balmain after fleeing their Cockatoo Island gaolers.
    Significantly, Rixon does not include any mention of Mary Ann’s involvement in the Cockatoo Island escape in her 1945 edition of Thunderbolt.
    Ten years after Rixon added fictional detail to the story of Mary Ann’s involvement in the Cockatoo Island escape of 1863, author Frank O’Grady co-opted the story and used it to open his Thunderbolt novel Wild Honey, further cementing the myth in the popular imagination. In Wild Honey, Mary Ann swam to Cockatoo Island within a pile of drifting seaward, then floated with the seaward along the shoreline until she reached the old ship's boiler in which Fred was hidden. She gave him food, fresh water and wine to keep him going. Interestingly, O'Grady made no mention of a file to cut off Fred's legirons.
    Tracing the genesis of these myths and the specific details within the myths is a fascinating exercise – a challenging detective hunt! – but we need your help. We are interested to know if anyone can come up with a pre-1951 reference to Long Nose Point or Balmain or the dog-disguise. We think that Rixon’s novel is the first time these Balmain details appeared in print, and that her novel spawned this part of the Thunderbolt mythology.
    If anyone can produce a specific reference to published information, we are offering as a prize a free subscription to the Journal of Australian Colonial History courtesy of the University of New England.

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Frederick Britten

29/10/2011

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Guilty or innocent? An intriguing question. The prosecution admitted that the evidence was largely circumstantial. The main eye-witness was uncertain. And Frederick Britten himself loudly proclaimed his innocence, then and later. So was Britten guilty of participating in the Bathurst mail-coach robbery of November 1862 – the crime that sent him to the Cockatoo Island penal establishment in February 1863 – or wasn’t he? Britten was, of course, the prisoner who escaped from Cockatoo Island with Fred Ward in September 1863.
    The subject of Frederick Britten is one that needs further exploration. I actually covered his story in more detail than readers of Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady would realise. In fact, I wrote a whole chapter about him. But when the manuscript reached 127,000 words and my contract limit was 100,000 words (see On Writing Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady – coming), I realised that the entire chapter on Britten would have to go.
    Fortunately, my decision to establish this back-up website – indeed my decision to produce these daily blog posts – has provided an opportunity to resurrect deleted material. The chapter on Britten is one of them (see Frederick Britten chapter).
    Britten has me stumped in more ways than one. Who exactly was he? In gaol admission records, he said that he was born in Tasmania in the mid-1830s, but no reference to his birth has been found nor to any Britten/Brittain/Britain family he could have belonged to. He said that he arrived in NSW on board the Julia in 1845. While a ship with that name was journeying across Bass Strait in the mid-1840s, it was only travelling to Port Phillip and Adelaide. Had he come to NSW by land from Victoria?
    Annie Rixon in her Thunderbolt books had Ward and Britten as childhood friends, but her novels are so poorly researched that one can almost assume that if she claims something it will be wrong. Indeed, she says that Thunderbolt was Fred Britten rather than Fred Ward!
    The information I have discovered for Britten is documented in his Timeline.
    But there’s more. What was his connection with the Victorian felon who used Frederick Brittain and John Thomas Ellis as an alias? And what was his connection with John Ellis, the man who visited him on Cockatoo Island? In my attempt to determine who all these people were, I produced another series of annotated timelines (see Britten/Ellis jigsaw puzzle).
    All that seems clear about Frederick Britten is that his background is very murky indeed! In fact, it is highly likely that his name was not Frederick Britten at all. As to his true identity, research will need to be undertaken in the Victorian Public Record Office. If anyone who lives near the Public Records Office would be interested in pursuing this subject, please contact me.

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Magistrate Thomas Nicholl's statement about Mary Ann Bugg

"Fred Ward swims to Balmain"

Frederick Britten

'Bolt & Bugg Blog

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