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Was Fred Ward a rapist?

20/12/2011

When I went into the ABC studios for my interview with Margaret Throsby on Classic FM, I was told that they had received calls about my book’s “mis-representation” of Fred Ward. One caller stated that Thunderbolt wasn’t a “gentleman bushranger” but instead was a psychopathic murderer and rapist!
     I had heard claims that Fred Ward was a murderer but when I had asked – repeatedly – for evidence, nothing was provided, either then or in the two years since. But a rapist? I’d never heard that one before.
     Soon afterwards, when I was preparing my myth-debunking piece regarding Fred’s alleged employment at Daandine Station, I realised the origin of the rape claim. And I realised that I could easily debunk it.
     On 11 May 1918, the Queenslander (p.41) published an article by William Clark claiming that he knew Fred Ward when he brought cattle from J.P. Wilkie’s property at Daandine to Clark’s father’s property at Brisbane in the early 1850s. Clark then wrote that:

Ward attempted to commit an assault on a married woman. He made his escape, went to Daandine, got a fresh horse, and started duffing fat cattle and selling them to local butchers. He was caught and sentenced to imprisonment on Cockatoo Island.

     I know I keep banging on about the simplest historical detection rule (that is, determine the likely accuracy of unknown information by evaluating the accuracy of known information in the same historical source), but if this “rapist” telephone caller had been paying attention, he wouldn’t have laid such a dreadful charge against Fred’s character.
     As starters, everyone knows that Fred was not convicted and sent to Cockatoo Island for duffing fat cattle in Queensland and selling it to local butchers. That being the case, William Clark’s reliability as a source of accurate information about Fred Ward is immediately open to doubt.
   And what about the rape claim? This can be instantly dismissed. It wasn’t Fred Ward who was working for J.P. Wilkie at Daandine. It was his nephew John Garbutt. Whether Garbutt "committed an assault on a married woman" or whether Clark's memory was inaccurate on this count as well, will probably never be known.

                          See Did Fred Ward’s life of crime start in Queensland?

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Mrs Garbutt of Cooyal

28/11/2011

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An important component of the myth-debunking process is to determine the genesis and development of the relevant myths. I have been exploring many of the Thunderbolt myths with Dr David Andrew Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Australian History at the University of New England, for articles to be published in scholarly journals. For today’s blog post I thought I would explore one of the minor myths. This is the claim that when Fred Ward chose to settle in Mudgee in 1860 upon receipt of his ticket-of-leave (a colonial version of a parole pass), he went to stay with his sister Mrs Garbutt at Cooyal (or, as some say, his “mother” Mrs Garbutt).
As I make clear in my myth-debunking article Who was Mrs Garbutt of Cooyal? (recently updated), the said Mrs Garbutt was neither Fred’s “sister” nor his “mother”. In fact, “Mrs Garbutt” didn’t come into existence until Fred’s nephew, John Garbutt – who had also received a ticket-of-leave to Mudgee – managed to woo and wed the widowed heiress of Cooyal inn and station, Mrs Elizabeth Blackman nee Aldridge.
So how did this erroneous claim develop? See Who was Mrs Garbutt of Cooyal?

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Garbutt family

14/11/2011

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The website continues to grow larger! The decision to include all my back-up documentation on a website has proven an excellent choice because it allows me to add new information and documentation as it comes to light, and also allows me to alert you to these additions.
    Today's post links to three certificates that were sent to me by a lady who did some research for a Ward descendant. These certificates relate to children of Maria Garbutt (wife of James Dewson), who was the daughter of John Garbutt and Sarah Ann Ward, who was herself the sister of Frederick Ward aka Thunderbolt.
The certificates include:

     - Birth Certificate of Myallas Maud Dewson (1875)
     - Marriage Certificate of Frederick William Dewson (1897)
     - Marriage Certificate of John Herbert Dewson (1912)

Although poor in quality (the lady who sent them, Alice Jansen, only had photocopies), they show something rather surprising. Maria's sons listed her surname as Shepherd on their own marriage certificates. Shepherd was the surname of her short-lived stepfather, William Shepherd. Why would Maria's children list her by this surname? Why would Maria's children not list her by her actual surname Garbutt, the surname Maria used at the time of her marriage and on her children's birth certificates. One can only speculate that it might have been to hide the connection with her executed brother, John Garbutt.

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Fred Ward and the Garbutt brothers

12/10/2011

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Some Thunderbolt romantics like to describe the young horsebreaker Fred Ward as the innocent victim of a nefarious plot crafted in 1856 by a man named Pelican, a plot that led to his apprehension for horse-stealing and consequent servitude in Cockatoo Island. Others claim that Fred’s brother William (whom they call his “uncle” Harry) was the evildoer, and that Fred was “driven to crime” by the management of Tocal station because their decision to put profits over lives led to the death of his brother George Ward in 1854 (see Did the Death of Fred Ward’s brother spawn his life of crime?).
     In truth, Fred had an eye for a quick buck as well as a good horse, and he willingly joined forces with his con-man nephew, John Garbutt.
     Garbutt was a blond-haired, blue-eyed charmer who decided that horse-stealing was more lucrative than station work. After a Queensland warrant was put out for his arrest in 1855, he fled south to the Hunter Valley district where he committed four large-scale horse and cattle thefts. For his fifth bold plan, he enticed his Ward relatives to join him.
     In March 1856, Fred offered his services to assist in a cattle muster at Tocal station on the Paterson River, which was also New South Wales’ pre-eminent horse stud. A few weeks later some four dozen horses were stolen from Tocal and neighbouring Bellevue station. In the aftermath, the horses were hidden for around ten days at the nearby Lambs Valley farm of Fred’s brother William Ward. John Garbutt then decided to drive the stolen horses south to the markets at Windsor. Fred accompanied them, but he, Garbutt, and the horses’ brands were recognised.
     Fred and his nephews, John and James Garbutt, ended up at the brutal Cockatoo Island penal settlement. Fred’s two surviving brothers were fortunate enough to escape the law’s clutches: William Ward was committed but never brought to trial while Joshua went a-droving before charges were laid against him.
     Fred and his Garbutt nephews worked hard and behaved well so after serving only four years of their ten-year sentences they were granted the colonial equivalent of a parole pass to the Mudgee district. There the 26-year-old John Garbutt managed to charm – and marry – the 42 year-old widowed heiress of Cooyal inn and station. There, probably on the wedding day, Fred met his famed lover, Mary Ann Bugg.
     For one crime or another, the trio ended up back on Cockatoo Island. James Garbutt served the longest term on the island and struggled in the aftermath: drunkenness, petty thievery and, eventually, an inability to keep his pecker in his pants. Between 1879 and 1902, he served five gaol terms for “exposing his person” or “indecent assault”. Ironically, his abandoned daughters were arrested under the Industrial Schools Act in 1874 and admitted to the newly-established girls’ home on Biloela, the recently renamed Cockatoo Island. Taking a leaf from her great-uncle’s book, one of the girls escaped from the island a few years later.
     John Garbutt’s charmed life continued until 1862 when a tumble from a horse led to brain damage and soon afterwards another conviction for livestock theft. Although the Mudgee doctors had claimed that he was fit to stand trial, the Darlinghurst gaol authorities disagreed and shunted him off to the Parramatta Psychiatric Institution. There the doctors diagnosed a “delusional mania”. Medical reports noted that he expressed a constant terror of imaginary persons and particularly of “blackfellows”, that he would remain naked day and night wearing only a pair of stockings and would hide under a bed or in a corner if people approached him, that he was frequently sullen and morose, refusing to speak to those about him and even refusing food which had to be administered forcibly.
     Garbutt made a remarkable recovery in the early 1870s and was eventually released to the care of his wife, but soon drifted north to Queensland. In September 1873 at Taroom near Roma, Queensland, he murdered a travelling companion, Thomas Conroy, by axing the man while he slept and burning the body. Garbutt was executed at Brisbane Gaol on 10 March 1874. No one realised that the “Taroom murderer” was Captain Thunderbolt’s nephew, let alone that he was the man whose bold plans first enticed the young horsebreaker onto the criminal footpath.
     James and John Garbutt were the sons of Fred’s elder sister, Sarah Ann Ward. Some have claimed that Sarah was Fred’s mother (see Was Frederick Ward the son of his “sister”?), however these claims are easily disproved – fortunately for Sarah. If she had indeed been Fred’s mother, she would have managed the ignoble achievement of giving birth to a gunned-down bushranger, a rapist, and an executed murderer. What a hat-trick!

For detailed information about Fred Ward’s pre-bushranging days, see Timeline: 1835-1863

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Was Fred Ward a rapist?

Mrs Garbutt of Cooyal

Garbutt family

Fred Ward and the Garbutt brothers

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