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John Thompson - Part 3

24/11/2011

Having been filing all the research material that I received back from the University of New England's Heritage Centre, I noticed some other material in my files that I had forgotten about. One was a chapter in a bushranging book by Edgar Penzig which included a photo of John Thompson reportedly taken upon his admission to Darlinghurst Gaol in 1872. This photo album is now missing from State Records, however the man stated to be Thompson bears a distinct resemblance to the description of Thompson given in original records. The photo does not show the scars that Thompson seemingly would have borne, however it is possible that the angle of the photo hides them.
If anyone knows the whereabouts of this volume of photographs, it would be wonderful if it could be returned to State Records as this is an important historical document. In fact, the photographs included in this volume would be the only photographs taken of most of the people admitted to gaol at that time.
See John Thompson

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John Thompson - Part 2

21/11/2011

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As I explained in my previous post, I was forced to reduce chapters in Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady because of space limitations. The extra information about Fred's accomplices was the first to go. Below is what I had originally written to "round up" the life of Fred's bushranging accomplice, John Thompson.

                                                     ___________________

Bail? The bushranger who’d shot at the police had been offered bail? Why? asked an appalled squatter who attended Thompson’s committal hearing early in May.
     The magistrate explained that it was usual in all cases of felony except murder and rape – unless, of course, the police objected. And the police hadn’t objected!
     The squatter remonstrated with him, reminding him of the character of the boy he was about to bail, and advising him of the character of the man who was gathering the bail money. The magistrate immediately rescinded the bail order but his error of judgment nearly cost him his honorary job.
     Another lapse in judgment allowed Thompson to escape from Tamworth gaol, after picking open the ring of his hobbles and climbing over the eight-foot gaol wall. He hadn’t been able to discard the hobbles altogether, however, and his lurching pace slowed him enough to be caught.
     ‘He is as impudent and boastful as formerly,’ reported the Tamworth press, indicating that Thompson’s brush with death hadn’t chastened him. However he was clever enough to know when he was beaten. Two months after the shooting, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two concurrent terms of fifteen years on the roads. He saw the insides of many New South Wales gaols before being released in 1872, only seven years into his sentence. His mother had petitioned the visiting Prince Alfred on the grounds of her son’s extreme youth at the time of the crimes, claiming that Thunderbolt’s wiles had drawn the boy into a life of crime, however she had died before his eventual release.
     Impudent and boastful he continued to be, calling himself John Thompson alias Thunderbolt, a reminder to all of his felonious connections. Not surprisingly, he was back in gaol six months later, by reason of stupidity as much as anything else. After the police tried to apprehend him following another robbery, he fired at them and fled, but was later spotted by one of the policemen when he attended his accomplices’ court hearing. The newspapers reported that the fleet-footed felon was apparently in training for the pedestrian sports at the Albert Ground. Fleet-footed he might have been but with little sense of direction. It was the equivalent of an own goal.
     Released in 1881, his tally of crimes and aliases continued to increase. A year later, James Jamieson alias Thompson alias Thunderbolt again fired at the police after attempting to rob the Australian Mutual Provident Society. Had the ex-bushranger found a new hero by this time, a ‘father’ in the American outlaw Jesse James? Fortunately his mother wasn’t alive to see the man her innocent boy had become.

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John Thompson - Part 1

19/11/2011

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As mentioned previously, space limitations forced me to delete some sections of Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady, however these blog posts allow me to resurrect the deleted sections. Today's post covers young John Thompson who was a member of Fred's first gang. Fred and his gang bushranged in north-western NSW in early 1865. The beginning of Chapter 21 was originally more detailed, as shown below:
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‘I have been authorised by his father to chastise the boy when he deserves it,’ said John Brown, master of the brig Venus, to the Water Police Court in 1859 when brought up on charges of ill-usage. The prosecutor? His eleven-year old apprentice, John Massey Thompson.
     ‘He is a sharp but pert boy,’ wrote the bemused court reporter as he listened to Thompson’s testimony. The lad reported that Brown had caught him by the ear and pulled him off the gangway and that, when he resisted and broke away, Brown grabbed his hair and drove him ashore. Thompson immediately stalked across to the Police Office and laid charges against his master.
    ‘I will not be ill-used by anybody, not even the Governor,’ exclaimed the mutinous boy when his master questioned him about the resulting summons.
‘What sort of language is that?’ demanded Brown.
‘It is English grammar,’ came the impertinent reply.
At which Brown grabbed a doubled-up rope and beat the boy, while a chained dog lunged at him and bit him.
                                                                   *
Thompson had spent enough hours scratching at a slate to know exactly what English grammar was. He wasn’t a poorly educated rural lad like Thunderbolt and many of his cronies; rather he was the son of educated middle-class urban folk, a respectable family indeed. His mother was the daughter of an Irish protestant clergyman, and his father an employee of the City of Sydney Corporation, a administrator who bore the illustrious title of Assistant Inspector of Nuisances, a promotion of sorts from his previous role as Inspector of Water Closets. No doubt his duties were of the pen-pushing variety and that he employed others to undertake the less salubrious tasks of actually inspecting the water closets or the ubiquitous nuisances. He also employed others to manage his difficult son, eventually sending him hundreds of miles away to the tough environment of a country station near Moree. But John Massey Thompson could take such dictatorial authority only for so long. Early in 1865 he threatened to shoot the Terrihihi station superintendent then he stole a horse and headed west to pursue his long-expressed dream of joining a gang of bushrangers. And he found one.
Running away to sea? That was the dream of many a British youth who chafed at society’s strait-jacket, lured to the vast blueness by tales of naval heroes and England’s finest hour, or fantasies of swash-buckling adventures under a Jolly Roger flag. For most Australian residents, however, ‘the sea’ conjured up few romantic visions, as too many had dropped to their knees in thankful prayer after stepping onto Antipodean terra firma and reacted with horror at any suggestion that they step off again.
Australian lads had their own dreams and heroes, rarely men of letters or political vision, or Admirals who fought in long ago battles, although rum-swigging pirates continued to generate a sneaking admiration. The Antipodean heroes were men who ‘never horse could throw while the saddle-girths would stand’. Add a pistol to their hand and the rallying cry of ‘bail up’ and colonial youths had a home-grown buccaneer they could admire – or even run away to join.

In tomorrow's post, I will include the deleted/reduced section about Thompson in the aftermath of the Millie shooting.

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John Thompson - Part 3

John Thompson - Part 2

John Thompson - Part 1

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