blog - Bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg

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?

John Ramsland's Custodians of the Soil

6/12/2011

In all the calm, reasoned, scholarly debate conducted in letters to editors and other communications since Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady was published, declarations have been made that my exhaustive annotated timelines and myth-debunking pieces about Thunderbolt and Mary Ann are all "wrong" and that we should instead examine “reliable” sources like Professor John Ramsland’s Custodians of the Soil, as well asThe Captain’s Lady: Mary Ann Bugg, a thesis by Tasmanian undergraduate Honours student, Kali Bierens.
As these declarations keep being made, I thought I would analyse these sources. Let's start with Ramsland’s Custodians of the Soil.
Go to Custodians of the Soil

Remembering Rosey

3/12/2011

Dr David Andrew Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Australian History at the University of New England, has written a piece called Remembering Rosey for the website, discussing old-timer’s recollections published in newspapers. One is particularly interesting and relevant in determining the truth about Mary Ann Bugg.

Go to Remembering Rosey

Mudgee Weekly

2/12/2011

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk at Mudgee library to a warm, welcoming, wonderful audience who were intrigued by the fact that Thunderbolt's Lady lived out her days in the Mudgee district. A journalist for the Mudgee Guardian attended and a link to her well-written report, Finding Thunderbolt's Lady, is today's post.

Go to Finding Thunderbolt's Lady

Focus magazine

1/12/2011

Today's post is a link to my interview with New England's Focus magazine, which talks about my journey to becoming a writing as well as my experiences writing Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady. I noted with amusement the section they circled as an important quote!

Go to Focus interview

"Fred Ward swims to Balmain"

29/11/2011

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.

Mrs Garbutt of Cooyal

28/11/2011

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?

Reader responses

26/11/2011

I had a phone call from a friend yesterday who was on holidays in Queensland and who walked into a bookshop in Coolangatta and saw my book on display. She bought a copy and asked the bookseller how it was selling. "It's walking out the door!" the bookseller told her. Apparently readers had been coming into the bookshop with newspaper cuttings, asking for copies of the book. I already knew that it was selling well because Allen & Unwin had found that their warehouse was empty only two months after publication and had to print more. But it was interesting to hear directly from a bookseller how readers were hearing about it.
    It is also great to hear directly from readers and I've had more emails this week. Peter Foerster wrote: "I've just read Thunderbolt..... brilliant ... bloody brilliant. Thanks so much for bringing Himself and Mary Anne back to life. I love Oz history, you've done fab job!!"
    Graham Woolley wrote: "I have finished reading the above book, which I enjoyed very much. It is not often one finds a book that is very hard to put down, this was one of those."
    And Warwick Hastie, who had previously contacted me about the book, wrote about the website itself: "Will you please stop uncovering so much new stuff and updating your website, I can’t keep up, and have to keep updating my thesis...it’s driving me crazy....haha. No seriously, congratulations on the website: it’s outstanding. I can’t believe the extent of your research and output...really quite extraordinary...your determination, dedication, and eye for detail is an inspiration. My only disappointment is that you debunked the part about Mary Ann helping Fred escape Cockatoo...I really liked that bit of the myth!"
    Indeed, the website will keep growing as more blog posts and myth debunking pieces are written. Stay tuned.

William Monckton

24/11/2011

I have recently heard from Jan Skorich, a great-great-granddaughter of Will Monckton. I asked her if I could publish her email as a blog post on my website and received her permission. Jan writes:

Thank you, Carol, for your thorough research, which corresponds with that of my brother, Barry Nelson. Barry unfortunately died last year, but not before publishing his own research on Will Monckton and Thunderbolt. From early in our lives we knew of the connection to Thunderbolt (Will Monckton was our great-great-grandfather) but Barry became very interested in the truth, and thus researched thoroughly, sometimes in collaboration with Stephan Williams. He had an ongoing dispute with Barry Sinclair over the facts. We know that William Monckton gave conflicting accounts of the facts, but Barry Nelson's research indicates that the account you give on this website is indeed the truth, and that the greatest likelihood is that it was Fred Ward who died at Uralla. Fred Ward did not escape to Canada or the US. We don't really know why great-great grandfather Will told the stories he did, but what I do know is that his daughters were very reluctant to talk about this period of his life at all, hence we don't have any first- or even second-hand accounts of the stories.
     I was given a copy of "Three Years with Thunderbolt" (Will Monckton) to read when I was about 10 years old. My mother had heard the stories, she was 11 years old when Will died, there's a picture of her as a baby sitting on his knee. And she tended to believe that Will was covering up for Fred Ward and that he was not the one shot at Uralla. One of stories we heard was that Fred Ward went to New Zealand. So there you are, yet another rumour! However, Barry Nelson's research debunks all of this. I wish he was here to talk to you about it as he spent a number of years on the research.
     As well as reading the two books as children, Will Monckton’s “Three Years with Thunderbolt” and Annie Rixon’s book, and being told by our mother that Fred Ward went to the US and lived to a ripe old age, our parents took us to Thunderbolt’s grave when I was 12 years old. Mum said “It’s not Fred Ward, it’s not Captain Thunderbolt, in this grave, because he wasn’t shot in Uralla, he escaped to America”. So for us to all turn around from this position to exactly the opposite conclusion really took some convincing because it was firmly entrenched in our family history. We are grateful for Barry Nelson’s, and for your, research.
     Thank you again, Carol, and we hope that truth will prevail!

It will, Jan. It will!! Stay tuned to this blog.

                        For further information about Will Monckton's statements, see
                                             What did William Monckton say?

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