blog - Bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg

Ghostly goings-on near Sydney

22/11/2011

An English reader, Mike Elliott, who is amused at all the Thunderbolt goings-on covered in this blog, sent the following:

Ghostly Goings-on Near Sydney!
Or if you believe this...

One night as I was leaving St Ives
I met Cobb & Co with seven scribes.
The seven scribes each had long knives,
No pleasant night out these husbands and wives.

As like the clappers I run on by
But they bail me up and says my my,
What have we here? You a local guy?
Not me says I, I'm from Gundagai.

Well we're from all over and you can leave alive
If you tell us where to find Melaleuca Drive.
We've some-one there our swords to rive
Tell us quick now and you will survive.

But gentlefolk (I blagged) what you have in mind
I think would be best if your journey rewind.
For up ahead is the ghost of Fred Ward maligned
Your faces in his horse's s..t will surely grind.

Sod this says one, I'm going no further
I denounce my claim to being an author.
Another cries with surprising candour,
I'm chicken s..t too so with you I'll canter.

A third chimes in I'm all of a fluster
My bravado it seems I cannot muster.
Perhaps another my place take over
For in the coach I stay under cover.

A fourth of the party quite bravely boasts
Never in my life have I been afraid of ghosts;
But Fred is another matter, see the signposts
It's time I departed away from the coasts.

Five, six and seven all crap in their pants
They are certainly changing their former stance
As back into the coach as if in a trance
Cobb turns the coach and the horses prance.

The coach leaves with a jerk as the horses take fright
And gallops off home somewhere in the night.
Back to their scribblings now to put right
No more honest writers to give a bad fright.

As I stand there amazed and laughing out loud
I think of the bullies that have now kowtowed.
And Mary Ann joins me, her face so proud
Holding hands we kiss and disappear as a cloud.

John Thompson - Part 2

21/11/2011

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.

John Thompson - Part 1

19/11/2011

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:
                                                    ____________________

‘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.

Thunderbolt's gangs

18/11/2011

A recent Thunderbolt novel managed to omit the year 1865 from its fictional account of Thunderbolt’s life, despite this being the most important year in the real Thunderbolt’s bushranging career. Chapter 13 of Thunderbolt: Scourge of the Ranges related events occurring in January 1865 then ended: “The first Thunderbolt gang was in business.” Chapter 14 began: “In early March of 1866 …”. The remainder of the novel included no further references to Thunderbolt’s first gang – or indeed to his second gang, which formed later in 1865 and disbanded in January 1866. That a second gang also existed was intimated by the use of the word “first”, so any reader paying close attention must have wondered what was going on – as I did.
     When I came across this strange omission, I flipped back through the pages and checked the chapter numbering to see if the printers had accidentally omitted the chapters relating to Thunderbolt’s two gangs (some authors send their manuscripts through as separate computer files for each chapter). The consecutive chapter numbering indicated that this omission was deliberate. Yet the abruptness suggested that the authors had written the chapters then dumped them for some reason – perhaps because the events of that year showed Thunderbolt shooting at the police, which would seriously undermine one of the major themes of the novel.
     So in this post, I am directing readers to two of the Timelines for the year 1865 so they can see for themselves the truth about the activities of the real Thunderbolt.

                                                  Timeline – 1865: First gang

                                                 Timeline – 1865: Second gang

By preparing annotated timelines like these, I was able to document absolutely everything I found for Thunderbolt and Mary Ann and their families and also for Fred's accomplices. Most published historical works include text annotations that merely source-reference the information contained in the book. In writing any book, however, it is necessary to omit information that has taken much time and hard work to find because of space limitations – and also, in this instance, because readers would get bored with too many cries of "bail up"! By publishing these timelines I have provided more exhaustive documentation than any previous Thunderbolt publication – probably more exhaustive documentation than any other book that has ever been published, in fact! In so doing, I am delighted to be able to the body of knowledge about these important historical figures.

Thunderbolt research material

17/11/2011

When undertaking my research for Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady, I went back to the original records and started again. Most government records are held at State Records of New South Wales at Kingswood, which is an intimidating research facility for beginners. One cannot simply type “Thunderbolt” into a catalogue and call up the original material of interest! Most of the Thunderbolt material that is easy to locate was discovered by researchers back in the 1980s, however many of the more obscure sources – depositions, judge’s notebooks, etc – remained hidden until I unearthed them during my Thunderbolt research.
     Historical transparency is extremely important, particularly in this situation, as I had discovered much new information and debunked many long-accepted myths. My publisher and I had originally intended to publish the results of my research – in the form of annotated timelines and myth-debunking analyses – at the back of the book, but this plan had to be abandoned when we realised that the source-references would be larger than the text itself (anyone who has seen the size of the print-out can attest to that as it is 350 A4 pages and doesn’t even include everything on my website!). Some works of popular history omit source-referencing altogether but this idea was unacceptable to me – as my publisher well knew. So we decided to include a brief bibliography in the book and publish everything else on my Thunderbolt website. This has allowed me to not only document the source-references but to include photocopies of important material to substantiate my discoveries. This website material has also been printed out and deposited in relevant record offices – including the UNE’s Heritage Centre at Armidale. In fact, the bound copy of the back-up documentation was handed over during the launch of Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady at McCrossin’s Mill on 18 September 2011, just three weeks after the book was published.
     Meanwhile there was the issue of all the new material I had discovered. I felt that it was important to make this material available to other researchers, so I contacted Bill Oates at the Heritage Centre and discussed handing over my copies so the Heritage Centre could photocopy them and make them available to the public. We decided not to worry about newspaper items as many had already been included in the files of Thunderbolt research deposited by Stephan Williams and Bob Cummins, others were now available online via Trove, and the local newspapers were available on microfilm at the Heritage Centre. The bound back-up documentation was handed to the Heritage Centre that same weekend.
     This material has now been copied and is available to researchers. It includes copies of the pages from the judge’s transcript of Fred’s 1856 trial (extremely hard to read so my own transcript is included on this website), the Parliamentary papers resulting from the Board of Inquiry into the Leichhardt claims, the depositions relating to criminal activities committed by Fred and his accomplices, and many other sources. In particular there is a lot of material relating to Fred’s young accomplice, William Monckton, which may be of interest to Monckton descendants.
     Now I have received all my material back, I will discuss some of it in future blog posts.

Thunderbolt histories

16/11/2011

The following is a review summary of Thunderbolt histories:

Three Years with Monckton by William Monckton, 1905                                 Fiction
Supposedly the memoir of Thunderbolt’s accomplice, William Monckton, this is largely a fictional account written by the editor, Ambrose Platt, as is evident from the title (Monckton bushranged with Thunderbolt for less than a year) as well as the contents and the amount of dialogue included.
See Review

Police history of the notorious bushrangers of NSW & Victoria
by Martin Brennan, c1910 (unpublished)                                        Fiction/Fact
Written by a police inspector during his retirement, this “police history” – which, notably, includes vast amounts of dialogue and no source references – is primarily sourced in anecdote which sometimes tallies remarkably with and seems to expand upon official records, but sometimes varies alarmingly. The difficulty lies in determining if the expanded information is elaboration or invention.
See Review

The truth about Thunderbolt
by Annie Rixon, 1940 (and its later incarnations)                    Fiction
Claiming that Thunderbolt was in fact Frederick Britten rather than Frederick Ward, this work – which, notably, also abounds in dialogue – bears little relation at all to the truth.
See Review

A Ghost called Thunderbolt
by Stephan Williams, 1987                                                            Non-fiction
This work, which contains source-references within the text itself, is one of the better publications about Thunderbolt although it still contains many errors.
See Review

Thunderbolt
by Bob Cummins, 1988                                                                           Non-fiction
This work, which contains source references at the back of the book, is the only Thunderbolt work that provides a detailed examination of the historical backdrop. In its description of Thunderbolt’s activities, however, the text contains a significant number of errors.
See Review

Thunderbolt
by Jim Hobden, 1988                                                                         Non-fiction
This work, which contains source-reference annotations throughout the text with the references themselves published as endnotes, is one of the better Thunderbolt publications although it still contains numerous errors.
See Review

Captain Thunderbolt: horsebreaker to bushranger
by David Brouwer, 2007                                                                            Non-fiction
This book contains both a bibliography and source-reference annotations (endnotes), however more than 80% of the annotations refer to published works about Thunderbolt rather than original records, and a large proportion of these references are to information extracted from Monckton and Brennan’s works (mentioned above), which are both assessed as largely fictional.
NB. In a recent communication, David advised that the errors have been corrected in the page proofs for a new edition of his book, so this review will be updated when the new edition is republished.
See Review

Thunderbolt: Scourge of the Ranges
by G James Hamilton with Barry Sinclair, 2009              Fiction
Not only do the authors themselves state in their Cataloguing-in-Publication classification on the back-title page that this self-published book is a work of ‘historical fiction’, the book’s contents bear out the authors’ classification. “Fantasy” is probably the most accurate description.
See Review (coming)

Garbutt family

14/11/2011

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.

Thunderbolt "histories"

12/11/2011

Since the 1890s there has been a continuing interest in Thunderbolt as reflected in the number of books and articles published. Many of these works claim to be “fact” or at least “based on fact” when they are, in fact, works of fiction. So how do we determine which publications we can rely upon? Here are a few simple steps:

1. Turn to the back-title page where the Cataloguing-in-Publication details are provided. If it mentions “fiction” or “historical fiction”, immediately dismiss the work as unreliable because the author can write whatever he or she wants. Even if the author elsewhere claims that the publication is “based on fact”, it must still be considered unreliable because there is no set ratio of fact and fiction in fictionalised history. Indeed, many works that claim to be “based on fact” would be better described as “inspired by a true story”.

2. Turn to the back of the book:
   a. If it does not contain a bibliography, dismiss the work as unreliable. Remember, unsubstantiated history is mythology.

   b. If it contains a bibliography, look at the references themselves. If these are mainly other printed works about Thunderbolt (that is, secondary-source references), it is necessary to assess these works themselves for reliability, using the guidelines mentioned here.

   c. If the bibliography contains primary-source references (that is, newspaper articles from the period itself, archival material, etc), then the work can be considered more reliable. This does not necessarily mean that it is accurate, however, just that it has a better chance of being reliable.

    d. If the biography contains primary-source and secondary-source references, and the secondary-source references include works relating to the historical backdrop, then the book or article has an even better chance of being reliable.

3. Assess the proportion of dialogue contained in the publication. A high proportion means that the account is largely fictional.

     I use the above guidelines as a simple rule of thumb in assessing the likely accuracy of other works relating to my topic of interest. After researching the subject using original records, I then compare the results of my research with the information contained in these publications. My detailed conclusions regarding the major Thunderbolt works is documented in the Reviews section on the website. In a future blog-post I will include a summary of these works.

Margaret Throsby interview

9/11/2011

A massively busy week – two radio interviews yesterday alone! – and an important family wedding on Friday (11/11/11 at 11) means that I have been quiet on the blog front this week but keep checking my blog because something exciting is happening very soon – probably next week, if not earlier.
Meanwhile, for those of you who missed my interview with Margaret Throsby on Classic FM, you can listen to the Podcast. Classic FM have told me that the interview went over well with listeners and I have had a lot of emails myself saying things like "Fantastic interview". It's great to hear that people enjoyed it.
I will blog again on Saturday.

Interview with Margaret Throsby

6/11/2011

Exciting news. I have an interview with Margaret Throsby on ABC Classic FM between 10 and 11 am tomorrow. This show is broadcast across Australia so if you google "abc classic fm frequency" you will be able to determine the frequency for your district.