blog - Bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg

Frederick Wordsworth Ward jnr

4/11/2011

I was working yesterday in the Mitchell Library perusing early Norfolk Island records as part of my “day job” – General Editor of the Biographical Database of Australia. As I and another experienced genealogist searched for useful lists of residents, we talked about how the internet has spawned so many “wannabe genealogists” and how a huge amount of bad research is now being published on the internet and, accordingly, spreads like a malignant virus. We talked about how these people stumble across information about someone and grab it as a reference to their own ancestor (particularly if it relates to someone “important”!) without making any attempt to verify that it actually does relate to their ancestor. Or they find “research” about their ancestor that someone else has done and accept it “holus bolus” – again without making any attempt to verify the accuracy of the information using original records. We agreed that most of these people have no understanding of how to undertake research or how to interpret historical records and therefore no ability to actually determine the truth – nor any interest in historical accuracy, in most cases. They just find it fun to “grab” ancestors like they are prizes in a treasure hunt and after they have found someone vaguely suitable for a particular slot, they move on to finding another person to fit into another slot.
So it was ironic when I came home and found emails from people who actually claim to be experienced researchers that revealed the most extraordinary ignorance about the nature of record-keeping in relation to the New South Wales registration of births, deaths and marriages – one of the foundations of genealogical research. I won’t name any names in case they read this web-post – I don’t want to humiliate them. Instead, I will use the example of the registration of records relating to Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior, the son of bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg, to explain how the system actually works and why claims of "forgery" are completely unsubstantiated.
See Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior.

Empty Grave

3/11/2011

Shayne Cantly of Evolution Studios, Toowoomba, has now uploaded an extended trailer onto his website to advertise his docu-drama. Go to Empty Grave and have a look.

More letters and rebuttals

2/11/2011

More letters are being sent to newspapers by those desperate to suppress the truth regarding Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg. But, interestingly, the newspapers who decide to publish the letters are reacting very quickly when rebuttals come in from authoritative sources. I guess they know how fine that certain legal line is!

See Letters to Armidale Express

The sage sayeth

31/10/2011

As I have – reportedly – deleted the material from my website that was proven to be wrong, then clearly everything that remains could not be proven wrong.

Hallelujah!

But I didn't need anyone else to confirm – even indirectly – that all my research is correct.

Evidence speaks for itself.

On writing Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady: Part 1

31/10/2011

Part 1: The Genesis of Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady

It all began in May 2009 when I phoned my publisher at Allen & Unwin to say that there was Hollywood film interest in my previous book Breaking the Bank: An Extraordinary Colonial Robbery. Breaking the Bank book tells the story of Australia's largest-ever bank robbery. In 1828 convicts tunnelled through a sewerage drain into the vault of the Bank of Australia – the “gentlemen’s bank” – and stole the equivalent (in today’s terms) of $20 million. In the recent Good Reading Review of Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady, the reviewer referred to the bank robbery as one of “epic proportions in early colonial times” – a just description (by the way, there are only a couple of hundred copies of Breaking the Bank still available so it will soon be out of print; you can ask a bookshop to order it in, or purchase it through my Orders page).
    As it turned out, nothing came of the film interest (it rarely does) but during the conversation my publisher asked me what I was thinking about for my next book and suggested that I find a strong female character. I then mentioned something that had piqued my interest. Sometime previously, I had been giving a talk at a historical society and afterwards, as everyone had afternoon tea, I heard a couple of women mention the phrase “female bushranger”. I immediately pricked up ears and asked about her. They became very reserved, wouldn’t tell me the women’s name, and said that someone else was writing about her. I told my publisher the story and concluded: “Pity about that. They have their dibs on that story.” To which she responded, “No one has their dibs on anything and, anyway, they wouldn’t write the story like you do!”
    So I put down the phone and googled “female bushranger” (ain’t the internet wunnerful!) and up she came. Mary Ann Bugg. Fiesty, beautiful, intelligent, educated and part Aboriginal – five ticks there! And she was the lover of the “gentleman bushranger” Captain Thunderbolt, Frederick Ward!!! It was one of those goose-bumps all over moment. What a wonderful story. Twenty minutes later I emailed my publisher to say that I had found the perfect story and would pitch it.
    So what does “pitching a book” mean?
   There are a few different ways that authors can get published. They can write a manuscript, or just an outline, and send it off to a publishing house (that is, “pitch it”) where it gets tossed into the “slush pile” – the pile of unsolicited manuscripts. Of every 500 unsolicited manuscripts that land in a publisher’s slush pile, 499 are essentially binned, with a polite rejection letter sent to the author. I was incredibly lucky with my first book, however. I sent my first manuscript as an unsolicited manuscript to Allen & Unwin alone, figuring that when I received the rejection letter I would work out why they hadn’t liked it, then I would rejig it and approach another publisher, continuing the process until I had exhausted the publishing possibilities. Instead, only two-and-a-half weeks after posting the manuscript, I received a phone call from my now publisher. The manuscript became An Irresistible Temptation: the true story of Jane New and a Colonial Scandal (Allen & Unwin, 2006).
    Or the author can find a literary agent and have them “pitch the book” to publishers. As surprising as it might sound, it is harder to acquire the services of a literary agent than it is to get a manuscript published! Why? Because many books have only a small print-run so it is not cost-effective for literary agents to devote time to pitching these books. I was fortunate enough to acquire the services of a literary agent when I was ready to pitch my second book, Breaking the Bank.
    With this latest book, I was pitching a story I hadn’t written – very difficult as I had to prepare a synopsis of the story and a chapter-by-chapter breakdown for something that I hadn’t even researched. So I went to my old Macquarie University library and looked for books about bushranging in general and Captain Thunderbolt in particular. As I read through those, I began to work out how I would tackle the story. I prepared the pitch and sent it off to my literary agent, who approached my publisher at Allen & Unwin. She loved the concept and pitched it to her own editorial committee – the publishing gatekeepers – and received the affirmative nod. The contract was signed in August 2009. I then began the huge job of going back to the original primary-source records to determine the truth about Fred Ward and Mary Ann Bugg.

Frederick Britten

29/10/2011

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.

Resurrecting Thunderbolt Seminar

28/10/2011

Yesterday, Dr David Andrew Roberts, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New England, gave a research seminar titled Resurrecting Thunderbolt: History, Fiction and Politics in an Age of Confusion. This was one of a series of research seminars held at the university, all being open to staff, students and the public. With almost record attendance, David's seminar was very well received, showing that confusion about the events that occurred 140 years ago has still not been resolved and that the subject continues to intrigue the public. The full seminar will eventually be accessible via podcast however, for now, a brief extract is shown below.

On 18 March 2010 the New South Wales Legislative Council demanded the NSW Governor
release allegedly censored documents relating to the death of the celebrated bushranger,
'Captain Thunderbolt', who was shot dead by police at Uralla in May 1870. Remarkably, the
renewed interest in this 140-year-old episode from the colonial past was motivated by claims
made in a self-published novel. Scourge of the Ranges (2009) is an historical fiction that
proposes that the colonial authorities shot the wrong man in 1870 and then engaged in a
high-level conspiracy to conceal this from the public. More seriously, the authors allege that
the conspiracy is enduring, that the NSW government actively maintains a strict censorship
over secret documents that reveal ‘the shabbiest official cover-up in our sad, inauspicious
history’. While it is not unusual for historical literature to sensationalise itself on the basis of
newly discovered ‘facts’, real or imagined, the use of the powers of the Legislative Council to
sanction and validate such serious claims warrants a reasoned response, particularly as far
as they reflect on the nature and integrity of governance and state record keeping in NSW.

Who says that history is dead and buried? Keeping watching this blog as more will be revealed soon ...

Reader's Review

27/10/2011

It is always lovely to hear that readers have enjoyed my books so, this morning, when I received the following email from Andrew Arnison, I immediately emailed back and asked if I could include his "review" on my website. Thanks Andrew!!

Hi   I have read your book and I just want to say congratulations and thank you. It is a wonderful read and very well written with the best treatment of Aboriginal issues I have ever encountered. Frank Clune, Eric Rolls and Thomas Keneally eat your heart out! I rave about this book to anyone who will listen. I raved to the librarian at my old school hoping she will get multiple copies. Kids don’t have time to read nowdays, but teachers will read it during the holidays. I usually keep book for a few years after I have read them then have a big clean up and throw them out. Not this book! This one I am keeping in my diminishing library of highly valued books.
    You have really hit the nail on the head with the appropriate mix of facts, supposition and intuition. It is so easy to read and the story flows smooth and deep like the Manning during a fresh. And the maps! I love those maps. Being able to place the characters in space and time is so important and I keep referring to the maps to find each river, road and town you mention.
     Congratulations once again.
     Andrew Arnison

Forgery claims

26/10/2011

Was Pat Lightfoot trying to “kill the messenger” when she wrote her nasty letter to the Maitland Mercury (Thunderbolt tale largely fictional) regarding me and my book Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady. For example, why would she announce that I have “no tertiary qualifications”? And forgery? Perhaps Ms Lightfoot doesn’t realise that both forging and using a forged birth, marriage or death certificate are criminal offences punishable by two years in gaol.
In researching Thunderbolt and Mary Ann, I discovered that many of the well-known Thunderbolt stories were error-ridden Myths – including the stories believed by Ms Lightfoot that Mary Ann helped Fred escape from Cockatoo Island and that she tragically died in November 1867 soon after giving birth to Fred’s namesake son. In fact, the Birth and Baptism certificates for Fred jnr both show that he was born in August 1868 – and we all know that a woman can’t give birth to a baby nine months after she dies. It is a simple and obvious medical fact. The truth about Fred and Mary Ann is included in my book, while the evidence is displayed on this back-up website for all to see.
Perhaps Ms Lightfoot needs to be reminded that historical debate should be conducted in a calm and reasoned manner by the presentation of evidence and counter-evidence in a respected forum. Claiming in an hysterical letter to a newspaper editor that documents are “forged” simply because she doesn’t like what they say is a strategy that can have serious repercussions.

Qualifications

24/10/2011

I have recently noticed some snide comments in articles and letters to newspaper editors intimating that I lack academic credentials – one of the “destroy the messenger” strategies that are so easily refuted. I can only presume that such comments are being made because I don’t tout my credentials. Imagine if I signed my name as follows:

Carol Baxter BA DipFHS FSAG (Bachelor of Arts, Diploma in Family Historical Studies, Fellow
      of the Society of Australian Genealogists)
Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New England
General Editor of the Biographical Database of Australia (BDA), and previously Project Officer
    for the Australian Biographical & Genealogical Record (ABGR)
Editor of six books and one CD-ROM of colonial records published by ABGR (1987-2002)
Author of three critically-acclaimed popular histories published by Allen & Unwin: An
    Irresistible Temptation (2006), Breaking the Bank (2008), Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady
   (2011)
Author of a genealogy “how to” book, Writing Interesting Family Histories (2010), with more
    books in the pipeline
Guest speaker on subjects ranging from my popular histories and “how to” books, to
    genealogy and writing
Most almighty on high …. Sorry! Sorry! Got caught up in the utter pretentiousness of it all.

     I have always thought that those who big-note themselves by signing everything with their academic credentials are merely exposing their own inadequacies. Indeed, when I see such a thing, I inevitably chuckle. When I was at university, students had irreverent nicknames for the different sets of initials, and they are impossible to forget. “BA” – perhaps not surprisingly considering its vocational usefulness – stood for “bugger all”.
     Having a degree doesn't make a person more able or worthy than those who don’t have a degree. For example, even though I am published by one of Australia’s top publishing houses, I didn't study “writing” at an academic level. I am completely self-trained – as are most published authors. So I found it interesting when I recently heard an author speak about a novel she wrote as part of a PhD. She said that when she approached a publisher in the aftermath and mentioned her novel's genesis, the response was an audible groan and the comment: “I’ve never yet come across a novel written for a Masters or PhD degree that is publishable!” Says a lot for the training provided by our academic institutions.
     When I heard about the latest UNE Degree, the Bachelor of Historical Inquiry, I felt envious of the students. If such a degree had been offered in my day, I would have signed up instantly rather than pursuing my own Bachelor of Arts degree. Now, because of my quarter-century in the industry, UNE sees the value of my knowledge for their students – one of the reasons for my appointment as an adjunct lecturer. Meanwhile, I have not just one job in my hobby but many (sorry to everyone else ... seems a tad greedy somehow, doesn't it!), so I am too busy to be interested in undertaking further academic study. Anyone can study. Anyone can self-publish. But only a few of us are lucky enough to receive book contracts from major publishers.
So I will continue researching and writing true stories, and continue signing my name simply “Carol Baxter” – although it had occurred to me to add underneath: “… who is doing for Australian history was our athletes are doing for our sport: making it exciting, interesting and world class.”
   Hmmm. Probably way too pretentious!! But then again …