The Botany Bay Medallion

 James Freeman – ‘Hang or be Hanged’. 

Extract showing a pardon on condition of becoming the public executioner. Dated 1 March 1788, signed by Governor Arthur Phillip.

‘For here was an opportunity of establishing a Jack Ketch who Should, in all future Executions, either Hang or be Hanged’. Dr John White, Chief Medical Officer, First Fleet Journal.

1788 –  Sydney, 29th February: That Friday shaped as another busy day for the infant colony’s’ criminal court. See: From Here To Eternity 

After the long drawn-out dramas of the previous two (2) days, to avoid Sydney’s intense midday sun and drenching humidity, it was decided court would convene earlier than usual.  See: Blind Man’s Bluff – Hall and Lavell

29th February: At 8 am James Freeman and William Shearman, accused the previous day of stealing from government stores, were first to appear in the dock.

Both were found guilty.  While Shearman was sentenced to 300 lashes Freeman was condemned to death.

Next to appear George Whitaker, Daniel Gordon and John Williams. They were charged with stealing eighteen (18) bottles of wine.

Formally chattel slaves these three (3)  Afro -Americans had gained their freedom as Loyalists. That is they fought for Britain against George Washington’s Patriot rebels during America’s Revolutionry War of Independence (1775-1783).

Whitaker was discharged. Gordon and Williams, found guilty, were sentenced to hang with Freeman. The executions to take place that afternoon.

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‘The full force of laws against theft was imposed from the moment the expedition arrived in Sydney. At the end of February 1788 five [5] men were convicted of theft and condemned to death, illustrating that property was more sacrosanct than life itself.

The sentences were carried out at public hangings, which the whole convict population was forced to watch’. Henry Reynolds,  Searching for truth-telling, History, Sovereignty and The Uluru Statement From the Heart, NewSouth Publishing, 2021

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‘Few personal documents relating to [Governor Arthur] Phillip survive; his low personal profile and the secret work in which he was sometimes involved make him one of the least-known founders of any modern state – in this case Australia’. Nigel Rigby, Peter Van Der Merwe & Glyn Williams, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, 2018

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‘Just three [3] weeks before half a continent had been declared Crown land in one of the most remarkable acts of plunder in modern times.’. Henry Reynolds. op.cit.

1788 –  Sydney Cove, February 27:  Five (5) weeks) a month after reaching Botany Bay, four (4) convicts John Ryan, Thomas Barrett, Henry Lavell and Joseph Hall were brought before a hastily convened military court charged with stealing from the Government Store.

These four (4) men were mates. Their strong friendship had been forged during three (3) difficult years imprisoned on Dunkirk  a prison-hulk moored in the Thames River. See Mutiny on Mercury and Swift

They were accused ‘on shaky evidence; of robbing or, of conspiring to rob food, from the government storehouse. Found  found guilty and sentenced to death.

Records show on the previous day each man had received ‘without distinction’ the full combat ration of ‘troops serving in the West Indies’.

‘The arm of a large tree was fixt upon as a gallows’ and made ready for the execution was to take place later that day. Arthur Bowes Smyth, Surgeon Lady Penrhyn, First Fleet  Journal, Australian Documents Library, 1979

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‘The bloody raw power of decapitation…the eternal tension between drama and control…lies at the heart of the death penalty’. Frances Larson, Severed, Granta Books, London 2015

PICTURE – London Gazette

1790 – Sydney, June: Major Grose the Corps’ commander of the New South Wales Corps remained in London to recruit sufficient numbers to satisfy establishment requirements.

The power vacuum was filled by by Lieutenant John Macarthur a ruthless, ambitious junior officer. In Phillip’s judgement the Pitt Administration in far off England was in danger of losing New South Wales (Australia) in a military coup.

Most certainly the threat did not come from the First Nations’ People. The previous year 1789, 50% of local Eora Aborigines died after contracting smallpox. The survivors were struggling to regroup. See: A Lethal Weapon Smallpox – Boston 1775 – Sydney 1789

And there was a lot at stake. Not only was New Holland, known now as Australia, a gateway to India and China, its ‘proximity’ via the Southern Oceans to Spain’s South American ‘treasure’ colonies, drove the invasion.  See: Proximity Not Distance Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland.

1790 – Sydney, December : By December 1790 Governor Captain Arthur Phillip RN knew ‘certain officers’ of these newly arrived troops were circling the tents.

He had been down this road before. Then and now in the midst of a hostile soldiery, he had only one (1) option in his armoury – diversion. See: From Here to Eternity – Terror in Three Acts

And only one (1) sure arrow in his quiver. Previously (February 1788) the charismatic Thomas Barrett and in (December 1790)  M’Entire, the ‘hated’ convict, one (1) of  four (4) convicts authorised to carry a gun.

 1790 – Botany Bay, December 9: ‘On the 9th of the month, a serjeant of marines, with three convicts, among whom was M’Entire, the governor’s game-keeper (the person of whom Bannelon had, on former occasions, shewn so much dread and hatred) went out on a [kangaroo] shooting party’. Marine Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961

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‘In 1800 and 1801 many hundreds of Irish prisoners arrived, pushing the percentage of Irish to more than one-third of those under sentence and one-quarter of the white population. Governor King nervously estimated that more than half of the recent arrivals were Catholic ‘Defenders’, summarily transported  for their part in the massive Irish rebellion of 1798′. Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation 1788-1990, Chapter 2, 1990

1800 – September, Sydney: Governor Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN succeeded Governor Captain John Hunter RN who had been recalled to England took up his commission on Hunter’s departure in September 1800.

King found himself juggling many balls; an unruly soldiery, a tsunami of grog, French colonial ambition and a simmering Irish rebellion. The Irish, many sentenced to death following the uprisings of 1798 on home soil, were reprieved death on condition of transportation to Australia, and these appeared to pose the most immediate threat.

A mixed bunch most poor illiterates, others were educated men; General Joseph Holt a militant Protestant, Rev. Henry Fulton an Episcopalian minister and Father James Harold a Catholic priest with two (2) British army officers Captains Alcock and St. Ledger.

1800 – 11 January, Sydney: At the beginning of 1800 these five (5) men were among one hundred and ninety-one (191) prisoners, twenty-six (26) of them women, who arrived aboard the convict transport Minerva in January 1800. See: G for Gender

Minerva and another convict ship Friendship sailed together from Cork on 24 August 1799. Friendship with one hundred and thirty-three male (133) prisoners. During the voyage of one hundred and forty (140) days via Rio one (1) in seven (7) prisoners died. Father James Dixon a Catholic priest and Paddy Galvin were among the survivors. See: G for Genocide

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‘A knowledge of the position of the military and their immediate friends occupied from 1792-1810, affords a key to the whole history of the colony; and without this knowledge many important transactions, affecting the civil, social and political  interests of the community would appear almost incomprehensible’. Samuel Bennett,Australian Discovery and Colonisation, Vol. 1 to 1800.

Sydney -1800 – 15 April: Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN, Britain’s third naval governor of New Holland, now Australia, arrived here in the middle of April 1800 aboard HMS Speedy.

Gidley King brought Governor John Hunter RN  bad news. A Home Office dispatch dated 5 November 1799 ‘severely censured Hunter and ordered him to return to England by the first safe conveyance’.

Whitehall: Tragically for Australia’s First Peoples, London could not have devised a more destabilising arrangement than King’s ‘anomalous…dormant commission’. It  became effective only if Governor Hunter ‘died or was absent from the colony’.  

‘It is probable, therefore, that the home department was not prepared to give King the full appointment of governor-in-chief in the year 1799…[His] limited commission was practically the appointment of a locum tenens or a  governor-in-chief on probation, and was recognised as such by both King and the English officials, when it became operative’. Commentary, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Vol 3.

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‘Twenty- five [25] regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between [June] 1790 and 1870 they participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent…for the first half of their stay were probably more frequently in action than the garrison of any other colony besides that of southern Africa’. Dr Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, 1986, Kangaroo Press, 1986

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‘A knowledge of the position of the military and their immediate friends occupied from 1792- 1810, affords a key to the whole history of the colony; and without this knowledge many important transactions, affecting the civil, social and political interests of the community would appear almost incomprehensible’. Samuel Bennett, Australian Discovery and Colonisation Vol. 1 to 1800, Facsimile Edition, 1981.

Though Phillip recommended Lieutenant Gidley King RN replace him as Governor government failed to commission an immediate successor exposing the First Australians to the brutality of the infantry troops of the New South Wales ‘Rum’ Corps.

The first contingent of the Corps had arrived in June 1790 aboard the second fleet. But the Corps commander Major Francis Grose  remained in London to recruit and satisfy establishment requirements.

‘The other great change came in the arrival with the second fleet and the first companies of the New South Wales Corps of Lieutenant John Macarthur  – a central figure in the military ‘mafia’ – which quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property owning elite.

This shift was commercially launched in 1793 when Macarthur organised a cartel that using credit accessed against pay bought 7,5000 gallons of rum and other cargo of an American trader [Hope], and sold it in the colony at a huge profit’. Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Nigel Rigby Peter Van Der Merwe & Glyn Williams, Maritime Museum Greenwich, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London 2018  etc ....

There was intense dissension within its senior officer ranks. Lieutenant John Macarthur, an ambitious junior officer, moved swiftly to fill the vacuum.Britain’s Grim Armada’. See: Dancing With Slavers – A Second Fleet

1792 -Sydney Cove, December 12 : Following repeated requests for repatriation Governor Arthur Phillip RN, after five (5) traumatic years as Britain’s first Governor of New South Wales, sailed home to England in the Atlantic.

By default, between December 1792 and September 1795, ‘the plentitude of power’ Britain vested in its naval governors fell into the hands of the military.

‘For the length of the interregnum the British government was greatly at fault’. Hunter, J.J. Auchmuty, Australian Dictionary of Biography

1794 – London, February 6: Eventually Captain John Hunter RN,  hero of the ‘First Fleet’ expeditionary force, was ‘commission[ed] as captain-general and governor-in-chief’ at the beginning of February 1794 [but] did not sail until 25 February 1795′.

1795 – Sydney, September 7: Governor Hunter arrived in the colony on September 7, 1795 and assumed office four [4] days later.See: A Black Hole: The First Interregnum 1792-1795

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