September 21, 2011 • 16 mins
After 1853, many bushrangers were native-born. Ben Hall seemed on track for a peaceful life until two wrongful arrests put him on different path. And then there's "Mad" Dan Morgan. who was known for meaningless murders, cruelty and violence.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a chucko reboarding and I'm fair down
and the news of Ned Kelly's now identified remains has
us all excited about bush rangers again, and that's mostly
(00:22):
because our listeners are so fired up about it. When
the news of his remains being identified came out, as
we mentioned in the first part to this podcast, we
got emails from all over the world in boxes exploded
with Ned Kelly subject lines. Indeed, so last time. We
started out by talking about Ned's remains being found and
the news about that, but we also talked about guys
(00:45):
who weren't Ned. The earliest bush rangers in Australia who
laid the foundation for later gangs like the Kelly Gang,
and these men were mostly convict bultures, which means they
were transported felons who escaped prison or the settlements and
turned to a life of time. But in eighteen fifty
three the British Parliament passed the Penal Servitude Act, which
(01:05):
ended most transportation sentences, and after that the typical bush
ranger went from being a foreign born convict to being
a native born in Australian complete with a thorough knowledge
of the land, and that's pretty important. But another thing
that's important is to to figure out the motivation for
this new generation of bush rangers, since they weren't just
(01:26):
already convicted criminals. There were really a few things that
play and the first one was gold. So the discovery
of gold in Australia, specifically in Victoria and New South Wales,
was a really big motivator of bush rangers in the
eighteen fifties. It gave them access to great wealth that
they could convert to cash really pretty easily, and it
(01:47):
helped that the gold fields were easy to bail up. Essentially,
they were isolated and the police were often neglecting their duties.
Many were jumping ship to join the gold rush themselves,
and because gold had to be shipped across these lonesome,
long stretches of territory, they were really the perfect target
for ambushes. But there was another factor at play too
(02:09):
besides just gold, which seems pretty obvious. Yeah, it was land.
So while the Aborigines had probably one of the most
peaceful attitudes towards landholding that you can imagine things changed
dramatically when the first European settlers arrived, and by the
time the period were discussing the world around, a real
beef had developed between the two subgroups of white Australians
(02:30):
who were rural, and that was the rich squatters on
one side and poor selectors on the other. So just
a little background on that. So initially, squatters in Australian
history were just like squatters anywhere else. They were illegal
occupiers of land, in this case grazing land outside of
the legitimate crown settlements. But by the eighteen forties it
(02:51):
was clear that squatters were developing the country's wool industry
and becoming a political force of their own. They were
allowed leases at that point and many grew very, very rich.
But we end up with an influx of new immigrants
and miners who were arriving every day, and finally the
colonies started to pass selection acts so that these newer
(03:11):
arrivals could buy some land themselves at auction, and they
were of course competing against the powerful squatters. So it's
really no surprise that these two groups of people didn't
much care for each other. They had conflicting interests. So
our first bush ranger. Though, now that we've established the
motives for this later generation, we're gonna start with a
(03:31):
bush ranger who really epitomized the later generation, even though
he was a compatriot of Frank Gardner, who was the
last ranger we included on our earlier list. Yeah, his
name was Brave Ben Hall or just Ben Hall that
they call him Brave Ben Hall. And he knew the
countryside really well, he knew horses, and he was Australian born.
(03:52):
He was born May nine, eighteen thirty seven in New
South Wales, and he was the son of two ex convicts.
His father actually met his mother when she was at
the female convict factory. And I like starting with him too,
because he is really truly the second generation here, the
son of convicts, how perfect exactly. And he grew up
working with horses and cattle while his father ran a
(04:12):
successful farm and worked as an overseer. And then the
interesting thing about him though, was even though he was
the child of two convicts, he seemed initially on track
for this kind of hard working agricultural life, the same
life that his parents were leading at the time basically,
or that they were at least cultivating right. He took
on a lease on land in Sandy Creek, and he
(04:33):
married his neighbor Bridget Walsh on Leap Day in eighteen
fifty six in a Catholic ceremony. But then, just like
a Western movie, poor treatment in the hands of the
law is what made him abandoned this peaceful life, or
at least that's what we think. Evidence about this part
of his life is a little bit sketchy. But there
are two wrongful arrests and the first occurs April eighteen
(04:55):
sixty two on the orders of Sir Frederick Pottinger, and
the charges were armed robbery and being an accomplished too
none other than bush ranger Frank Gardner, not a guy
who you want to be associated with if you're on
the right side of the law. So then Hal spent
several weeks in jail, but there was really no evidence
and he was let go. Then comes another arrest, this
(05:18):
time for a gold robbery, and again there was no evidence.
It didn't even go to trial. And uh, he comes
back home and finds that his house has been burned
down and perhaps potting Tur did it. His stock is
dead from thirst, and because of legal expenses, he has
to give up his lease, so he's suddenly a ruined man.
(05:39):
And to make matters worse, at some point in the
middle of all this trouble, his wife left with their
infant son, maybe for a former policeman, So twenty two
year old Hall at this point teams up with Frank
Gardner for real and starts robbing the countryside. Their exploits
were really in your face type tactics. They'd steal race horses.
(06:00):
In eighteen sixty three, they bailed up the entire town
of Canundra, putting everybody up in a local hotel and
treating them to a three day feast and bender. The
party was only cut short because they got word that
the river was rising and they'd be trapped if they'd
stay longer. And one thing to note too about Ben Hall,
even though they were really well armed and really well organized,
(06:21):
Hall would stop members of his own gang from committing
acts of violent revenge or cruelty. If he could. He'd
prefer a ransom over death, even though by eighteen sixty
four a gang member had shot a sergeant and by
eighteen sixty five another member shot a constable. It's easy
to see how violence would pretty quickly become the norm
for for these bush Rangers. But the exploits of the
(06:43):
gang and the ineptitude of the police force eventually caught
higher ups attention, as as you would expect them to.
His old enemy, Hall's old enemy, Frederick Pottinger was even
recalled to Sydney in eighteen sixty five for neglecting his duty.
He had been out riding in some races and he
didn't notice that Hall's gang was also right there. You
(07:06):
think you'd recognize him, Yeah, you'd think so. Maybe he
was like wearing a different differed or something a disguise
for him. I don't know. But that same year things
change a little bit. The government put out a new law,
the Felon's Apprehension Act. So, in addition to the Gold
and the Land disputes we discussed, this is really the
third piece of the puzzle for understanding later generations of
(07:26):
bush Rangers. Under the new rules, individuals could be proclaimed
as outlaws and then shot without warning. So this was
basically martial law, and anyone harboring a felon could be
considered a felon as well. Pretty bad news for the
bush Rangers with Robin Hood type reputation because, as we've
discussed in the Ned Kelly episode and in our earlier
Bush Rangers episode, these people really were indulged by townspeople sometimes,
(07:51):
I mean, depending on on how good or bad they were.
I mean, I have to imagine some of it was fear.
You don't want to insult the bush Ranger. But these
three day venders, the three Day Feast, that sort of thing.
Townspeople like them to a certain extent. So with this
new law in a one thousand pound reward on his head,
Hall decided that he was going to call it quits.
(08:12):
But he was betrayed by a friend and troopers showed
up at his hiding place. May five, shot him in
the back, then shot him thirty more times, and that
was pretty much the end of the notorious Hall Gang.
The last two members of his gang were also shot
or executed within the next few months, but he did
(08:33):
get some valid immortality though, courtesy of Hall's brother in
law and I'm gonna force the rhymes here to make
this work dark, and he was chosen to shoot the
outlaw dead. The troopers then fired madly, filled him full
of lead. They rolled him in a blanket and strapped
him to his proud and led him through the streets
of Forbes to show the prize they had had. But
(08:57):
you know, we're gonna make it work. So that was
the end of Ben Hall. But we have another Bushranger
who's not such a cheery sounding fellow, and he's not
quite as likable. So first we should say that the
notoriety of Ben Hall's gang and the ineptitude of the
police are often credited as the reason behind the Fellon's
Apprehension Act of eighteen sixty five, but not all of
(09:21):
the bush Rangers of the eighteen sixties were these Robin
Hood type characters hosting three day parties. One in particular,
Mad Dan Morgan, was known for meaningless murders, cruelty and violence.
Mad Dan, as he was called, was born John Fuller
in New South Wales in eighteen thirty and he was
the illegitimate child of Mary Owen and George Fuller, and
(09:44):
unlike Ben Hall Dan Morgan, he didn't start out on
the straight and narrow. Pretty much as early as his teens,
he was suspected of stealing stock, but his actual arrest
record began in eighteen fifty four, when he was sentenced
to twelve years of hard labor for a highway robbery
in Victoria. He always and he was innocent of this
original crime though, that's the interest is what made him
a bitter man. So after six years he was released
(10:07):
on a ticket of leave for good behavior and didn't
report back. He was on the lamb and from that
point became known as Down the River Jack. And he
started work as a horse breaker in a station hand
so maybe kind of getting into legitimate work, except that
he got into bush rangering pretty fast when he stole
the prize horse of the family he worked for, and
(10:29):
one member of that family, Evan Evans, along with another squatter,
tracked Jack back to his camp and badly hurt him,
but he did manage to escape, and from then on
he changed his name yet again and became known as
Daniel Morgan Billy the Native. And this is when he
really gets into serious bush rangering. He was tied to
(10:52):
the bailing up of a police magistrate into robberies across
northeast Victoria. He even gets a two pound reward put
on his head, did her alive, and by the next year,
in eighteen sixty four, he drove up the price on
his head considerably by shooting the overseer John McLean, and
just a few days later a police sergeant too, So
(11:13):
now there's a one thousand pound reward on his head.
And by September another sergeant was killed and Morgan claimed
responsibility for that too, So he just kept just kept snowballing.
Morgan was quite different from some of the other rangers
we've discussed. He usually worked alone, for example, or if
he had accomplices, they'd changed from job to jobs, so
he didn't have one crew or gang that he worked
(11:34):
with the entire time. He'd sometimes be remarkably cruel too.
He would force groups of Chinese workers to sing and
dance before shooting one in the arm. He also forced
the wife of a homesteader against a fire until her
skirt caught fire, and after bailing up coaches, he'd stampede
the horses and once tied squatter isaac Vincent to a
(11:54):
fence and then set fire to a nearby shed. So
not a very nice guy, very bad, but he really
really hated squatters, and it's good that we gave that explanation,
so you know what squatters are, and you're not just like,
what do you have against squatters, illegal landholders, but he
hated those who had bad reputations as employers especially, and
(12:15):
during raids he'd pull these stunts that kind of sound
like Robin Hood but kind of bad to like Robin
Hood with a dark twist. In one case, he made
one squatter right more than four pounds worth of checks
to his employees while he was bailing him up, and
during another he made the employer give food and drink
to all of his employees. And his temper was really
(12:37):
unpredictable to it could shift on a dime, turning from courtly.
That's how you'll often see it described and consider it
too violent. And that's his name, Mad Dan sometimes mad Dog.
And it's this element of his personality, that unpredictable temper,
plus his five ft ten frame, his dark beard, and
this very hooked bird like no is that made people
(13:01):
seriously afraid of him, and he worked on that fear.
He would kill informants without question. I mean, that's probably
part of why he part of the reason why he
worked alone and switched up his partners so frequently. But
he was a scary guy eventually, though his reputation did
catch up with him. In the early months of eighteen
sixty five. Morgan pulled six major robberies before the passing
(13:24):
of the Felon's Apprehension Act, and the day that it
did pass, April eighth, eighteen sixty five, he committed his
last crime. And what timing right exactly. He built up
a homestead in northeast Victoria. Pretty standard stuff from Morgan, right,
But what he didn't know was that the co owner
of the station, a man named George Rutherford, lived really nearby,
(13:44):
and a nurse at the station, Alice Keenan, managed to
get word to Rutherford about what was going on, and
he rounded up a posse of workers, local men, and
police to wait for Morgan's appearance in the morning. So
when Morgan emerged in the morning to steal a horse,
he was shot in the back and he died by
that after noon. But they didn't just bury him, No
they didn't. They cut his beard, skin and all off
(14:06):
of his face and sent his severed head to a
Melbourne anatomy professor. Yeah, the beard thing is usually described
as being flayed off his face, which I think is
so so horrible, what a what a gross souvenir. But
um kind of a grizzly end for Dan Morgan will
definitely a grizzly end. But these bush Rangers have obviously
(14:28):
continued to capture the imagination of Australians and really people
around the world. And we talked a little bit about
Ned Kelly movies and spinoffs and things, but fortunately there's
spinoff regarding other bush Rangers too. It's not all about Ned,
as I hope we've proved with this podcast series. Yeah,
just an example of a few of the films that
(14:50):
are out there about other bush Rangers. There was a
nineteen seventy six film called Mad Dog Morgan starring Dennis Hopper.
He sounds like a really good mad Dog Morgan definitely.
Nineteen fifty three there was another movie called Captain Thunderbolt,
made by Cecil Holmes, and there are several movie adaptations
of the novel Robbery under Arms by Ralph Boulderwood and
(15:11):
those feature bush Ranger Captain Starlight, whose real name I
believe was Harry Redford. And finally there's a movie called
Ben Hall Notorious bush Ranger, which was made in nineteen eleven,
and there were also Ben Hall TV shows. There was
a series I think on Ben Hall in nineteen seventy five,
which was a collaboration between the BBC and the Australian
(15:31):
Broadcasting Corporation. So those are just a few of the
options that are out there if you want to see
some other bush Ranger movies, but there are so many,
and I would invite all our listeners to send us
some recommendations because everyone was so good about sending us
ned Kelly movie recommendations. I mean, you know, we heard
all about the Heath Ledger ned Kelly, the two three
one which everyone says you shouldn't see because it's so terrible.
(15:55):
A few people who said you should just see it
because I mean, I mean, because are yeah. So definitely
send us your favorites um or your least favorites just
so we know what to avoid if we want to,
and any other suggestions for Australia related topics. We've done
a lot of Australian history recently, so we might take
a little break, but we're always looking for Australia related
(16:18):
topics to research. So you can email all those suggestions
to us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
or if you want to just get to know us
a little better over social media talk to us about
whatever is on your mind, history wise or otherwise. We
are on Twitter and hisst history or on Facebook. We
will see there for more on this and thousands of
(16:44):
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a chucko reboarding and I'm fair down
and the news of Ned Kelly's now identified remains has
us all excited about bush rangers again, and that's mostly
(00:22):
because our listeners are so fired up about it. When
the news of his remains being identified came out, as
we mentioned in the first part to this podcast, we
got emails from all over the world in boxes exploded
with Ned Kelly subject lines. Indeed, so last time. We
started out by talking about Ned's remains being found and
the news about that, but we also talked about guys
(00:45):
who weren't Ned. The earliest bush rangers in Australia who
laid the foundation for later gangs like the Kelly Gang,
and these men were mostly convict bultures, which means they
were transported felons who escaped prison or the settlements and
turned to a life of time. But in eighteen fifty
three the British Parliament passed the Penal Servitude Act, which
(01:05):
ended most transportation sentences, and after that the typical bush
ranger went from being a foreign born convict to being
a native born in Australian complete with a thorough knowledge
of the land, and that's pretty important. But another thing
that's important is to to figure out the motivation for
this new generation of bush rangers, since they weren't just
(01:26):
already convicted criminals. There were really a few things that
play and the first one was gold. So the discovery
of gold in Australia, specifically in Victoria and New South Wales,
was a really big motivator of bush rangers in the
eighteen fifties. It gave them access to great wealth that
they could convert to cash really pretty easily, and it
(01:47):
helped that the gold fields were easy to bail up. Essentially,
they were isolated and the police were often neglecting their duties.
Many were jumping ship to join the gold rush themselves,
and because gold had to be shipped across these lonesome,
long stretches of territory, they were really the perfect target
for ambushes. But there was another factor at play too
(02:09):
besides just gold, which seems pretty obvious. Yeah, it was land.
So while the Aborigines had probably one of the most
peaceful attitudes towards landholding that you can imagine things changed
dramatically when the first European settlers arrived, and by the
time the period were discussing the world around, a real
beef had developed between the two subgroups of white Australians
(02:30):
who were rural, and that was the rich squatters on
one side and poor selectors on the other. So just
a little background on that. So initially, squatters in Australian
history were just like squatters anywhere else. They were illegal
occupiers of land, in this case grazing land outside of
the legitimate crown settlements. But by the eighteen forties it
(02:51):
was clear that squatters were developing the country's wool industry
and becoming a political force of their own. They were
allowed leases at that point and many grew very, very rich.
But we end up with an influx of new immigrants
and miners who were arriving every day, and finally the
colonies started to pass selection acts so that these newer
(03:11):
arrivals could buy some land themselves at auction, and they
were of course competing against the powerful squatters. So it's
really no surprise that these two groups of people didn't
much care for each other. They had conflicting interests. So
our first bush ranger. Though, now that we've established the
motives for this later generation, we're gonna start with a
(03:31):
bush ranger who really epitomized the later generation, even though
he was a compatriot of Frank Gardner, who was the
last ranger we included on our earlier list. Yeah, his
name was Brave Ben Hall or just Ben Hall that
they call him Brave Ben Hall. And he knew the
countryside really well, he knew horses, and he was Australian born.
(03:52):
He was born May nine, eighteen thirty seven in New
South Wales, and he was the son of two ex convicts.
His father actually met his mother when she was at
the female convict factory. And I like starting with him too,
because he is really truly the second generation here, the
son of convicts, how perfect exactly. And he grew up
working with horses and cattle while his father ran a
(04:12):
successful farm and worked as an overseer. And then the
interesting thing about him though, was even though he was
the child of two convicts, he seemed initially on track
for this kind of hard working agricultural life, the same
life that his parents were leading at the time basically,
or that they were at least cultivating right. He took
on a lease on land in Sandy Creek, and he
(04:33):
married his neighbor Bridget Walsh on Leap Day in eighteen
fifty six in a Catholic ceremony. But then, just like
a Western movie, poor treatment in the hands of the
law is what made him abandoned this peaceful life, or
at least that's what we think. Evidence about this part
of his life is a little bit sketchy. But there
are two wrongful arrests and the first occurs April eighteen
(04:55):
sixty two on the orders of Sir Frederick Pottinger, and
the charges were armed robbery and being an accomplished too
none other than bush ranger Frank Gardner, not a guy
who you want to be associated with if you're on
the right side of the law. So then Hal spent
several weeks in jail, but there was really no evidence
and he was let go. Then comes another arrest, this
(05:18):
time for a gold robbery, and again there was no evidence.
It didn't even go to trial. And uh, he comes
back home and finds that his house has been burned
down and perhaps potting Tur did it. His stock is
dead from thirst, and because of legal expenses, he has
to give up his lease, so he's suddenly a ruined man.
(05:39):
And to make matters worse, at some point in the
middle of all this trouble, his wife left with their
infant son, maybe for a former policeman, So twenty two
year old Hall at this point teams up with Frank
Gardner for real and starts robbing the countryside. Their exploits
were really in your face type tactics. They'd steal race horses.
(06:00):
In eighteen sixty three, they bailed up the entire town
of Canundra, putting everybody up in a local hotel and
treating them to a three day feast and bender. The
party was only cut short because they got word that
the river was rising and they'd be trapped if they'd
stay longer. And one thing to note too about Ben Hall,
even though they were really well armed and really well organized,
(06:21):
Hall would stop members of his own gang from committing
acts of violent revenge or cruelty. If he could. He'd
prefer a ransom over death, even though by eighteen sixty
four a gang member had shot a sergeant and by
eighteen sixty five another member shot a constable. It's easy
to see how violence would pretty quickly become the norm
for for these bush Rangers. But the exploits of the
(06:43):
gang and the ineptitude of the police force eventually caught
higher ups attention, as as you would expect them to.
His old enemy, Hall's old enemy, Frederick Pottinger was even
recalled to Sydney in eighteen sixty five for neglecting his duty.
He had been out riding in some races and he
didn't notice that Hall's gang was also right there. You
(07:06):
think you'd recognize him, Yeah, you'd think so. Maybe he
was like wearing a different differed or something a disguise
for him. I don't know. But that same year things
change a little bit. The government put out a new law,
the Felon's Apprehension Act. So, in addition to the Gold
and the Land disputes we discussed, this is really the
third piece of the puzzle for understanding later generations of
(07:26):
bush Rangers. Under the new rules, individuals could be proclaimed
as outlaws and then shot without warning. So this was
basically martial law, and anyone harboring a felon could be
considered a felon as well. Pretty bad news for the
bush Rangers with Robin Hood type reputation because, as we've
discussed in the Ned Kelly episode and in our earlier
Bush Rangers episode, these people really were indulged by townspeople sometimes,
(07:51):
I mean, depending on on how good or bad they were.
I mean, I have to imagine some of it was fear.
You don't want to insult the bush Ranger. But these
three day venders, the three Day Feast, that sort of thing.
Townspeople like them to a certain extent. So with this
new law in a one thousand pound reward on his head,
Hall decided that he was going to call it quits.
(08:12):
But he was betrayed by a friend and troopers showed
up at his hiding place. May five, shot him in
the back, then shot him thirty more times, and that
was pretty much the end of the notorious Hall Gang.
The last two members of his gang were also shot
or executed within the next few months, but he did
(08:33):
get some valid immortality though, courtesy of Hall's brother in
law and I'm gonna force the rhymes here to make
this work dark, and he was chosen to shoot the
outlaw dead. The troopers then fired madly, filled him full
of lead. They rolled him in a blanket and strapped
him to his proud and led him through the streets
of Forbes to show the prize they had had. But
(08:57):
you know, we're gonna make it work. So that was
the end of Ben Hall. But we have another Bushranger
who's not such a cheery sounding fellow, and he's not
quite as likable. So first we should say that the
notoriety of Ben Hall's gang and the ineptitude of the
police are often credited as the reason behind the Fellon's
Apprehension Act of eighteen sixty five, but not all of
(09:21):
the bush Rangers of the eighteen sixties were these Robin
Hood type characters hosting three day parties. One in particular,
Mad Dan Morgan, was known for meaningless murders, cruelty and violence.
Mad Dan, as he was called, was born John Fuller
in New South Wales in eighteen thirty and he was
the illegitimate child of Mary Owen and George Fuller, and
(09:44):
unlike Ben Hall Dan Morgan, he didn't start out on
the straight and narrow. Pretty much as early as his teens,
he was suspected of stealing stock, but his actual arrest
record began in eighteen fifty four, when he was sentenced
to twelve years of hard labor for a highway robbery
in Victoria. He always and he was innocent of this
original crime though, that's the interest is what made him
a bitter man. So after six years he was released
(10:07):
on a ticket of leave for good behavior and didn't
report back. He was on the lamb and from that
point became known as Down the River Jack. And he
started work as a horse breaker in a station hand
so maybe kind of getting into legitimate work, except that
he got into bush rangering pretty fast when he stole
the prize horse of the family he worked for, and
(10:29):
one member of that family, Evan Evans, along with another squatter,
tracked Jack back to his camp and badly hurt him,
but he did manage to escape, and from then on
he changed his name yet again and became known as
Daniel Morgan Billy the Native. And this is when he
really gets into serious bush rangering. He was tied to
(10:52):
the bailing up of a police magistrate into robberies across
northeast Victoria. He even gets a two pound reward put
on his head, did her alive, and by the next year,
in eighteen sixty four, he drove up the price on
his head considerably by shooting the overseer John McLean, and
just a few days later a police sergeant too, So
(11:13):
now there's a one thousand pound reward on his head.
And by September another sergeant was killed and Morgan claimed
responsibility for that too, So he just kept just kept snowballing.
Morgan was quite different from some of the other rangers
we've discussed. He usually worked alone, for example, or if
he had accomplices, they'd changed from job to jobs, so
he didn't have one crew or gang that he worked
(11:34):
with the entire time. He'd sometimes be remarkably cruel too.
He would force groups of Chinese workers to sing and
dance before shooting one in the arm. He also forced
the wife of a homesteader against a fire until her
skirt caught fire, and after bailing up coaches, he'd stampede
the horses and once tied squatter isaac Vincent to a
(11:54):
fence and then set fire to a nearby shed. So
not a very nice guy, very bad, but he really
really hated squatters, and it's good that we gave that explanation,
so you know what squatters are, and you're not just like,
what do you have against squatters, illegal landholders, but he
hated those who had bad reputations as employers especially, and
(12:15):
during raids he'd pull these stunts that kind of sound
like Robin Hood but kind of bad to like Robin
Hood with a dark twist. In one case, he made
one squatter right more than four pounds worth of checks
to his employees while he was bailing him up, and
during another he made the employer give food and drink
to all of his employees. And his temper was really
(12:37):
unpredictable to it could shift on a dime, turning from courtly.
That's how you'll often see it described and consider it
too violent. And that's his name, Mad Dan sometimes mad Dog.
And it's this element of his personality, that unpredictable temper,
plus his five ft ten frame, his dark beard, and
this very hooked bird like no is that made people
(13:01):
seriously afraid of him, and he worked on that fear.
He would kill informants without question. I mean, that's probably
part of why he part of the reason why he
worked alone and switched up his partners so frequently. But
he was a scary guy eventually, though his reputation did
catch up with him. In the early months of eighteen
sixty five. Morgan pulled six major robberies before the passing
(13:24):
of the Felon's Apprehension Act, and the day that it
did pass, April eighth, eighteen sixty five, he committed his
last crime. And what timing right exactly. He built up
a homestead in northeast Victoria. Pretty standard stuff from Morgan, right,
But what he didn't know was that the co owner
of the station, a man named George Rutherford, lived really nearby,
(13:44):
and a nurse at the station, Alice Keenan, managed to
get word to Rutherford about what was going on, and
he rounded up a posse of workers, local men, and
police to wait for Morgan's appearance in the morning. So
when Morgan emerged in the morning to steal a horse,
he was shot in the back and he died by
that after noon. But they didn't just bury him, No
they didn't. They cut his beard, skin and all off
(14:06):
of his face and sent his severed head to a
Melbourne anatomy professor. Yeah, the beard thing is usually described
as being flayed off his face, which I think is
so so horrible, what a what a gross souvenir. But
um kind of a grizzly end for Dan Morgan will
definitely a grizzly end. But these bush Rangers have obviously
(14:28):
continued to capture the imagination of Australians and really people
around the world. And we talked a little bit about
Ned Kelly movies and spinoffs and things, but fortunately there's
spinoff regarding other bush Rangers too. It's not all about Ned,
as I hope we've proved with this podcast series. Yeah,
just an example of a few of the films that
(14:50):
are out there about other bush Rangers. There was a
nineteen seventy six film called Mad Dog Morgan starring Dennis Hopper.
He sounds like a really good mad Dog Morgan definitely.
Nineteen fifty three there was another movie called Captain Thunderbolt,
made by Cecil Holmes, and there are several movie adaptations
of the novel Robbery under Arms by Ralph Boulderwood and
(15:11):
those feature bush Ranger Captain Starlight, whose real name I
believe was Harry Redford. And finally there's a movie called
Ben Hall Notorious bush Ranger, which was made in nineteen eleven,
and there were also Ben Hall TV shows. There was
a series I think on Ben Hall in nineteen seventy five,
which was a collaboration between the BBC and the Australian
(15:31):
Broadcasting Corporation. So those are just a few of the
options that are out there if you want to see
some other bush Ranger movies, but there are so many,
and I would invite all our listeners to send us
some recommendations because everyone was so good about sending us
ned Kelly movie recommendations. I mean, you know, we heard
all about the Heath Ledger ned Kelly, the two three
one which everyone says you shouldn't see because it's so terrible.
(15:55):
A few people who said you should just see it
because I mean, I mean, because are yeah. So definitely
send us your favorites um or your least favorites just
so we know what to avoid if we want to,
and any other suggestions for Australia related topics. We've done
a lot of Australian history recently, so we might take
a little break, but we're always looking for Australia related
(16:18):
topics to research. So you can email all those suggestions
to us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
or if you want to just get to know us
a little better over social media talk to us about
whatever is on your mind, history wise or otherwise. We
are on Twitter and hisst history or on Facebook. We
will see there for more on this and thousands of
(16:44):
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com
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Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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