SYMHC Classics: Not Ned - Bushrangers in Later Years

This 2011 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina continues the bushranger discussion. 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

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday everyone. Today is the last installment in our
three episodes on Australia's Bush Rangers, which originally came from
hosts Sarah and Deblina in This one first came out
on September twenty one of that year, and it covers
later bush Rangers and changes to the law that changed
the way the legal system was working in Australia. We

(00:22):
said this on the prior to Classics, but we'll say
it again. This episode is eight years old. If we
were recording it today, we would use different, more modern
language in terms of talking about criminal justice and incarceration
as well as Australia's Aboriginal people. But otherwise, just keep
that in mind and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed

(00:44):
in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to Blaine,
a Chuck rebording, and I'm and the news of Ned
Kelly's now I identified remains has us all excited about
bush Rangers again, and that's mostly because our listeners are

(01:05):
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. Our inboxes 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

(01:25):
also talked about guys 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 bolters,
which means they were transported felons who escaped prison or
the settlements and turned to a life of crime. But
in eighteen fifty three the British Parliament passed the Penal

(01:46):
Servitude Act, which ended most transportation sentences, and after that
the typical bushranger went from being a foreign born convict
to being a native born in Australian complete with a
thorough knowledge of the land. And that is pretty important.
But another thing that's important is to to figure out
the motivation for this new generation of bush rangers, since

(02:07):
they weren't just 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 helped that the gold fields were

(02:31):
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 besides just gold, which

(02:53):
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 world around, a real beef had developed between
the two subgroups of white Australians who were rural and

(03:13):
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 was clear that squatters were

(03:34):
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 arrivals could buy some

(03:55):
land themselves that auction, and they were of course competing
against the power full 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 going to start with a bushranger who really epitomized

(04:15):
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. He was born May nine,

(04:35):
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 successful farm and worked

(04:56):
as an overseer and ben. The interesting thing about him, though,
was and 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 married his neighbor Bridget Walsh

(05:17):
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 sixty two on the orders of

(05:38):
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

(06:00):
then Hall spent several weeks in jail, but there was
really no evidence and he was let go. Then comes
another arrest, this 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 Tri did it.

(06:21):
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. 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.

(06:45):
Their exploits were really in your face type tactics. They'd
steal race horses 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

(07:07):
too about Ben Hall. Even though they were really well
armed and really well organized, 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

(07:29):
pretty quickly become the norm for for these bush rangers.
But the exploits of the 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

(07:51):
in some races and he didn't notice that Hall's gang
was also right there. You think he'd recognize them, Yeah,
you'd think so. Maybe he was like wearing a different,
differed 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 Felons Apprehension Act. So,
in addition to the Gold and the land disputes we discussed,

(08:13):
this is really the third piece of the puzzle for
understanding later generations of 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

(08:36):
our earlier Bush Rangers episode, these people really were indulged
by townspeople sometimes, I mean, depending 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 Benders, 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

(08:59):
or reward on his head. Hall decided that he was
going to call it quits, 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

(09:22):
few months. But he did get some valid immortality though,
courtesy of Hall's brother in law. And I'm going to
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

(09:42):
and led him through the streets of Forbes to show
the prize they had had. But 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

(10:03):
and the ineptitude of the police are often credited as
the reason behind the Felon's Apprehension Act of eighteen sixty five.
But not all of 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

(10:27):
born John Fuller in New South Wales in eighteen thirty
and he was the illegitimate child of Mary Owen and
George Fuller. And 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

(10:47):
for a highway robbery in Victoria. He always claimed he
was innocent of this original crime though, that's the interesting
what made him a bitter man. So after six years
he was released 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

(11:09):
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 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

(11:31):
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 the bailing up of a police magistrate into
robberies across northeast Victoria. He even gets a two pound
reward put on his head dead or alive. By the

(12:01):
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 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.

(12:21):
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 change from job to jobs, so
he didn't have one crew or gang that he worked
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

(12:42):
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 Isaaca Vincent to a
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,

(13:04):
what do you have against squatters? Illegal landholders? But he
hated those who had bad reputations as employers especially, and
during raids he'd pull these stunts that kind of sound
like Robin Hood but kind of bad to you, like
Robin Hood with a dark twist. In one case, he
made one squatter right more than four pounds worth of

(13:26):
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 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 thus his name Mad Dan
sometimes mad Dog. And it's this element of his personality,

(13:50):
that unpredictable temper, plus his five foot ten frame, his
dark beard, and this very hooked, birdlike nose that made
people 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

(14:12):
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
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,

(14:36):
But what he didn't know was that the co owner
of the station, a man named George Rutherford, lived really nearby,
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 from 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

(14:57):
that afternoon. But they didn't just bury him, No they didn't.
They cut his beard, skin and all off of his
space 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

(15:20):
grizzly end for Dan Morgan. We'll definitely a grizzly end.
But these bush Rangers have obviously 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 they're spinoffs regarding other bush

(15:41):
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 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. Yeah, definitely red
There was another movie called Captain Thunderbolt, made by Cecil Holmes,

(16:04):
and there are several movie adaptations of the novel Robbery
under Arms by Ralph Boulderwood and 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 seventy five, which was a collaboration

(16:27):
between the BBC and the Australian 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,

(16:48):
the two three one one which everyone says you shouldn't
see because it's so terrible. A few people who said
you should just see it because I mean, I mean
because yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today
for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind

(17:09):
of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l
during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
email address again. You can now reach us at History
podcast at i heart radio dot com, and we're all
over social media at missed in History, and you can
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(17:30):
I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
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