Gangland Robbers Read Free

fled into the bush. Gardiner’s men picked up 2700 ounces of gold and £3700 in cash, estimated to be worth $20 million today.
    Lieutenant General Sir Francis Pottinger was authorised to lead a recouping expedition. He and his men met with initial success ,retrieving 1500 ounces of the gold and taking two prisoners, before they were bailed up and lost both the gold and the men. Eventually, arrests were made and after one of the gang, Daniel Charters, was given bail, he dobbed in his mates. There had been such a spate of robberies that a special commissioner was appointed to sit in Sydney and try bushrangers, including members of the Eugowra Gang, in February 1863. The only one of the gang who was hanged was Henry Manns, who had wanted to plead guilty and was of good character. Two others, John Bow and Alexander Fordyce, convicted by the special commissioner, were reprieved. Gardiner had vanished.
    Manns’ execution, on 26 March 1863, was not a humanitarian success. Apart from trying to steal his new boots, the hangman failed to secure the rope properly and Manns’ face was half torn off. Eventually, four convicts held his body while the executioner readjusted the rope. That night, an Archibald Hamilton, clearly a follower of Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist who believed criminals had different skulls from those of the general population, gave a lecture, ‘Crime, Its Causes, Punishment and Crime’, illustrated with replicas of criminals’ skulls. Instead of punishment for them, he advocated a course of treatment ‘in strict accordance with their phrenological developments’. Admission was one shilling and reserved seats two shillings.
    One outcome of the robbery was the decision that no longer should all members of a gold escort ride in the coach in which the precious metal was being carried. In future, there would be an outrider and officers behind it. Over the years, Cobb & Co coaches were held up a relatively modest thirty-six times, with nine of those occurring between the middle of September 1862 and the end of February the next year. On 10 February the special commissioner sentenced three men to be hanged; five to fifteen years on the roads, the first year in irons (the man’s legs would be chained together, although this did not prevent escapes); one man to twelve years; and another to ten. This may have decreased the number of robberies but it certainly did not put an end to them. Several more coaches were attacked before the end of the year.
    The first attempted armed bank robbery in Australia is credited to the remnants of Frank Gardiner’s gang. On 13 July 1863 Ben Hall, along with Johnny Gilbert and John O’Meally, held up the Commercial Bank at Carcoar, an area popular with ex-convicts. A teller fired a shot into theceiling, thwarting the robbery. The manager was shot as he was returning to the bank, and the gang fled without seizing anything. However, as some compensation , on their way out of town they robbed a man of £2 and his watch.
    But now, with the cities growing, bank branches were springing up in the suburbs, very often as rooms in shops. And these were not the targets of bushrangers but of metropolitan criminals. On 14 June 1864 a team led by Samuel Woods, whose real name was Young and who had served fifteen years on Norfolk Island, raided the George Street, Collingwood, branch of the ES&A Bank. However, the raiders had bitten off more than they could chew.
    Around 10.45 a.m. Woods, who appeared to be drunk, entered the bank, and John Dowling, the manager, took him into a side room, at which point Woods produced a gun and ‘threatened to blow his brains out’. Undeterred, Dowling called for the assistance of young ledger clerk Percy de Jersey Grut , but before Grut could assist, he had problems of his own. Two men came into the bank and threatened him; one produced a pistol and a bullet scorched Grut’s neck. They ran out of the bank, and