Gangland Robbers Read Free Page A

Grut went to help the manager, picking up a candlestick as he went.
    The manager’s nephew, Thomas, arrived to help and was shot in the hand. Woods, who had a dagger, stabbed the unfortunate Grut, who now hit him three times with the candlestick, breaking it. There was a knocking on the door, and the manager thought the police had arrived but it was a man from the shop opposite, who had brought a cheese cutter with him. Woods gave up, saying, ‘You can’t prove I fired the pistol—it was an accident’.
    The gang members, who were thought to have robbed Bergers in Flinders Street a few days previously, were quickly rounded up. As for Dowling, his nephew and Grut, there were testimonials, collections and justifiable praise; in particular, for Grut. The collections realised £120, divided equally between them. On 23 June
Melbourne Punch
published a congratulatory little poem, beginning:
    Â 
    When you cracked that
    cracksman’s nut,
    Bravely daring,
    On the scroll of fame
    You traced your worthy
    Name.
    Â 
    At the trial, Woods and William Carver, one of the gang members, tried to argue that the bank’s money had never been in Dowling’s possession, so avoiding the scenario that would convert the robbery into a capital offence. They were unsuccessful, and were executed on 3 August 1864, along with Christopher Hamilton, hanged for a murder. Two other members of Woods’ gang, Jeremiah Phillips and James Anderson, each received fifteen years on the roads, the first three to be served in irons. Woods, who was not pleased by what he saw as their cowardice and betrayal in not coming to his rescue, remarked that very soon they would wish they had been hanged.
    With the passing of the
New South Wales Felons Apprehension Act 1865
, it became lawful to shoot an outlaw bushranger on sight. That year Ben Hall, who had come to be seen as a ‘social bandit’, was shot and killed by police, along with his offsider, John Gilbert. Captain Thunderbolt lasted only another five years before, on 25 May, he was killed by Constable Walker, near Uralla.
    Probably Queensland’s first major crime for profit, as opposed to survival, occurred on 6 November 1867. Gold commissioner, magistrate and thorough rogue Thomas Griffin, born in Sligo, Ireland, had been a store clerk in Dublin before serving in the Crimean War. On his way to Melbourne in 1857, he had met and charmed the widow Crosby, who had children of his age. He squandered her money, and upon their separation, took half of what was left. He went to Sydney, and became a clerk and then acting sergeant in the constabulary office. He undoubtedly had charm, because he endeared himself to Governor Brown and so was eventually appointed gold commissioner.
    Unfortunately, he gambled away £252 worth of gold that Chinese miners had given him, and to retrieve his losses, joined a gold escort party that included several police officers. During the journey, at the Mackenzie River, Griffin attempted to poison four officers, and when that failed to kill constables John Power and Patrick Cahill, he shot them dead and escaped with £4000 of gold.
    Caught and convicted, and after an unsuccessful appeal, Griffin continued to deny his guilt to the bitter end, even on the scaffold when, after a breakfast of eggs, toast and tea, he was hanged at Rockhampton on 1 June 1868. No one doubted his guilt, though, and the
Queenslander
thought he had died as he had lived: ‘hard, callous and impenitent’.
    The day after his death, a warder, Alfred Grant, wrote to the
Queenslander
that Griffin had tried to bribe him so he could escape. In return, Griffin would tell him where he had buried the stolen money. If escape was impossible, Grant was to bring him either strychnine or a knife, and if he did so, Griffin would make sure his sister in Ireland received £500. Grant had reported this to the principal turnkey, John Lee, and it was agreed he should play along with