1843: Hanged Outside Adelaide Gaol for the Port Lincoln Station Murders of 1842
In March 1842, Elizabeth Stubbs and a man named Biddle were killed at a remote pastoral station near Port Lincoln, South Australia. The killings came amid a period of violent conflict between colonists and local people in the region. The man later convicted of the murder of Stubbs had also been involved in an armed raid on a neighbouring station, where a group drove off the owner under threat of spears and clubs before taking goods and dispersing into the scrub.
Convicted at the Criminal Sessions, he was hanged on a drop erected at the entrance to Adelaide Gaol on 1 August 1843, at the age of around 25. Mounted police under Captain Tolmer kept the ground. In the days before his death he received the attention of German missionaries, one of whom remained with him until the final preparations. A colonial account noted he showed no outward fear, with observers recording a belief that death by hanging would bring him reborn into a new life.
