1816: Betrayed Twice by the Same Informer: Thomas Collins Hanged in Sydney for a Parramatta Road Robbery
Thomas Collins had been transported from Cork on the convict ship Canada, arriving in New South Wales in 1815, and within a year was standing trial in Sydney for burglary. He and two accomplices had broken into a shop in O’Connell Street and made off with baskets of tobacco, burying part of it in the earth near Farm Cove before selling a basket on for a watch and cash. The case against him rested on the evidence of Edward Dempsey, a fellow gang member turned Crown witness, and Collins was convicted of burglary that September.
Days later he was back in the dock on an entirely separate charge: robbing a carter on the Parramatta Road the previous July, in a predawn ambush that saw three carts stopped and their drivers beaten to the ground. Dempsey gave evidence again, and Collins was convicted a second time.
He was hanged in Sydney on this day in 1816, alongside two other condemned men.
Collins confessed his guilt before his death; the record states that all three men executed that morning died penitent.
