1863: The Hangman Was His Old Mate From Tasmania: James Murphy Hanged at Geelong for Killing a Warrnambool Constable
James Murphy was awaiting trial for horse theft in the Warrnambool jail when Constable Daniel O'Boyle walked him across to the courthouse on 4 August 1863 to light the morning fires. As O'Boyle knelt at the grate, Murphy came up from behind and beat him down with a mason's hammer, then calmly shut the door on his dying victim and walked off as if nothing had happened.
He was run down two days later at a dairy station on the Hopkins River, where he told his captors he had not meant to kill the constable, insisting he had "only struck him once"; he blamed the attack on how "brutally treated" he said he had been in the watchhouse.
At trial his defence argued that, taken from the jail without a fresh warrant, Murphy had been held unlawfully and any killing committed while escaping could be no more than manslaughter; the jury rejected it and convicted him of murder. He was hanged at Geelong on this day in 1863, with the hangman specially sent from Melbourne turning out to be an old friend of Murphy's from their years together in Tasmania; recognising him, the executioner wept before composing himself and carrying out the sentence.
Murphy made no address on the scaffold and offered no formal confession, though at trial he had all but admitted killing O'Boyle, claiming only that it followed a struggle rather than a cold attack.
