1834: Risking the Gallows to Avoid a Flogging: Two Hanged in Sydney for the Murder of Dr Wardell
Dr Robert Wardell, a Sydney barrister and co-founder of The Australian newspaper, was inspecting his Petersham estate one Sunday afternoon when he rode straight into the bark hut of three runaway convicts, among them a teenage absconder named Brace. Trying to talk his way clear, Wardell urged the men to surrender and come quietly with him, warning it would go better for them. Brace begged his companions not to risk their lives over a matter that might cost them only fifty lashes, but John Jenkins raised his stolen gun and fired, killing Wardell on the spot.
Brace turned Crown evidence, and his account convicted both Jenkins and his companion Thomas Tattersdale, who had joined the pair partway through their bushranging spree. A jury took only minutes to find them guilty, and on this day in 1834 the two men were hanged in Sydney for the murder.
On the scaffold, Jenkins confessed to a separate killing, claiming he had once stabbed a man on the Liverpool road whose body had, he said, been devoured by the native dogs and never found. Tattersdale made no such confession, saying only that he hoped to make his peace with God.
