On 5 September 1842, a man known as Figara Alkapareet was hanged in the Port Phillip District for his alleged part in the killing of an overseer named Codd at Mount Rouse two years earlier. Witnesses placed Figara among a group of men who attacked Codd, although questions surrounded his identification and Figara maintained that it was his brother who had been at Mount Rouse while he was elsewhere washing sheep. After a jury found him guilty, Figara was sentenced to death. Contemporary accounts described him as meeting his fate with a sense of “natural resignation,” apparently accepting his approaching death without outward resistance. His execution provoked criticism in the newspapers, which questioned the justice and usefulness of the punishment amid the violent conflict and dispossession of the period. Even at the time, Figara’s death prompted debate over whether the law was being applied justly.
