James Yardsley was drinking keg beer with fellow farm servants in a hut near Deloraine on the night of 26 July 1851 when, after a separate scuffle outside, he strode back in and told Robert Hudson he would be his “butcher to night.” He stabbed Hudson three times with a pocket knife while another labourer, Bush, wrestled for the blade and begged him to stop; Hudson collapsed with wounds to his chest, arm and back.
Convicted of wounding with intent to do bodily harm, Yardsley was hanged at Launceston on this day in 1851, the same port where he had landed as a transported convict sixteen years earlier.
When his employer confronted him that night, Yardsley answered flatly, “I’ve done it, and am willing to suffer,” and later said he was ready to “die on the gallows for it.”
