Colonial Crime - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1794: The First Free Settler Murdered in the Colony: Hanged at Sydney for a Parramatta Stabbing

John Hill, a butcher, had spent the day drinking with Simon Burn at Parramatta on 5 October 1794 when he turned on the woman he lived with, beating her until Burn stepped in to stop him. Hill stabbed Burn through the heart; dying within the hour, Burn had just enough strength left to name his killer before witnesses, declaring that the butcher had done it. Burn, a First Fleet convict who had earned his freedom and settled his own farm, was reportedly the first free man in the colony to be murdered by another colonist.

Hill tried to set up an alibi at his trial, but the wound and Burn’s own dying words undid him. He was hanged at Sydney on 16 October 1794, his body handed over for dissection as his sentence required.

Bloody Halloween killer dressed as butcher on dark blue background

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Australia Colonial Crime Execution Murder NSW Parramatta Sydney Trial

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1860: Freed From Servitude, Then Hanged: John Caldwell Executed at Perth for Assault

John Caldwell was a former British soldier, court martialled at Bangalore in India for stealing his own equipment and sentenced to seven years transportation. He arrived in Western Australia aboard the General Godwin, landing at Fremantle in 1854, and was granted a ticket of leave the following year. His sentence finally expired in July 1860, a free man again after years of convict servitude.

Within months he was convicted of assualt of a local person at Champion Bay. He was tried at the Supreme Court in Perth, sentenced to death, and hanged at the old Perth Gaol just nine days later on 13th Oct 1860, being buried at East Perth Cemetery.

Panter Tomb at East Perth Cemetery burial place of John Caldwell 1860

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Australia Colonial Crime Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Trial WA

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1803: Masked Robbers Bound a Family and Threatened to Drown Them for Money They Did Not Have

One night in May 1803, two masked men forced their way into the Hawkesbury home of Charles Palmer and his wife, clubbing both with the handle of an axe until Palmer lay senseless for two hours. They ransacked the house for money, bound the family and a child, and warned they would throw them into the river if the cash they insisted did not exist was not handed over.

Stolen clothing later surfaced in the household of a woman who said it had been given to her to mend for Thomas McLaughlane the elder and his son. Both men were convicted and sentenced to death, but only the elder went to the gallows at Hawkesbury; of eight men condemned that session he was the third actually hanged, the rest reprieved into transportation for life.

At his trial the elder McLaughlane claimed the stolen goods had come from an informer already giving evidence in another case, a claim the informer flatly denied. On the scaffold he said nothing more, meeting his end, witnesses noted, with quiet decency.

Hand of a drowning man reaching above the sea surface

⬅ See all events from 7 October

Australia Colonial Crime Execution Hawkesbury Home Invasion NSW Robbery Trial

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1794: He Survived a Notorious Convict Voyage to Sydney, Then Was Hanged for Burglary

John Bevan arrived in Sydney aboard the Pitt in February 1792, after a gruelling eight-month voyage during which 29 convicts died, and many others arrived sick.

By 1794, Bevan had built a reputation for trouble in the colony and was caught in the act of breaking into the Sydney home of William Fielder. The case against him was considered overwhelming, and little time was lost: Bevan was convicted of burglary, sentenced to death and hanged on 6 October 1794.

He was buried at the old Sydney burial ground, little more than two and a half years after surviving the voyage that had brought him to New South Wales.

Painting of the East Indiaman Pitt and other sailing ships

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Australia Burglary Colonial Crime Convict Crime Execution NSW Sydney

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