Colonial Crime - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1861: Two Men Executed in the Wrong Place? A Widower Demands Answers

Two men were convicted of killing Margaret Ann Impett at Mount Wedge station in South Australia. Rather than being executed at the remote spot where the crime occurred, they were hanged at the Chiriroo police station near Venus Bay on Saturday, 14 September 1861, in front of a large gathering, where both men admitted their guilt.

Authorities had decided against transporting the condemned men the 20 to 30 miles to the actual murder site, citing a lack of available conveyance, a decision that left the execution taking place far from where Margaret Impett had died.

Her husband later wrote a furious public letter demanding to know why the men had not been executed on the spot, as he understood a recently passed law required. He branded the failure to enforce it a farce, asking who had dared to disregard the law of the land.

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1828: The Tunnel Under Sydney: Australia’s First Great Bank Robbery

On the night of 14 September 1828, thieves broke into the Bank of Australia in Sydney. A teller arriving the next morning found the strongroom breached.

Thieves had tunnelled through a drain on the opposite side of the street, burrowed underground, and cut through a foundation wall between five and nine feet thick, work that would have taken at least three to four weeks to complete. They made off with 12,000 to 14,000 pounds in cash and property, a sum worth a small fortune today.

For two and a half years the robbers evaded capture, even as some of the stolen notes began surfacing in circulation and officials issued repeated warnings against using them. The case only broke when one of the gang was sentenced to 14 years on Norfolk Island for an unrelated highway robbery in 1829. Nearly a year into that sentence, he accepted the Governor’s offer of a pardon and confessed, naming his accomplices: one of whom had fled to Ireland, another who had since died, and three more who joined him on Norfolk Island.

Not all the stolen money was recovered. Rumour has long held that boxes of coins from the robbery remain buried near the water’s edge on Sydney’s North Shore.

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1840: The Coorong Executions after the Maria Massacre

In June 1840, the ship Maria wrecked on Margaret Brock Reef off Cape Jaffa, South Australia. All twenty-six aboard reached shore, but the survivors later split into groups as they attempted to make their way towards Adelaide. Those travelling along the coast entered the territory of the local clan, where they were killed in a series of attacks. The remaining survivors were also pursued and subsequently killed.

Major O’Halloran, acting under orders, rounded up members of the local clan and conducted a summary field trial on the Adelaide frontier. Two men were hanged on 25 August 1840, in what colonial authorities framed as justice for the massacre, but which many historians regard as an act of punitive colonial retribution.

Major OHallorans 1840 expedition scene with mounted party

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Adelaide Australia Cape Jaffa Colonial Crime Coorong Execution Historical Crime Massacre SA Trial

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1843: Hanged Outside Adelaide Gaol for the Port Lincoln Station Murders of 1842

In March 1842, Elizabeth Stubbs and a man named Biddle were killed at a remote pastoral station near Port Lincoln, South Australia. The killings came amid a period of violent conflict between colonists and local people in the region. The man later convicted of the murder of Stubbs had also been involved in an armed raid on a neighbouring station, where a group drove off the owner under threat of spears and clubs before taking goods and dispersing into the scrub.

Convicted at the Criminal Sessions, he was hanged on a drop erected at the entrance to Adelaide Gaol on 1 August 1843, at the age of around 25. Mounted police under Captain Tolmer kept the ground. In the days before his death he received the attention of German missionaries, one of whom remained with him until the final preparations. A colonial account noted he showed no outward fear, with observers recording a belief that death by hanging would bring him reborn into a new life.

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