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1816: Betrayed by the Same Informer Twice: Hugh McLarie Hanged in Sydney for Highway Robbery

Hugh McLarie and his gang lay in wait on the Parramatta Road one morning in July 1816, ambushing a line of carts before dawn, knocking the drivers to the ground and making off with a keg of spirits, bolts of cloth and a haul of clothing from the cart of John Andrews. The robbery unravelled when Edward Dempsey, one of the raiders, turned King's evidence and gave the court a detailed account of the ambush.

It was not the first time Dempsey's testimony had put McLarie in the dock. Weeks earlier the same informer had helped convict him over a break in at a Sydney shop, naming him as one of the men who carried off baskets of tobacco, coin and clothing hidden in the bush beyond the town.

McLarie was hanged in Sydney on 1 November 1816 for the Parramatta Road robbery.

He confessed his crime before the scaffold and, the record states, died penitent.

Horse-drawn omnibuses on Parramatta Road, Sydney, c. 1870–1875. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.

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Australia Burglary Colonial Crime Execution NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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1816: The Black Beau of London, Hanged in SydneyAustralia

Daniel Moowattin was raised from infancy by the colony's own flogger and hangman, grew up fluent in English manners, and became a trusted bush guide to the botanist George Caley. In 1810 Caley took him to London, where society was charmed by his polished English and the latest fashions; one newspaper called him, admiringly, "a black beau." He even sang his own songs at a London party before confessing he longed for home, telling a companion he found more pleasure under a gum tree with his own people than anywhere in England.

He returned to the colony in 1812 and drifted between farm labour and life in the bush. That August, a teenage girl named Hannah Russell was walking alone on a road near Parramatta when, she testified, Moowattin dragged her into the scrub, beat and assaulted her, robbed her of money, then beat her again before a passing stockman frightened him off.

Under the colony's rules, Aboriginal people could not ordinarily be tried in its courts, but the men who knew Moowattin argued he no longer counted as one of them: he dressed, worked and spoke like a settler. On that reasoning he became the first Aboriginal man ever tried before a court in New South Wales, and on this day in 1816 he was hanged in Sydney alongside two men convicted of highway robbery, the first Aboriginal person legally executed in colonial Australia.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie claimed in his records that all three "confessed their crimes... and died penitent."

Port Jackson, a Native Boy; contemporary to Moowattin, William Westall, 1802. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia.

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Assault Australia Colonial Justice Execution NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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1828: The Last Victim of Burke and Hare: a Fatal Night of Drinking in Edinburgh

Margery Campbell, an Irish woman also known as Margaret Docherty, was lured into William Burke's lodging house in Edinburgh on 31 October 1828 after Burke struck up a conversation with her on the street, claiming a shared homeland. A night of drinking followed, and before it ended Burke and his accomplice William Hare had suffocated her, the sixteenth victim in a killing spree that had run through the city for months.

Her body was found hidden under straw by fellow lodgers Ann and James Gray, who went straight to the police. The discovery ended the partnership for good: Hare turned Crown witness to save himself, and Burke went to the gallows for a murder that finally could not be concealed.

Burke murdering Margery Campbell historical crime illustration

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Edinburgh Execution Murder Scotland Serial Killer Trial UK

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1851: A Fabricated Choking Bullock Led to the Murder of a Sleeping Man: Hanged at Launceston

Francis Duke, a servant on George Hill's farm near Deloraine in northern Tasmania, woke his employer in the middle of the night with an urgent story: the bullock being fattened was choking and needed help. When they reached the shed the animal was calm and Duke complained only of the cold, but as Hill turned back toward the house Duke knocked him down with a piece of firewood and began stabbing him as the two men grappled on the ground. It was Hill's wife who turned the fight, beating Duke with a brick until neighbours arrived to help subdue him.

Searching the property afterwards, they found Duke's fellow servant, a ticket-of-leave man named William Smith, already dead in his bed, a wound driven more than an inch into his skull while he slept. Duke was convicted of murder and sentenced to death without hope of mercy. He was hanged at Launceston on 31 October 1851.

Duke, a Spaniard who reportedly spoke unintelligibly in court, insisted to the end that the evidence given by Hill and his wife was false from beginning to end.

Old Launceston Gaol, viewed from Wellington Square. State Library and Archives of Tasmania, LPIC147/4/62.

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Australia Deloraine Execution Launceston Murder TAS Trial

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