TAS - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1822: Eight Convicts Fled Macquarie Harbour, and Two Ate the Rest

On 20 September 1822, Alexander Pearce, Bob Greenhill and six other convicts escaped the brutal penal outpost of Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast, plunging into some of the most impenetrable wilderness in the colony with almost no food or supplies.

As starvation set in, the group turned on itself. Greenhill, who had once been a butcher, took the lead in killing and butchering their companions one by one to survive, and Pearce joined him in eating the flesh of the dead.

Eventually only Pearce and Greenhill remained, each watching the other, until Pearce killed Greenhill as well and continued alone, becoming the last man standing from the original party of eight.

⬅ See all events from 20 September

Australia Cannibalism Escape Murder Prison TAS

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1826: Nine Hanged in a Single Day at Hobart, All for Sheep Stealing and Burglary

On September 18, 1826, nine convicts went to the gallows together in Hobart under Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur’s ruthless enforcement of Britain’s Bloody Code, the doctrine that made property crime a capital offence equal to murder. Not one of the nine had killed anyone: George Farquharson, Robert Cable, Thomas Savell, John Davis and John Cruitt were hanged for sheep stealing, John Penson, Timothy Swinscow and William Wickens for burglary, and James Rowles for theft.

The hangings were part of the largest cluster of executions recorded in Van Diemen’s Land that year, twenty three people put to death over a single fortnight in mid September 1826. Earlier hangings that month, on September 13, had targeted actual killers; those on September 15 and 18 were reserved entirely for non-violent property offenders, a deliberate signal from Arthur to a colony economically dependent on settler flocks and stores.

Sheep stealing in particular was treated by the colonial administration as an existential threat to the fledgling economy of the penal settlement, and the September 18 executions were designed as a public deterrent to convicts tempted to raid the herds and homes of free settlers.

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Australia Colonial Crime Execution Hobart Robbery TAS Theft Trial

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1826: Property Crimes, Not Murder: Seven Men Hanged in Hobart in a Single Morning

On 15 September 1826, seven convicts, George Brace, John McFarlane, James Edwards, Thomas Balfour, John Dadd, John Clark and Patrick Brown, were hanged together in Hobart, the second of three mass executions carried out that month under Chief Justice John Pedder.

Unlike the seven hanged just two days earlier for murder, not one of this group had killed anyone. Balfour, McFarlane and Edwards went to the gallows for absconding into the bush and robbing settler William Holdship; Brace was hanged for robbery, Dadd and Clark for burglary in Ross, and Brown for stealing sheep, a crime that under Britain’s Bloody Code carried the same legal weight as taking a human life.

The scale of the executions reflected both the severity of imported English law and Governor George Arthur’s determined push to impose discipline on the penal colony. Rather than hang prisoners as they were convicted, the Supreme Court held sentences over and carried them out in batches: seven men on 13 September, seven more on the 15th, and a further nine on the 18th, accounting for nearly half of the 53 executions recorded in Van Diemen’s Land that year.

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Australia Burglary Bushranging Colonial Crime Execution Hobart Robbery TAS Theft Trial

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1826: The Head Was Never Found: Three Men Hanged at Hobart for Murder

Alexander Simpson, a shopkeeper who lived and slept in two houses near Pittwater not far from Hobart, was last seen walking home at dusk. The next morning his body was found mutilated on rocks below the high-water mark, his head and much of his flesh removed and never recovered. A discoloured mark around his neck suggested he had been strangled with a cord before his body was carried to the water and cut apart, apparently to prevent identification. His shop had been completely rifled, yet the doors were found padlocked exactly as usual, suggesting the killers had taken his keys and relocked the premises after the robbery. Strangely, no footprints, blood or signs of a struggle were ever found.

Three neighbours who knew Simpson well, Thomas Dunnings, Edward Everitt and William Smith, stood trial for three days on largely circumstantial evidence, including stolen goods traced back to Simpson’s shop and their movements on the night of the killing. All three were convicted, sentenced to death on 2 September 1826 and hanged together at Hobart on 13 September 1826.

Each man gave a different account at the end. Dunnings insisted he had “had no hand in it”; Everitt admitted stealing goods from the house after Simpson’s death but denied any part in the murder; Smith maintained the evidence used to convict him was “entirely false.”

Vintage door secured with padlock and chain, lockdown security

⬅ See all events from 13 September

Australia Execution Hobart Murder Robbery TAS Trial

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