In the bar of the National Hotel at Rowdy Flat, near Yackandandah, a drunken brawl broke out between Patrick Sheehan and another miner, Neville. James Kennedy, the publican, stepped out from behind his bar only to keep the peace; he was not part of the fight and had given Sheehan no provocation beyond refusing him more drink on credit. When the scuffle briefly quietened, Sheehan slipped away, and a bystander, seeing him go, called out a warning that chilled the room: "Sheehan is gone for something." Kennedy locked the door, but when Sheehan came back demanding to be let in, he opened it rather than provoke him further, and was met with a knife driven into his side.
Kennedy died the next day. Sheehan was tried and convicted of wilful murder, then hanged within Beechworth Gaol on this day in 1865, one of the first executions carried out there rather than the usual practice of hauling the condemned nearly 200 miles in an open wagon to a distant gaol.
He went to the gallows calm and resigned, asking only that his cap be lifted for a moment so he could say, "God bless you all, and God forgive me; that will do." He always maintained he remembered nothing of the killing, writing from his cell beforehand: "I do not remember anything of the dreadful occurrence of which I am found guilty."
