1871: "Don't Charley, don't Charley": The Final Plea of a Bailiff Near Mount Gambier
When assistant bailiff Thomas Garroway seized Carl Jung's horse, cart and pigs over an unpaid debt on 29 June 1871, Jung begged him to turn back, promising to sell his own gun to raise the money instead. Garroway refused and walked on toward Mount Gambier with the seized property. Jung followed, caught him in a gully, and demanded to know what Garroway had ever heard against his character. By Jung's own account to police, the bailiff's last words were "Don't Charley, don't Charley," as he threw up a hand and turned his head.
Jung shot him twice at close range, dragged the body into the ferns, then calmly sold off his possessions, settled an agreement with a neighbour and told his stepchildren goodbye, warning they would never see him again. He wrote a confession to a local newspaper and swallowed laudanum before his nerve failed. Captured days later hiding in the bush, he was tried for wilful murder and convicted.
On this day in 1871 Jung climbed the gaol scaffold at Mount Gambier carrying a bunch of flowers. He forgave "the English law for its severity," asked that the flowers be given to his wife, and died almost without a struggle, still mid sentence when the bolt was drawn.
Though he had earlier confessed to levelling the gun and firing deliberately, when the moment came to be sentenced Jung insisted the shooting was an accident, the gun discharging as his horse reared and threw him backward.
