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1864: Christopher Harrison Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for Shooting His Business Partner

Christopher Harrison and James Marsh held a government contract to clear Section No. 4 of the Jordan track near Melbourne. Marsh had failed to deposit funds to honour the workers’ cheques, leaving Harrison besieged by unpaid men. When the two met to settle the dispute, with contractor John Stewart present as arbitrator, Marsh refused to sign papers. Harrison drew a pistol, remarking: “Do you think such a wretch is fit to live? I don’t.” Marsh fell while trying to use a bystander as a shield, and Harrison shot him where he lay.

An inquest before Dr. Youl at the Sir Charles Hotham Hotel on Flinders Street returned a verdict of wilful murder. Harrison was described as composed, even nonchalant, as the evidence against him was heard. He was convicted and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 3 August 1864.

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1916: Knighted Diplomat Hanged for Treason After Failed Easter Rising Mission

Sir Roger Casement, the British consul who had been honoured for exposing colonial atrocities in the Congo and Peru, was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916. Once celebrated as the ‘father of twentieth-century human rights investigations’, he had spent the war years seeking German military support for the Easter Rising before being arrested on the Kerry coast just days before the uprising began.

Stripped of his knighthood, he was tried and convicted of high treason. During and after the trial, British intelligence circulated typescripts of private journals, said to be in Casement’s hand, that detailed homosexual activity. The material, illegal under the laws of the time, was used to undermine calls for clemency. He was executed at 49, and the authenticity of those diaries has been disputed by scholars ever since.

Portrait of Sir Roger Casement in formal attire

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1869: James Ritson Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of a Prison Chaplain

James Ritson, a prisoner at Pentridge Stockade already serving time for shooting a market inspector, killed the Reverend William Hill inside his solitary confinement cell in July 1869. Hill, the Wesleyan chaplain and superintendent of the second Wesleyan Circuit, had entered the cell alone to offer religious instruction. Ritson attacked him with a bed hinge he had wrenched free, battering in the chaplain’s skull. A warder heard Hill cry out “Mercy, man” but mistook it for prayer; by the time he forced the barricaded door open, Hill was dying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Hill had served the colony for fourteen years, was acting editor of the Wesleyan Chronicle, and left four young children orphaned, their mother having died only months earlier. He was buried at Melbourne Cemetery on 15 July 1869. Ritson, described at the time as a homicidal maniac, was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 3 August 1869.

The Late Reverend Hill

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1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

On 3 June 1926, Royston Rennie boarded a train between East Perth and Perth stations and attacked two employees of the National Bank of Australasia who were transferring a large sum of banknotes from the Maylands branch to head office. He bludgeoned 15-year-old junior clerk Douglas Favas into unconsciousness and fatally shot senior clerk John Roger Greville, seizing the cash before fleeing. Rennie had spent weeks ingratiating himself with locals, posing as an aviator seeking work with W.A. Airways, and had borrowed a pistol from a Bassendean acquaintance under false pretences.

Tried before Justice Northmore, Rennie pleaded not guilty in a low but firm voice. The testimony of young Favas, himself a victim of the attack, proved decisive. The jury convicted, and Rennie was sentenced to death. He was executed at Perth on 2 August 1926.

Royston Rennie the gentleman killer from Perth executed in Fremantle

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1864: Christopher Harrison Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for Shooting His Business Partner

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1916: Knighted Diplomat Hanged for Treason After Failed Easter Rising Mission

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1869: James Ritson Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of a Prison Chaplain

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1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

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