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.
