Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1826: Escaped Convicts Turned Highway Robbers: Two Hanged After Fleeing Macquarie Harbour

John Taylor and George Waters had absconded from the notorious penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour, Van Diemen’s Land’s infamous secondary punishment station for repeat offenders, before turning to highway robbery. Their crime involved robbing soldiers of their arms, a particularly bold offence that ultimately led to their conviction.

Both men were sentenced to death on 2 September 1826 and hanged together at Hobart just eleven days later, on 13 September 1826.

British Army drum and muskets historical military equipment

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Australia Escape Execution Hobart Prison Robbery TAS

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1973: The Real Friday the 13th Killer: David McGreavy and the Murder of Three Children in Worcester

On Friday 13th September 1973, 20-year-old David McGreavy was left babysitting the three Ralph children in Worcester while their parents were out. He killed all three.

McGreavy then took a pick-axe to the bodies before impaling the remains on the wrought iron fence spikes of the house next door, where they were discovered by neighbours. The killings, carried out on the date now inseparable from bad luck and horror folklore, later fed the case’s grim nickname as Britain’s real life Friday the 13th murders. McGreavy was convicted and given three life sentences.

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Murder Prison Trial UK Worcester

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1824: Queensland’s First Convict Colony Founded, Then Abandoned for Brisbane Within a Year

On this day, Lieutenant Henry Miller led a party of convicts and soldiers ashore at Redcliffe on Moreton Bay to establish the first European settlement in the region that would later become Queensland. The site had been recommended by explorer John Oxley as a suitable location for a new penal outpost, but the choice quickly proved a poor one.

The choice proved a poor one. Fresh water was scarce, the anchorage was exposed and unsafe for shipping, and within a year the entire settlement was abandoned. The colony was relocated south along the river to a site that would grow into the city of Brisbane, which soon eclipsed Redcliffe as the region’s principal convict station.

Flogging a Convict at Moreton Bay by William Ross: illustration from The Fell Tyrant

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Australia Brisbane Colonisation Convict Colony History QLD Redcliffe

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1865: He Meant No Harm, Said the Man He Stabbed: Thomas Bushell Hanged at Fremantle

Thomas Bushell, an Imperial convict working in the bake-house at the Convict Establishment in Fremantle, took a 12-inch dough-knife from the bake-house on Sunday 9 July 1865. During the muster of prisoners for church service on C and D landing, he struck warder George Hollis on the head, then stabbed him in the back as Hollis passed, prompting Hollis to cry out, “Secure Bushell, for he has stabbed me.”

At his trial before Chief Justice Burt on 6 September 1865, the wounded warder himself testified that he did not believe Bushell had meant to kill him. The jury convicted him anyway of maliciously wounding with intent to murder, and he was sentenced to death and hanged just days after the verdict.

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Prison Trial WA

1826: Escaped Convicts Turned Highway Robbers: Two Hanged After Fleeing Macquarie Harbour

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1973: The Real Friday the 13th Killer: David McGreavy and the Murder of Three Children in Worcester

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1824: Queensland’s First Convict Colony Founded, Then Abandoned for Brisbane Within a Year

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1865: He Meant No Harm, Said the Man He Stabbed: Thomas Bushell Hanged at Fremantle

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