Other editions of book History of the Australian Bushrangers

“No penny dreadful in any language could exaggerate some of the actual horrors described by the author ... from all these figures upon whom Mr. Boxall throws the limelight, no single one stands out with so glaring a ferocity as Ned Kelly, an almost Homeric personality, who was the very last of the bushrangers.” -T. P.'s Weekly The Story of The Australian Bushrangers (1908), by George E. Boxall (1875 – 1927) presents us with the history of bushranging, commencing with the great outbreak inaugurated by Frank Gardiner in 1861 up to the death of Ned Kelly, the last of the bushrangers, in 1880. About 300 persons altogether were implicated during these twenty years, and the story points out that this brigandage was evolved from the convict system established as the basis of the earlier settlements, more particularly in Victoria, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land. The book is full of exciting episodes, and is not without interest. Marcus Clarke's and Rolf Boldrewood's novels have done a deal towards giving us at least a nodding acquaintance with the highwaymen of Australia, but Mr. Boxall's encyclopaedic book is the first to traverse the whole history of the 'movement' in a comprehensive way. We find in it a complete record of the exploits of not only the more notorious bushrangers, such as Jackey Jackey, 'the gentleman bushranger,' and Ned Kelly, the last of these very young criminals (most of them came to a bad end before they were thirty), but details, culled from newspapers and other sources, concerning the more obscure 'operators' who never achieved more than local renown. Mr. Boxall is able, too, to supply the atmosphere without which such a book might easily be colourless and jejune. Bushrangers always made a point, these daring fellows, of bestriding the best horse flesh the colony could produce, for often enough their lives depended upon the fleetness of their steeds. Naturally they preferred racehorses when they were able to steal them. The most callous and brutal of the New South Wales bushrangers was John Lynch, who was transported from Cavan, Ireland, in 1831. He worked in a road gang in the neighbourhood of Sydney, being afterwards in the employment of a Mr. Barton as an 'assigned servant' on his farm, near Berrima. He ' bolted' into the bush, as many ex-convicts had done before him, and entered upon a career of the most extraordinary and relentless crime. Some of the subjects of Mr. Boxall's history were inordinately cruel, so that it is no wonder the country-side went in abject fear of them. Whitehead's gang, who ranged in Van Diemen's Land, captured a halfwitted fellow named John Hopkins, whom they accused of trying to betray them. By way of punishment a pair of bullock-hide moccassins were fitted on his feet, and in them were placed a number of great red ants, 'bull-dog' or 'soldier ants,' as they are called. They are an inch and a quarter long, sting as severely as a bee or a hornet, and never let go what they take hold of, continuing to sting until removed. It does not justify such cruelty, though it helps to explain it, to say that the convicts, who for the most part recruited the ranks of the bushrangers, were treated in confinement with shameless cruelty. Men, artiste in the use of the cat-o'-nine-tails, were employed to flog them, and this they did until the backs of their victims were one huge festering sore, in which the blue-fly would sometimes lay its eggs. There are hundreds of pages of interesting reading in this volume concerning these 'gentlemen of the road,' if that is the term to use of a country where roads were far from abounding. In especial much diversion lurks in the careers of Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, and Thunderbolt, as also in that of 'Captain Moonlite,' who began life as a lay reader in the Established Church!

In this story of the bushrangers I do not pretend to have included the names of all those who have at various times been called bushrangers in A ustralia. That, as will be seen from what I have said in the earlier chapters, would be not merely impossible but useless. I believe, however, that I have collected some particulars about all those who succeeded in winning even a local notoriety, and I have also endeavoured to supply such personal characteristics of the leaders in the movement as may throw some light on the causes which induced them to take to the bush. My principal object, however, has been to make the picture as complete as possible, so that the magnitude of the social evil which the Australians set themselves to cure may be realised ;and it is generally believed in Australia that this cure has been so complete that bushranging will never again become epidemic. The story is a terrible one. Some of the incidents related are no doubt revolting, but it is necessary that even these should be told to show how civilised man may be degraded by unjust and oppressive laws. We are all creatures of the educational influences to which we are subjected in our youth, and therefore it is unfair to blame the earlier bushrangers; because they were the products of the civilisation of their day, and were not themselves responsible. But sensational as the story is, its tendency is rather to depress than to exhilarate the reader, for the story is a sad one, in that it shows a deplorable waste of what under happier conditions might have been useful lives.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of hist

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The species of brigandage known in Australia as bushranging was, without doubt, evolved, more or less directly, from the convict system established as the basis of the earlier settlements in the island continent. The first bushrangers were simply men who took to the bush to escape work and enjoy freedom of action. Under the harsh laws of the Georgian era the greater criminals were hung, and not transported, and the convicts sent to "Botany Bay," in the eighteenth and the earlier years of the nineteenth centuries, were generally men to whom the trammels of the civilisation of their day were irksome. Many of them were political agitators, industrial rioters, and machine-breakers. The others were poachers and similarly comparatively mild offenders against the laws, who, under the present laws of Great Britain, would be sufficiently punished with a few months' imprisonment. Many of these men, when they were removed to a new land where the social conditions did not press so heavily on them, became honest and reputable citizens, and, perhaps, but for the harsh treatment they were subjected to, numbers of others who were driven to continue their fight against authority, might also have lived quiet and useful lives. This subject is a very delicate one, and it is not my intention to pursue it further here; but if it could be fully treated without giving offence to numbers of worthy and, in some cases, justly honoured residents of Australia, some very valuable lessons might be learned from the histories of some of those families whose founders could not live in England without offending against the laws, but who could and did earn the respect of their fellow colonists in Australia who were not "sent out." The student of history in Australia is reminded, perhaps more forcibly than his fellow in England, that the humanitarian spirit, now so distinguishing a trait in the Anglo-Saxon character, is of very recent growth. Under the operation of this new force the criminal law of England was rapidly softened and ameliorated, and with every advance in this direction the character of the convicts sent out to Australia steadily deteriorated, if I may so describe the process. With every alteration in the law a fresh class of criminal was transported, and these with few exceptions would, a few months before, have been hung. At first, pickpockets, then sheep and horse-stealers, forgers and others, who had previously only escaped the gallows in rare instances, when they could find some influential friend to take sufficient interest in them to plead their cause, were now transported as a matter of course. This process continued until transportation ceased, and as the last batch of prisoners sent out was presumably the worst, having been guilty of more heinous crimes than their predecessors, we are too apt to judge the earlier convicts harshly from our knowledge of the later ones. The general effect was that while, with the amelioration of the laws, crime steadily decreased in England, it just as steadily increased in Australia, and no doubt the worst criminals were transported to Van Diemen's Land after transportation had ceased to New South Wales in 1842. The laws of England previously to the great changes made during the past sixty years seem to me to have operated, whether designedly or not, to clear the country of the disaffected and the discontented, rather than the criminal. How far the introduction of large numbers of this class into the country may have paved the way for modern advances in liberal government in Australia, is a question which it might be profitable to study; but it only relates to the bushrangers so far as it enables us to account for the large number of men who "took to the bush."

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