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Tuesday 10 March 2020

Bolters: part 3 of many


Black Caesar.

The man the colonists called Black Caesar appeared in the official records as John Caesar. His common name tells us one of the few things we know for certain about him: he had dark skin, and was probably of African descent. Some people said he came from Madagascar, but slave owners often gave their slaves the names of ancient Romans, so the name “Caesar” may mean that he or his parents had been slaves at some stage.

All we can say for sure is that he was one of at least four people believed to be of African origin in the First Fleet. The others were John Williams (alias ‘Black Jack’), Daniel Gordon and Samuel Chinnery.

In 1786, Caesar was a servant, living at Deptford, now a suburb of London. On 13 May, he went on trial, charged with stealing £12 from a dwelling house, and he was found guilty.

At that point, he had some luck, because many thieves back then were sentenced to hang for taking far less valuable loot. Instead, he was given seven years in gaol, sent to the hulk Ceres, and then shipped off to Botany Bay in the First Fleet transport Alexander.
In the new colony, Caesar was known as a good worker at first. Judge Advocate, David Collins wrote in his story of the early days, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales:

This man was always reputed the hardest working convict in the country; his frame was muscular and well calculated for hard labour; but … his appetite was ravenous, for he could in any one day devour the full ration for two days.[1]

Caesar’s problem was that everybody, large or small, got exactly the same rations, meaning the same amount of food each day. Because he was big and toiled hard, Caesar was always hungry, so he stole food. On 29 April, 1789, he was tried, found guilty of stealing and given a life sentence.

Two weeks later, he stole a gun and some food, and went bush. Caesar stayed close to the settlement, probably so he could steal food or tools. As a result, he was captured on 6 June and sent to work in chains, on Garden Island. His task was to grow vegetables, and he was allowed some of what he grew, on top of the usual rations. He behaved well, and soon he was allowed to work without the chains. Then on 22 December, he stole a musket, an iron pot and a canoe and went off into the bush again.

He now found himself up against the same problem that all the bushrangers faced: getting enough food. None of them knew how to find bush tucker, and so they had to steal. Caesar stole from settlers’ gardens and he also robbed Indigenous people of their food, but while this annoyed the locals he robbed, they weren’t all unfriendly to him. On 31 January, 1790, he was brought into the settlement by some of them after they found him near Rose Hill with spear wounds. They helped him back to Sydney so he could give himself up and get medical help.

Caesar’s wounds healed, and he was sent to Norfolk Island for three years, where he farmed. Then he was sent back to Sydney and stayed quiet for more than a year, but in July 1794, he took off into the bush again. He was soon caught and punished, but he took his flogging without reacting, beyond declaring that “… all that will not make me better”.

Caesar escaped again in December 1795, and became one of probably six to eight other escapees who were loose in the bush at the time. Even so, everybody in the colony blamed Caesar for all the thefts. They complained bitterly of having suffered quite enough from Caesar’s thieving ways.

Important people, meaning the ones who had something worth stealing, demanded that something be done about such rogues, and on 29 January, 1796, Governor Hunter offered a reward of five gallons of spirits for Caesar’s capture. Our first thief/bushranger had barely a fortnight left to live, hiding out in the bush near what is now the Sydney suburb of Strathfield. David Collins told the story of Caesar’s end:

On Monday the 15th a criminal court was held for the trial of two prisoners, William Britton a soldier, and John Reid a convict, for a burglary in the house of the Rev. Mr. Johnson, committed in the night of Sunday the 7th of this month. The evidence, though strong, was not sufficient to convict them, and they were acquitted. While this court was sitting, however, information was received, that black Caesar had that morning been shot by one Wimbow. This man and another, allured by the reward, had been for some days in quest of him.

Finding his haunt, they concealed themselves all night at the edge of a brush which they perceived him enter at dusk. In the morning he came out, when, looking round him and seeing his danger, he presented his musket; but before he could pull the trigger Wimbow fired and shot him. He was taken to the hut of Rose, a settler at Liberty Plains, where he died in a few hours. Thus ended a man, who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above the brute, and who had given more trouble than any other convict in the settlement.

Mind you, some of the convicts, just by making it to Australia, had achieved an escape of sorts, evading the gallows. John Hudson is a case in point, but he needed some help to bring it off.

Mind you, some of the convicts, just by making it to Australia, had effected an escape of sorts, evading the gallows. John Hudson is a case in point. He comes next.


[1] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol 1, 58.

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