They truly belonged

The magistrates of colonial Australia were, as we say, a rum bunch, and many of them were bent. The blue text is extracted from chapters 14 and 14 of Involuntary Belonging.

We have already seen something of how Aborigines were treated, as serfs that came, with the land, belonging to the new possessor of the land. This held, even when the land was taken without the permission of those who, in the law, we are now more likely to recognise as the rightful owners, but there is more that needs to be said. It is possible that the Aborigine did indeed belong to that Country, but he also seems to have been treated as a possession to the extent that any gold he found belonged to the new ‘owner’.

Around 1900, a writer claimed that indentures protected Aboriginal women. The agreements had to be witnessed by either Resident Magistrates, Justices of the Peace, persons appointed under the Act, or officers of the police force. These people, said a letter writer, just a little bit naïvely, were unlikely to witness an agreement between employers and natives unless the natives were willing to make such agreement, and were under no fear, coercion, or constraint.

Until 1900, the Police Act had made it an offence to tamper with or detain another person’s native servant, and a breach led to a fine of from £20 to £40, when costs were added in. The writer then cited a case where a white man in the Gascoyne district had lured away “a rather nice looking native girl”.

Her employer took out a summons, the man was fined, and the girl was ordered to go back to her service “where she is still”. This was too much for the editor, who expostulated: “Still there after eight years; the 12 months agreement is evidently pretty durable.” Men, on the other hand, were “caught and apprenticed to a kind master at about nothing and sixpence a year”, said the writer in The Bulletin, as quoted in a Perth newspaper.

Westralia is proud of its slave system on the ground that it prevents native girls being led astray by wandering white men of the swagman and prospector description [but] doesn’t make the seduction of aboriginal girls a punishable offence. It doesn’t protect them to any extent that is worth a straw against their own white boss, the squatter. Before they are “apprenticed” or enslaved, or after their period of enslavement has expired, the law takes no notice of their morals, and does nothing in particular for their protection.

During their spell of slavery it doesn’t protect their morals either, but it falls like Sodom and Gomorrah on any bad man who beguiles them away and thereby deprives the good boss of their services. And it is presumably out of the ‘Groper law’s anxiety to preserve the morals of the aboriginal girl that it compels the aboriginal man to also work for the squatter as his “apprentice” at nothing or thereabouts per annum — at least it doesn’t actually compel him, but when [offensive word]s are scarce an obliging J.P. is generally at hand to gaol the aboriginal for vagrancy till he consents, of his own free will, and quite voluntarily, to be indentured.

The Westralian boss magnates have always had a great yearning after the [offensive word]’s soul, and in the early days they couldn’t, sleep at night for wondering how to save the local black girl in the Altogether [i.e., naked] from being led astray. Then it dawned on them that the best way to save her soul was to make her work darned hard without anything that could be called wages, and in consequence of this discovery their minds have been at ease ever since.
— West Australian Sunday Times 1 April 1900. 8 (taken from The Bulletin).

Not sickened yet? Try this, but be warned that it is unpleasant reading, which is why, among family and friends, I call this Bog-snorkelling in a cess-pit. 

In September 1897, Ernest William Anderson, one of the proprietors of Bendhu Station in the Pilbara, reported to the officer in charge of the local police that on the 13^th, three aboriginal natives, identified as Spider, Biddy, and Polly, had died at Bendhu. Their names were actually Pringamurra, Warradamngenmia, and Narilung. These three, and three others who survived, had “escaped” (‽), so Alexander Anderson went in pursuit of them and

… encountered them at Redbank, 24 miles from Bendhu. He persuaded them to return, leaving the following morning for home. He arrived at the station at half-past two that day, having, it is stated, walked the absconders the distance of 24 miles without water. It is further alleged that on reaching the homestead the natives were soundly thrashed by the Anderson Brothers with a piece of half-inch rope, and were then allowed to drink water from the well. Shortly afterwards they sickened, and the three of the aboriginals first named died about six o’clock that evening.
— The West Australian, 23 September 1897, 5.

When you read this, note that the victims “escaped” and were then “persuaded” and later “thrashed” . To me, that is a state of slavery, pure and simple, though they weren’t traded, so far as we know. Maybe, just barely, it was not slavery in the strict sense.

Anderson reported the deaths to the police, suggesting that the victims died from being overheated and then swallowing too much water. Sergeant McCarthy notified the Coroner, and sent a constable to proceed to collect information from witnesses and make arrangements for an inquiry. Later, the District Coroner travelled to Bendhu, and, obtaining a jury of three at Bamboo Creek, conducted an investigation into the case.

The jury returned a verdict that the deaths were caused by exhaustion caused by travelling the deceased natives from Redbank to Bendhu without water. They added a rider, censuring the Andersons for the manner in which they had beaten the deceased people. The coroner also examined two of the survivors, girls aged 8 and 12, and squeamish readers may prefer not to read this next paragraph, even though you really should:

… both appeared to have been severely beaten, the former’s back being one mass of festering wounds of the color of sunbaked clay. She presented a pitiable spectacle, whilst the aspect of the elder girl Louie, was not much less deplorable … The Anderson Bros. are but young men, the elder, Ernest, being about 21 years of age, whilst the younger, Alex, would be something like 18.
— The Pilbarra Goldfield News (Marble Bar) 1 October 1897, 2.

On 19 October, the brothers were behind bars, held on a charge of murder. Alexander had arrived with a case of typhoid fever, and this killed him on 30 November. Alexander was on trial on December 20, when evidence showed that Pringamurra’s shoulder blade had been broken. The evidence listed the wounds on both the dead and the living, and no witnesses were called for the defence. The prosecutor summed up:

It might be argued that the charge could be reduced to one of manslaughter had the deed been done under sudden and great provocation, but when such deliberate and barbaric violence sufficient to cause death had been proved he could not see how that would be possible.
— The West Australian 22 December 1897, 3.

As there were no witnesses for the defence, there will be no recounting here of the weasel words added in defence, but sadly, they had an effect. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. Anderson had eluded the noose, but he still had an incandescent Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Onslow, to descant on his case:

Ernest William Anderson, the jury have taken a very lenient view of your case. Nobody who has heard the evidence given in this case can have a shadow of a doubt in his mind about the crime in question. Your crime is nothing but a deliberate, brutal, base and cruel murder of a man and two women, and an inhuman flogging of mere girls besides. However, the jury have done what they have in law a right to do, and it remains only for me to pass sentence upon you. That sentence is the most severe I am able to give-you are sentenced to penal servitude for life.
— The West Australian, 22 December 1897, 3.

On 10 February 1903, Anderson was allowed out on a ‘ticket of leave’ arrangement. As they say about policemen, there’s never a touch of typhoid fever around when you need it, and if that comment seems harsh, Onslow would have agreed with me, given the way he weighed in again the very next day after sentencing the surviving Anderson, at the start of another trial:

But I cannot forget that only 18 months ago I myself tried a case at Geraldton when a man named Thompson was charged with flogging a native to death. The circumstances of the case were equally revolting to that of the Andersons, the great difference being that in Thompson’s case one man instead of three was flogged, and there was also no inhuman beating of females.
— The West Australian, 24 December 1897, 6.

This reference pleased me, because while I had seen and been chasing references to “Thompson”, the name is common, so the details had eluded me, but that one word, “Geraldton”, gave me a way in. The case went to court in July 1896, when Ernest Waugh, George Thompson and William Purtill flogged ‘Micky’, an Aboriginal described as “a fighting man” who took no nonsense from white men, giving as good as he got. He was overpowered by the three, and chained to a verandah post before Thompson and Waugh whipped him.

The next piece of evidence should serve to quell any doubts about whether or not the rank smell of slavery in the air at that time.

James Aitken, affirmed in the Scotch method, said: — I am a Justice of the Peace, as well as a squatter and merchant, and know the accused, who bear a good character. I have never heard of any complaints about them. I have 65 natives in my employ. Occasionally I find it necessary to punish them in order to maintain discipline.

His Honor: What do you mean by punishing them?

Mr. Aitken: By thrashing them.

His Honor. — With what?

Witness: — With a piece of leather trace. I have heard what Micky did to Waugh, and I certainly say he deserved punishing for what he did.

His Honor: You are a magistrate of the peace. What do you suppose they are appointed for? Do you think they are appointed for the purpose of illegally punishing natives? Let me urge you to seriously consider the position you have placed yourself in in giving your opinion that it is right and proper to take into your own hands the duty of punishing natives. I am quite shocked to hear a Justice of the Peace express himself in this way.

Mr. Aitken: I am quite prepared to resign my Commission at any time. We have to tell the truth in a Court of law.
— Geraldton Advertiser, 10 July 1896, 3.

All three were found not guilty. The papers of the later 1890s always seem to link the names Anderson, Thompson and Brockman. We need just one more look, though, to seal the case for the prosecution, but the better informed papers also add the name De Pledge, so one more for luck. Interestingly, like Mr Aitken, De Pledge and Brockman were also magistrates. The prosecution rests.

George Julius Brockman, of Minilya station, was charged in February 1899 with ill-treating an aboriginal named Cooardie. The treatment involved placing Cooardie in stocks for an afternoon and night without food, then kicking him on the head, and flogging him.

The evidence came from the complainant, two other natives, and a Japanese, employed by the defendant as a cook. Cooardie’s story, largely corroborated by his witnesses, was that he was put in the stocks one afternoon and was kept there, in a fowl house, all through the night.

Cooardie escaped the fowl house, but not the stocks, and when Brockman discovered him, he was kicked about the face, and bled from a wound. He was returned to the fowl house and in the morning, with the stocks still on his legs, he was flogged with a whip made of strips of bullock hide. His offence, Cooardie said, was that he had taken a native woman named Maggie, with whom, he said, the defendant had intimate relations. Two natives, Jackie and Billie corroborated the complainant’s evidence. The Japanese cook, Cawabila, saw the complainant in the stocks, and saw him beaten by the defendant with a bullock hide whip. He did not witness the kicking, but when he entered the fowl-house blood was flowing from a wound on Cooardie’s face.

Brockman gave evidence on his own behalf, and his version differed. Yes, he had put Cooardie in the stocks, but could not have kicked him as he had no boots on. The cook, on the other hand, said the boots were on.

Brockman continued. He punished Cooardie, not in connection with the woman Maggie, but because he had attempted to assault an old blind woman. In cross-examination, he admitted telling Corporal Turner that the thrashing was administered because Cooardie had stolen a pair of boots from a contractor named Hough, and that he had made no mention of the old woman.

The contractor Hough gave evidence that during the five years he had worked for Brockman, he had never known him to ill-treat a native. The defendant had admitted enough ill-treatment to sustain the charge, and the Bench, consisting of the Resident Magistrate and three Justices of the Peace, fined the accused £5, ordered him to pay costs to the amount of £9 8s., and cancelled Cooardie’s indentures.

Brockman was a J. P., so he accepted his loss, and then took his seat on the bench, to hear a charge against a Japanese man of supplying liquor to an Aboriginal! That brings us to another J.P., Thomas De Pledge, who along with his employee, Reginald Orkney, was charged with assaulting aboriginal natives, a man and a woman, who were indentured to them. Remembering Brockman’s ‘Maggie’, the man De Pledge had flogged said that it was because he had taken away ‘his woman’. This whole saga begins to read like 19^th century USA, with concupiscence in the slave quarters.