*Ø* Blogmanac May 25, 1870 | Death of a bushranger
The mystery of Thunderbolt
1870 Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Ward), the notorious Australian bushranger, was allegedly shot dead by Constable AB Walker.
Thunderbolt had been the scourge of inns and mail coaches around Bourke and Uralla, New South Wales, and had done at least 80 robberies netting him £20,000. Many of these ill-gotten gains, however, were in the form of cheques and half notes, pretty useless to a highwayman out in the Armidale tablelands wilderness.
A number of years ago I sometimes used to stay on Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour. The house I stayed in had once been the mansion of the governor of the notorious Cockatoo Island Prison that existed during the convict days of Australia – like a mini-Alcatraz or Robbin Island. In the old sandstone prison yard I have seen the iron rings on the walls, with which prisoners were restrained as they were scourged with the cat o’ nine tails, a leather whip sometimes made more fearsome by the addition of small pieces of sharp lead at the end of nine knotted thongs. Cockatoo has only recently been opened to public tours so visitors can get a feel for what a terrible living tomb it was.
Fred Ward was the only prisoner ever to escape from the hell of that place, which he did by covering his head with a box and swimming a kilometre or so to land. Some say that he was shot dead on May 25, 1870, but a respectable theory has it that Thunderbolt lived a long life and died in a boarding house in the 1920s; the boarding house was, I believe, in Stanmore, possibly within a few blocks of where I was born.
Ward family members have long asserted that it was not Fred at all who was shot, but his brother William (known as 'Harry'), and word has it that there was a tall, veiled 'woman' with a masculine gait at the funeral, but no one ever saw 'her' face. Was Fred having a larrikin lark at his own interment? ... (Read on)
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
The mystery of Thunderbolt
1870 Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Ward), the notorious Australian bushranger, was allegedly shot dead by Constable AB Walker.
Thunderbolt had been the scourge of inns and mail coaches around Bourke and Uralla, New South Wales, and had done at least 80 robberies netting him £20,000. Many of these ill-gotten gains, however, were in the form of cheques and half notes, pretty useless to a highwayman out in the Armidale tablelands wilderness.
A number of years ago I sometimes used to stay on Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour. The house I stayed in had once been the mansion of the governor of the notorious Cockatoo Island Prison that existed during the convict days of Australia – like a mini-Alcatraz or Robbin Island. In the old sandstone prison yard I have seen the iron rings on the walls, with which prisoners were restrained as they were scourged with the cat o’ nine tails, a leather whip sometimes made more fearsome by the addition of small pieces of sharp lead at the end of nine knotted thongs. Cockatoo has only recently been opened to public tours so visitors can get a feel for what a terrible living tomb it was.
Fred Ward was the only prisoner ever to escape from the hell of that place, which he did by covering his head with a box and swimming a kilometre or so to land. Some say that he was shot dead on May 25, 1870, but a respectable theory has it that Thunderbolt lived a long life and died in a boarding house in the 1920s; the boarding house was, I believe, in Stanmore, possibly within a few blocks of where I was born.
Ward family members have long asserted that it was not Fred at all who was shot, but his brother William (known as 'Harry'), and word has it that there was a tall, veiled 'woman' with a masculine gait at the funeral, but no one ever saw 'her' face. Was Fred having a larrikin lark at his own interment? ... (Read on)
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 8:41 PM | Permalink
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