I begin this chapter by publishing a classified list of the crimes committed by 54 of the prisoners who were arrested by Sergeant-major (afterwards Inspector) Alford in less than three years. I have been enabled to prepare this list from a complimentary general order issued by Major O'Halloran, Commissioner of Police, dated September 28, 1841, with which Mr. H. Alford furnished me. In this the Commissioner speaks of him in the highest terms, and reports the names of the 54 prisoners he took, and the crimes for which they were arrested.

This list was headed by Morgan, of whom I gave an account in No. II. :—
LIST of CRIMES.
Shooting with intent at the Sheriff, 1;
murder, 1;
horse-stealing, 9;
cattle-stealing, 8;
house-breaking, 7 ;
robbing a store, 1 ;
stealing money, 4;
stealing poultry, 1 ;
stealing in dwelling-houses, 6 ;
picking pockets, 1 ;
shop-lifting, 1 ;
receiving stolen goods, 1 ;
breaking out of gaol, 6 ;
convicts from convict colonies, 7.

The above list give an idea of the large influx of professed plunderers who had made their way to this young colony, when one police officer arrested such a number as his share in the time stated, and affords evidence of the necessity forced upon Governor Colonel Gawler to establish a large police force, and to erect an extensive and substantial gaol.

Captain Hindmarsh, our first Governor, had established a small force, which was enlarged and made complete by Colonel Gawler immediately after his arrival, in which duty he spared no expense or trouble; and the force he established has been from that time to the present day, notwithstanding occasional fallings off and disputes, one of the most efficient under the British Crown.

By the appointment of Major O'Halloran as Commissioner, and the judicious selection of inspectors, sub-officers, and privates, many of the herd of depredators who had intruded on us were either soon caught or dispersed. I believe I am correct in saying that the work under-taken by both officers and men was entirely new to them, but they were actuated by one principle, viz., to do their duty; and in that, they did not fail.

In No. 2 I gave an account of Mr. Alford's first action as a volunteer special constable, from which time he became a private member of the police force, which was then commenced, and rose through the various grades until he obtained the office of Inspector. His fuller account than I was able to give in Chapter 8 of the last days of Curran, Hughes, and Fox follows, and will be succeeded by accounts from him of crimes committed, captures made, and punishments inflicted, until South Australia became as it has continued— a pattern colony as to the orderly and industrious character of its inhabitants.

Whilst Curran, Hughes, and Fox were under the charge of Mr. Ashton in the then miserable and unsafe first Adelaide gaol he was informed one night by one of the guards, named Kennedy, that he had reason to believe by the riotous conduct of the prisoners after they were locked for the night that they meditated an outbreak, and that he feared they were tampering with their irons. Mr. Ashton immediately on hearing this report, sent to the horse-police barracks for a file of men with loaded carbines. After these were placed around the small and insecure building, from which prisoners had previously escaped, the door was opened by himself and the turn-key. The men being cautioned by him (he had at all times a marvellous influence over his prisoners), and also in dread of the carbines in the hands of the police, they allowed their irons to be examined without any resistance, but they were left for the night with extra guards over them.

In the morning Mr. Ashton waited upon the Governor, and requested that Curran, Hughes and Fox and two other prisoners who had received heavy sentences, might be removed and placed at the horse police barracks, in charge of the police under Inspector Tolmer. This request was complied with, and the five prisoners were removed accordingly, and confined in the sergeants' day room, to enter which it was necessary to pass through the guard-room. On one side of the day-room temporary beds were made up on the floor for the five prisoners, who were all ironed.

They were under the especial charge of Sergeant-major Alford, who had a mattress on a table in the same room, on which he rested at night. In the outer or guard-room, in bunks, slept three or more men with loaded carbines ready, a sentinel also pacing backwards and forwards between the rooms. In the first instance the window of the day-room was not guarded by iron bars. This insecurity, on the report of the Inspector, was ordered by the authorities to be rectified, and a smith was sent to do the work.

Shortly after this was done, after the prisoners were ordered to turn in, and the Sergeant-major was reclining on his mattress, the guard aroused him by touching his leg and whispered to him that the prisoners were filing their irons ; on which he got up quietly and passed into the guard-room, and said to the men, " I will take a drink of water," in a loud voice, to blind the prisoners, so that they should not suspect their actions to have been detected. He then charged the men in a whisper to have their pieces in their hands, and on his making a signal, to rush into the day-room and present their carbines, and on his giving the order, to fire if the prisoners did not surrender.

He gave them to understand he would return to his mattress and lie down as if all was right, and allow the prisoners to continue their work until he gave the signal, which he shortly did, by stripping off their blankets by a pull from the ends at their feet. They had, in order to effect their object, covered their heads with their blankets, and drawn up their knees so as to reach the rivets, and to disguise the working of the files kept up a loud snoring, feigning sleep. Five loaded pieces being presented at them, they obeyed the order to rise, and pass across the room, and seat themselves on a form, where they were kept till morning.

Inspector Tolmer had been called in, and in the morning communicated to Mr. Ashton the attempt to escape made by the prisoners. Mr. Ashton arrived with a smith and with heavy irons; the prisoner's lighter irons were taken off, and several of the rivets were found to have the heads filed off, and the heavier were substituted for the light ones. On the beds being searched, the tools they had used were found and some screws to be put in place of the rivets intended to be removed. The smith who had been previously employed to fix the iron bars on the windows was afterwards charged with dropping the implements and screws, the latter being the size of those used by him in fixing the bars. He stoutly denied the charge, but was not believed. The prisoners were well known to have friends and confederates outside who would render them any assistance in their power.

The prisoners, up to the night on which they made this wild attempt, had conducted themselves in a most quiet and orderly manner, in order to allay any suspicions as to such, an attempt but now they commenced to behave in a most disgusting and riotous style. Fox and two other prisoners were removed, and Curran and Hughes, the confederates of Fox, only were left. They continued their reckless behavior to the last ; sad, indeed, to be related of men who had so short a time to live, but which time had been unusually extended after sentence was passed on them, in the hope that they would use it in preparing for their departure, but without any apparent good.

The sentence of death, as we have stated in a previous chapter, was in the case of Fox commuted to transportation for life; but Hughes and Curran were left to suffer the last penalty of the law. The Colonial Chaplain (Mr. Howard) visited them in their cell, but for some unaccountable whim they took a dislike to this amiable clergyman, and wished to see the late Rev. T. Q. Stow, who attended them in the barracks and on the gallows, and was on the platform when the bolt was drawn. His efforts to arouse them to a proper sense of the awful position in which they stood were wholly fruitless.

On the fatal morning, on the executioner entering to pinion them, Hughes refused to submit to him, and addressed him in unmentionable language, calling on him to pull off his mask, and finished by knocking him down, when Mr. Ashton had to interfere. After being pinioned Hughes required a lighted pipe to he furnished him, and continued to smoke until he reached the gallows which was erected in the police yard to guard against a rescue.

At the gallows, Hughes bent himself so as to catch his pipe, which he cast away, saying, "No b— man shall smoke my pipe." At length Curran, who in action had always taken a leading part, now called on Hughes to be quiet, and die like a man. To the last this most reckless mortal continued his mad career, for at the sound of the withdrawing of the bolt setting free the scaffold flap he made a spring, and caught with his feet in the sides of the opening, and it was necessary for the hangman to seize his legs to pull him through the opened space ; thus, by resisting his inevitable fate, he lengthened his last sufferings in this stage of probation before he went to meet his Judge in the world to come in so unfit a frame of mind. So ends the history of Curran and Hughes.

It is necessary out of the course of events to give Mr. Alford's account of the time I met with his party encamped in the neighborhood of Mrs. Murdock's place, as mentioned by me in a previous chapter. He had been hastily dispatched with three troopers to catch Green and Wilson, who had first stolen, from Mr. John Hallett a quantity of rations. These men had previously worked for Mr. J. Hallett. With these rations they crossed the Mount Lofty Range, and visiting Mrs. Murdock, robbed her of two horses. It should here be mentioned that there was no concert or connection between the two gangs of robbers, i.e. Curran and his mates and Green and Wilson, although their outbreaks occurred about the same time.

Sergeant major Alford's party had been sent out with some of the horses unshod and not in condition for a long and severe journey. When I came upon them, Mr. Alford was absent. To his men I reported what I had heard at Mount Crawford as to the bush-rangers who had visited the hutkeeper there. I had received no description of them, or their names, nor had I heard of their doings near Gawler Town, and the police-troopers had not previously heard of their outbreak. The doings of Green and Wilson were unknown to me, nor do I remember if the policemen mentioned anything about those men to me.

Mr. Alford and his party had returned from the Wellington Crossing on hearing that the men they were pursuing had crossed ; when he deemed it necessary to have horses with shoes on, and to be well found in rations and outfit for a stern chase through such a desert and unsettled country as they would have to travel. He, therefore, decided to leave his men where I saw them and report himself at head-quarters.

The day after I saw his men, on his way to town with led horses, he called at a recent settler's place on the Onkaparinga River, Mr. Richardson's, and there had a drink of milk ; at the same time a young man, a stranger, was supplied with a drink. In that neighborhood Mr. Alford saw a shepherd, who told him that on his round the day previous he saw three men firing at a gum tree. It was singular that Mr. A. and his men also heard shots fired at a distance from their camp, and supposed sportsmen were out.

Mr. Alford continued towards town at a slow pace, and passed Crafer's public-house without calling, nor did he see anything remarkable in passing. As he approached town he first saw posted placards, and became aware that the Government had offered a reward of £200 for the arrest of Green and Wilson, whom he had missed. Before he reached Adelaide he met Inspector Edwards with a party of police, and from him he received information of the outbreak of Curran, Hughes, and Fox, and that there was a reward of £100 for the arrest of each of those men, and that he was after them.

Mr. A., on seeing their description, declared at once he had seen one of them drinking milk at the same time he got a drink at Mr. Richardson's, and now supposed the whole of them must have been on the road he had followed, and that two might have been before him at Crafers, and the one he saw, whom he pronounced to the Inspector to be Fox, would be behind him.

Having given to the Inspector a report of what he had ascertained of the men he had been after — that they had crossed the Murray, he was ordered to continue on and report himself. This report made at head quarters, he was instructed to go back the next day to bring in his men, as it was considered Green and Wilson, on fresh horses, had got too long a start to be overtaken. These men having made good their escape from this colony, the Government took the first opportunity by ship to forward to Melbourne information as to the crimes of Green and Wilson, a description of them, and the reward offered for their apprehension.

I should here remark that Inspector Edwards and party arrested Curran and Hughes and Fox, at Crafer's pub., as I have before related, so Mr. Alford, by a run of ill-luck, lost his chances of obtaining either of the rewards out. The above explanations and additional circumstances show how these concurrent outbreaks confused the police party and myself.

I now come to the successful arrest of Green and Wilson in Melbourne by two of our officers on their way from Sydney. These policemen, namely Corporal Wilkie and private Higgins, having landed some prisoners who had been transported to Sydney, had to take their passage back to Adelaide via Melbourne. As the vessel was stopping a few days there, these men spent their time on shore, and soon got wind of the reward out for Green and Wilson, and were not long in finding them and taking them before the Police Magistrate, who remanded them to Adelaide.

On their being charged at the Police Court in Adelaide with stealing Mrs. Murdock's horses, evidence was wanting to connect them with the stolen animals, and so they were remanded from time to time that the required evidence might be procured. Nevertheless, Corporal Wilkie and private Higgins were the lucky men who received the reward for their arrest.

The following proceedings, taken to convict these horse-stealers, will show that Governor Colonel Gawler was determined they should not escape. An intelligent and active officer, Sergeant N—— , was selected, and sent to Victoria to collect evidence and obtain the horses, to complete the case against the criminals and make perfect the work his predecessors had left undone. He had ample powers given him, and a letter from our Governor to the Officer Administering the Government of Victoria (or Port Phillip, as that settlement was then called), requesting that every assistance might be rendered to him. Sergeant N—— was accompanied on the expedition by Mr. Lorrimer, then manager of the station from which the horses had been stolen, that he might identify and claim them when found.

By this account it will be seen how vigorous the Government were under Colonel Gawler's administration, and how regardless of expense in bringing to book the authors of the depredations which were now becoming so common. There is one remarkable fact, that a sufficient number of men with talents specially qualified to carry out the determinations of Government in such an early stage of the colony should have been found. The sergeant and his companion started for Melbourne in a small vessel named Thirteen. The passage was most boisterous throughout. On arriving off Port Phillip Heads, the tempestuous weather and heavy sea obliged the captain to bear up for Sydney, his final destination, and there our passengers had to land and take their passage back to Melbourne by the first sailing ship bound there. On arriving at Melbourne our officer presented his credentials, on which a mounted trooper was placed at his service. He soon discovered the public-house at which Green and Wilson put up, and where they disposed of the horses, and was informed that three men were engaged in the sale of them, two answering to the description of Green and Wilson, and a third man who represented himself to be their master. As to the acting gentleman-master, our officer got a particular description of him, and he decided him to be Morgan, who, having been transported for life from our colony, was reported to have escaped from Van Diemen's Land, and was supposed to have landed at or near Portland Bay. In coming to this conclusion, Sergeant N. was not supported by one of the Melbourne inspectors; who held a contrary opinion ; but he acted on his own judgment, founded on the description gained; as to the extreme tallness of the man, his pleasant countenance, the color of his eyes and hair, and the great probability of his having been picked up by his old comrades, Green and Wilson, as they passed through the Portland Bay district.

As will be seen in the sequel he was correct in his assumption. It now became doubly important that this third man should be secured. From the landlord spoken of he obtained much information, also from the police, and on following this up step by step, he heard that a horse answering the description of one of the stolen ones had been seen in the possession of a sporting innkeeper, well known in all the colonies.

On him he waited, and on the question being put to him, " Do you know anything of such and such a horse ?" he answered, " I neither know nor care." "Then you may expect to hear from me again," replied Sergeant N— .

After this, our active officer on a visit to the horse police barracks seeing the horses brought in from the paddock to be fed, on casting his eyes over them, saw a horse which he thought answered to the description of one of the stolen ones, and asked if that was a police horse? The answer was, " No, that horse belongs to an hotel-keeper, and is sent here to be under treatment by our farrier. His owner is: Mr. —. " Now, this being the individual from whom he had received such an unsatisfactory answer to his question, he felt the scent was get-ting hot.

The horse was immediately caught, and on the water brush being applied to his long coat, at the place where Murdock's station brand should be, it was visible. The horse was then taken in charge for the rightful owner. On the following morning the overseer confirmed the claim, and the case was taken before the Police Magistrate, and on a razor being employed, the part was shaved, and the brand shown perfect. A decision in favor of the claimant was made, and an order given to remove the horse to Adelaide, much to the annoyance of the sporting landlord.

This first step successfully gained, and also some information of the probable whereabouts of the other horse, arrangements for a bush trip were made, on which our officer was accompanied by a mounted trooper. The scent being closely followed, the second horse was found in the possession of a sheep-farmer, at a station on the River Plenty, and was given up.

To make the case complete it was now only necessary to secure the third man, whom our officers continued to believe to be the escaped Morgan, although very slight traces had yet been found of him. After riding many miles and visiting many stations the officers made a station on the Rocky River, at about one hundred miles from Melbourne. To this station the scent had been followed up, however slight and contradictory the evidence appeared.

On entering the men's hut, amongst a number of assigned men, Sergeant N— discovered him whom he was seeking. On challenging him by the name of Morgan he denied that was his name, and said he had never been in South Australia. He was now seen with only one arm. Nevertheless, although the sergeant had not heard that he had been so maimed, he took him into custody.

It may be mentioned here that it was afterwards reported to our officer that the Melbourne police had some months previously made an attack on a party of bushrangers, and after an exchange of shots the bushrangers had escaped with one of their number wounded. This was now found to be Morgan; at a subsequent period he confessed that he was the man whom the police wounded, and said that a shepherd had cut off the shattered part of his arm, and bound it up. It was still a green, unhealed wound at the time of his arrest. He had adopted the quiet life of a shepherd in the hopes of recruiting himself, and of getting his arm healed. In this miserable state he had to walk a hundred miles to Melbourne. Sergeant N — was unable to procure any conveyance, and at that time the roads were not formed. In this shattered state this iron man, as I have called him, walked the whole distance, and with apparent ease. I must reserve the finish of the work of Sergeant N— for another number.