15 June 1933

Seventy-six years ago the coast at Port MacDonnell was the scene of one of the coldest-blooded murders in the history of South Australian crime. This was the slaying of Captain Broadfoot, of the barque Jane Lovet. The story is told below.

FORGOTTEN CRIME OF THE FIFTIES

CALLOUS MURDER OF CAPTAIN BROADFOOT

Some time during 1857 a barque, the Jane Lovet, became disabled about three miles out from Port MacDonnell. The sails were torn, and the ship had lost her rudder. Slowly she drifted to shore. On the third day she became wedged, on the coast, and the cook was able to climb over the side to gather some driftwood to prepare breakfast. Captain Broadfoot, who had a paralysed arm, called the men together, and found they were all safe. Deciding to stay with the ship himself, he ordered the mate to take the men and endeavor to reach Portland. From Portland the mate was to take a vessel to Melbourne, and then return to MacDonnell to collect the salvage from the Jane Lovet. The crew, accordingly, took leave of the skipper.

After six days of loneliness on the practically deserted barque. Captain Broadfoot saw two men walking along the shore. He greeted them heartily. They told him they were two shepherds employed on the Mount Schank station. The captain explained the cause of the ship being there. After that the shepherds visited the ship each day. They were always treated well by the captain. Eventually the strangers, Crawford and Stevens, learned there were 400 sovereigns in the vessel's safe. They made up their minds that they would get them. One day the captain asked for a hair-cut, and one of the shepherds volunteered not only to cut his hair, but to shave him. The unsuspecting Captain Broadfoot sat on a cask on the sand, with a blanket round his neck. This was the opportunity the volunteer barber was seeking. He cut the captain's throat.

Not long afterwards, the overseer from Mount Schank came seeking his men. He discovered them about 100 yards from the boat. In reply to his questions, the men stated the captain, becoming despondent, had committed suicide. The overseer asked to see the body. When viewing it he discovered the razor, in the captain 's useless hand. The overseer said nothing about this suspicious find, but rode to Mount Gambier, and informed the police. When they arrived on the scene the men had parted company. One police man followed a sheep track until he found Stevens, whom he arrested. Following the tracks of another mob of sheep, a second police officer came to a hut. In a yard outside there was a mob of sheep, and smoke was rising from the chimney of the hut. The trooper was not certain that he had the right man. So he tethered his horse to a tree. Left his gun there, too and advanced towards the hut. But Crawford, who was watching, rushed towards the gun and ordered the policeman inside the house, threatening to blow out his brains. When, some time later, the policeman escaped from the hut, his horse had gone, and so had his man.

Next day the officer's horse was found on an adjoining station, but one of the station animals was missing. That was the last the police heard of Crawford. Some time later the station horse returned home. In the meantime, Stevens was taken to Adelaide. On the way there he escaped from his custody. Coming to a butcher's shop, while the butcher was in the act of chopping meat, Stevens placed his handcuffed hands on the block, and asked to have them cut through. The butcher refused, and, during the argument which followed, the police arrived, and Stevens was again arrested. When taken to Adelaide, he turned Queen's evidence. It was then learned that the two shepherds were ex-convicts. Stevens said Crawford was the murderer, because, in his early days, he had been a barber in London. It was thought that Crawford took the money and buried it somewhere. — 'Interested,' Allandale East.

Another account of this story can be found at 22 August 1935

'Catching The Thief'

Every bush community at one time or another finds itself faced with the problem of the sneak-thief, and if is a most baffling thing. There is no clue to the identity of the thief, and as a result every settler comes more or less under the suspicion of his neighbors until the identity of the thief is established beyond all doubt.

I once found myself one of a community which was pestered by a series of baffling thefts, and for a long time nobody had any idea who the thief might be. Every one reported losses, but the local police constable was a dull man. devoid of the faintest ideas about investigation, and so we went on losing fowls, calves, cut firewood, wattle bark, tools, and other property.

Gradually suspicion narrowed down until it centred upon three families who lived together in a sort of little settlement, and then we found ourselves up against another problem in the shape of almost incredible cunning. Do what we would, we could never sheet anything home to those families, and thus we were driven to let them get away with their ill-gotten gains time after time.

Finally we thought that we had them at last, when a squatter found some full-grown lambs among their sheep, which he was able to positively identify as his own, but he suddenly refused to lay any information, and was satisfied with the return of his lambs. When questioned as to the reason he gave an evasive reply about the matter, and so we were no farther forward.

Another squatter traced some unbranded calves to this same little community, but he, too, suddenly refused to prosecute. And then the thieves made the mistake which led to their undoing, for they stole two dozen rabbit traps belonging to old Donald Kinross.

To all the district Kinross was something of a mystery. He was a dour old Scot, living alone in a little stone hut, doing very little work, yet he always seemed to have plenty of money. For a long time he had been suspected of being the very man who was responsible for the thefts, until it was noticed that they continued while he was in the Adelaide Hospital recovering from an accident.

I am of the opinion that he had at one time been in the Canadian police force though I have only a chance remark which he once made as evidence. At any rate, when his traps were stolen it meant that the thieves had unwittingly put on to their trail a man whose anger smouldered like one of the peat fires of his native land, for from that time Kinross set himself out to bring them to book.

Weeks passed, then he informed the local constable that he was in a position to lay the thieves by the heels. The constable was at first inclined to think that it would be a waste of time to try to do so, but Kinross insisted, so the constable accompanied him down to the little settlement.

Kinross walked up to one of the men, and bluntly demanded to know where he had been the previous night. The man stated that he had been at home playing cards, and called his neighbors in to back him up. 'Ye lie,' retorted Kinross. 'Ye went oot ta Henderside's scrub in a dray, and stole half o' yon heap o' wattle bark.'

Again they replied that he was mistaken; all three swore that it was part of what they had cut on their own land. Kinross walked over to the stack of bark, selected a bundle, cut the lashing, and pulled out a strip of bark. Inside it was scratched the name of the man who had really cut it!

'I put him to this wodge,' he explained to the constable. 'When he was cuttin' this bit bark, and swore him to secrecy. See here, and here again— bundle after bundle o' it wi' the man's name on a score o' strips. I swore t' maself that I'd lay ye by the heels, an' I've done it. There's not a night these last five weeks that I've not watched what ye did through ma night-glasses from yon hill. Constable, under this onion bed ye'll find the set o' harrows which they stole from Rathman's paddock on Saturday last — I saw them go out and return, although the rain was just teemin' down.'

Turning to the three crestfallen thieves, he went on, 'An' it bein' winter ye'll not be able to get anyone to drop the prosecution by threatenin' to set fire to their grass, like ye did wi' Laidlaw and Baker when they found their lambs an' calves runin' in your paddocks. Ye'll find that ye'r numbers are up this time, ye domned rogues, ye!'

I attended the session of the circuit court when the three men were tried, and then the whole story came out when Kinross entered the witness box and told how he had dogged those three men with untiring patience, night after night, as they set out to steal stuff which they had marked down during the day, little dreaming that a human bloodhound followed them everywhere.

He told of traps which he had set to catch them directly he knew what they had selected to steal; when he found them looking at some grown lambs from the shelter of a patch of scrub he had immediately got in touch with the owner of the stock and had helped him muster his lambs and tattoo an identification mark inside their ears.

He had laid many booby traps for them, and had done everything so skilfully that the thieves had never suspected that he was dogging them. They spent the next twelve months in gaol; the stealing stopped as if by magic, and did not start again after they were released— they evidently had learned their lesson!

I have purposely altered all names in this as the descendants of those three light fingered gentlemen are today respected members of the community. But anyone who lived in my district around 1900 will remember the case; those three thieves must have often thought that they were mighty expensive rabbit traps which they stole from Donald Kinross! — 'Larrapinta.'

In The Grip Of Drought

There was a big drought from 1889 to 1901. It never rained for eighteen months.

In the north, Farina was in for a share of the trouble. The stations around went back to camels and goats, and sent the horses and sheep away to get feed. They had to remove the sheep from Mounpeowie head station down to Beltana. They were dying in hundreds.

The drovers were accompanied by two waggons, one with hay on to feed the sheep, which had to go by slow stages, and the other to carry those too weak to travel and the skins of those which died.

Even the kangaroo perished, and the top branches of the mulga and white bush trees had to be cut down for feed for the camels and goats.

The mail in those days from Farina to Innamincka, via Leslie's Well, was conveyed in a buckboard buggy, with the letter bag inside a big box with royal mail printed on the side. As the water stages were a long way apart it was not uncommon for the horses, when they got near the drinking places, to bolt and capsize the box. Then away like a streak would go the royal mail, until the horses got their drink, when they were brought back to pick the box up.— E. M. Pahl, Verran.

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1933, June 15). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article90886432