Bennett Killer with 300 Names

1898: The Scandalous Escape of the Gatton Murderers
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4835-4087-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

The Man with 300 Names expands on Stephanie's seminal earlier work, The Gatton Murders, and examines the turmoil in the young colony of Queensland in the years preceding the Gatton murders. While the world was wrestling with the new concept of socialism, western Queensland was to become a crucible of discontent, culminating in the Shearers Wars, the birth of the world's first Labor Party, and a promise of a utopian new beginning for some. Into this tinderbox step Michael Murphy and his eventual killer, a man with 300 names.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bennett, Stephanie

Leseproben

CHAPTER 4 The Rumblings Socialism is a form of government under which the ownership by the state of all means of production, distribution, and exchange is both the philosophy and the law. The ideology goes back thousands of years and in the 1840’s it became organized as a political movement in working class Europe, its popularity again declining after about ten years through lack of general support. In the mid-1880’s enthusiasm was re-kindled in England, the interest spreading to Queensland, chiefly through the writings of socialist Frances Adams, an English journalist employed by the Brisbane Courier, and another young Englishman William Lane, publisher of the Worker, as well as a radical weekly newspaper, vociferously anti-Chinese, called the Boomerang. Joe Quinn was briefly to adopt the names ‘Adams,’ ‘Lane’ and ‘Drake,’ (Lane’s partner at ‘The Worker’) among his inventory of aliases at periods over the next few years. Lane’s ultimate dream was to establish a socialist commune in Argentina or Paraguay in South America which aimed to be a working man’s paradise. As editor of ‘The Worker’, he vigorously promoted his proposals for the Queensland colony’s conversion to a socialist state. An occasional contributor to ‘The Worker’ was James Martin, a former Irish immigrant who, like Joe Quinn, had moved to the Balonne district of south west Queensland, where after a few years as a boundary rider and shearer, he had become an organizer for the Australian Labour Federation. An article written by him which demonstrated his political tenets was published in ‘The Worker’ on page 2 on 7th April 1894, in which he advocated the establishment of a ‘Labour Bank’. The shares would be sold for £1 each, which would finance the purchase of suitable blocks of land to establish settlements for workers, he wrote, with ballots to be held to select men to work the land. The land itself would be chosen by a majority of the shareholders with all men working for the same wage. A town would be laid out with a store, a saddler and other essential services, he proposed, with cheaper goods for shareholders. A ‘Bushman’s Home’ was envisaged with a large restaurant and lodging house, the occupants of the settlement growing all their own food, the surplus to be sold for moderate prices. There would be libraries, where the occupants could learn the work of the great reformers, and a Town Hall where important debates would take place. Continual education and amusements would be provided, though it was stipulated that no gambling would be permitted. Economically it would become easier for men to marry, with a large amount of capital staying in the hands of the workers. On and on went the vision he offered … His scheme would deliver a death-blow to swag-carrying, he declared. ‘There is no life harder or more degrading’ he wrote, ‘than aimlessly wandering about the country, swag up, for months as I have done, as hundreds – I might say thousands – of you have done. Men willing to put down £50 each, with the Secretary of the Labour Federation’s assistance, we will make arrangements for them to start a settlement of their own on co-operative communistic lines’. Many of those who subscribed to the doctrine of ‘collectivism’ or ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ as expounded by Karl Marx saw the uneven distribution of wealth in the community as a form of injustice and discrimination. Labour, they held, was the sole source and measure of value. Any article had value because of the labour expended on it, and its value was exactly proportional to the amount of labour necessary to produce it. In fact the more extreme advocates would have liked to see money abolished altogether. By the beginning of the 1890’s, with most of the large sheep runs in western Queensland fenced, boundary riders were employed by the pastoralists to patrol the borders of the properties, checking the fences and looking after the sheep. Specialist shearers and labourers were hired for a couple of months every year to shear, each man belonging to his own union, (the QSU, or QLU – Queensland Labourers’ Union for shed-hands). A shearer was paid for the number of sheep he had shorn, £1 or a little less per hundred. Before shearing started at a station, each man signed an agreement approved by the union specifying the conditions and payment under which he would work. Starting at daybreak a good worker could shear eighty to ninety sheep a day, although there were expenses to be paid out of the money he earned, such as for the purchase of shears, transport to the shed, food, fines for any infringements that may have occurred, and of course union tickets. In December 1890 the Queensland Pastoralists Association settled and arranged a new agreement amongst themselves outlining the terms and conditions to be presented for signature by the shearing unions for the 1891 season. The agreement contained several items the unions found objectionable including a proposal to cut the wages of casual hands, the pastoralists also demanding ‘freedom of contract’, that is, the right to employ anyone they wished, whether a unionist or not. Unionists insisted on working only with other unionists, fearing that the pastoralists would use ‘freedom of contract’ terms to employ Chinese to shear their sheep, undercutting the wages of white shearers. Soon after the new year on 6th January the organizer for the QLU George Taylor met Pastoralists’ Association President Fairbairn, and notified him of the union’s refusal to work under the new agreement. On the following day, 180 heavily armed unionists made camp five miles from Clermont at Sandy Creek. Next day the Pastoralists Association decided to wait until the end of the month when, if local men still refused to work, other labour would be obtained. Eight days later the union issued its first manifesto and a week later started a branch at Roma, appointing a man named Ned Murphy as Secretary. On 27th January the Pastoralists Society replied to the Union Manifesto with a refusal to endorse it, at the same time deciding to dispatch 200 shearers from Victoria, demanding guarantees that they would not be molestedxv. The incursion during this period by the Amalgamated Shearers Union into the territory of the Queensland body was a sore point, with the national union providing shearers for Oakwood station near Augathella. The Queensland Pastoral Employers Association (PEA) offered to shear under ASU rules if the union would establish offices in Charleville and Barcaldine, the ASU agreeing to set up a branch at Charleville. By May a conference was arranged between the two unions (QSU and ASU) which reached a compromise solution and peace between them was temporarily establishedxvi. During 1890 discontent simmered within the general ranks of the colony’s labour force. A class war between workers and capital threatened to erupt, though QSU Secretary Bill Kelty, a mild-mannered man and dedicated socialist was strongly against the use of violence to win the struggle, as were most of the union officials. The Queensland Labourers’ Union, which had been formed in 1888 at Barcaldine, worked closely with the QSU obtaining significantly higher wages for their unskilled members, with no competition from Chinese workers whom they refused to work with. There was not much money at the union’s disposal for a fight, the Maritime Strike having cost it about £10,000 during 1890. At the QSU’s December meeting it was arranged that two men, an official named Jack Meehan and Billy Saunders, the latter Chairman of the QSU’s December meeting, would, accompanied by William Lane, editor of ‘The Worker,’ negotiate with the ASU in Adelaide a common agreement for the 1892 season, but with no relaxation of the rules involving Chinese or non-union members. In fact these rules were to be strengthened. The men were also charged with the responsibility of establishing the General Labourers’ Union. Their efforts were successful. Later a man would be imprisoned under the name ‘Thomas Meehan,’ his brother also adopting the names ‘Meehan’ and ‘Sheehan’ under which he too would serve time.xvii These men were Joe Quinn and his brother Martin. Why Quinn adopted Jack Meehan’s name is impossible to say, though the name ‘Meehan’ obviously carried weight in the circles in which he moved. Shearers Strikers’ Library near Balcaldine 1891 Most shearers had honest intentions and realistic concerns Later also, Joe Quinn was to use the name ‘Claude Wilson’ as an alias for ‘Thomas Meehan.’ Claude was the young crippled son of an Ipswich schoolmaster named Wilson, whose gun he (Quinn) apparently stole, using it to murder young Alfred Hill at Darra in 1898. His use of Claude Wilson’s name connects him with that crime. There can be no doubt about it. Thomas Meehan and Joe Quinn are the same man: distinctive genital scars matching, deformed little finger of the left hand the same, matching colouring and physique, the same weight and height … they are the one man. The police descriptions of the two men exactly match. Joe Quinn in April 1900 would serve a manslaughter sentence under the name Meehan for yet another killing. But that was still some years into the future, and the first seeds of what was to be one of Australia’s most tragic and horrifying crimes had yet to be sown. On 1st February 1891 the Central District Council of the Australian Labour...