Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (41 page)

As recorded by Raffaello Carboni, ‘The more the diggers felt annoyed at it, the more our Camp officials persisted in goading us, to render our yoke palatable by habit.’

And the diggers are indeed outraged. One law-abiding digger, Thomas Pierson, writes in his diary with great feeling, if not necessarily great spelling:

‘When the New Governor was here he made firm promises to the miners that he was going to study their interests – but since he has gone his orders do not correspond with his promises . . . – he does not allow the miners to be represented in the Legislation, and ordered the traps, or constables and Comissioners to scour all over the diggers 5 days in each week to make every one show them their Lycense and if they find any one without a Lycense they take them up make them pay a fine of £5 or one months Labour on the roads taken no excuse. It is most disgusting to see the Governors emisarys vomit themselves forth from their camp five days in a week to hunt down the diggers & others for their Lycense in front of is 16 Bullys on horseback with muskets Loaded & a sword – and about fifty on foot each with a loaded club and soon as they find any one without a Lycense he has either to follow those with the club – or the horsemen whitchever happened to catch them – I have seen poor fellows who were unable to buy a Lycense compelled to follow after a horse half a day wherever they went exposed to all on the diggings – it is a criminal offence here to be poor, sutch a sample of liberty speaks for itself, needs no comment and yet they will tell you they are the finest people in the world.

‘Rule Britton Rule the slave

Till Liberty points you out a grave.’

Friday, 6 October 1854, that’s the way to serve those sweeps

From the top of the valley, the effect of seeing so many scattered campfires blazing makes the scene look like a thousand candles in the night. The darkness takes away the scunge, the mess, the rubble and leaves only those cheery points of light. It’s another night at the diggings . . .

The day’s work is done, and for most of the workers, once they have finished their dinner of damper and meat washed down by tea, they can enjoy their one moment of leisure, the time they have been looking forward to all day. On this chilly, moonlit night, some simply relax by the fires, while others riotously celebrate their luck at one of the hotels, while still others drink away their rising desperation that they have found nothing for days.

From just down towards the Gravel Pits a ways comes the noise of several drunken diggers laughing uproariously at some joke unknown. Up on the hill there is a fight going on, with grunts and groans and the sounds of fists on flesh, all of it punctuated by the barking of dogs and the odd shrill scream of encouragement – presumably the wife of one of the men involved in the fight. Or maybe it is one of the women having a donnybrook with another woman. Or a man . . .

Who knows? On it goes, just like any other evening, with nothing to mark it as special. By midnight, though, things have mostly fallen quiet – most of the fires have blinked out, most of the diggers retired to their tents, and even the dogs have stopped barking.

Softly, softly now the whole site is about to fall completely quiet when suddenly more drunken shouting breaks out: Who? Where?

Why, it sounds like that cheery young fellow James Scobie, and I think he must be up at the grog shop of that scoundrel, Bentley – still the worst Vandemonian in the valley, though many have pushed him close – the Eureka Hotel. There is more shouting, and it includes someone divesting himself of the view that Mrs Bentley is ‘a whore’. After that there is silence for a time, followed by the sound of a door opening . . . many feet running . . . a scuffle and swearing . . . a long, low expiratory
groooaaaaan
. . . followed by a heavy thud and then silence, broken only for the people in some tents by the sound of one man – but not two – running away.

What is going on? That very question is one that will be the subject of much speculation in days, weeks and even many decades to come.

What is definitely known on the night, as some men take their lanterns to investigate, is that earlier this evening Scobie had run into a friend from Scotland, Peter Martin, and the two countrymen had been beside themselves with joy to be so met. To celebrate, they had shared a wee drink in Scobie’s tent, and then another wee one, and why not a wee one more?

‘For Auld Lang Syne, my friendsssss, for Auld Lang Syne . . . We’ll take a cup of kindness yet . . . for the sake of Auld Lang Syne

And then more and more . . .

At midnight, when the drink starts to run out, Scobie has another idea. Spying the light on the hill through his tent flaps, he says, ‘Let us have some more to drink.’

And so, staggering, they make their way beneath a moon shining ‘as light as day’ to the grandest establishment on all the diggings, the still-lit Eureka Hotel for – why not? – one lasht wee drinkie. As a matter of fact, Scobie has been there that very afternoon, to sell some gold to a gold buyer at the public bar – which is one of the reasons he is so flush with cash – but now he wants to return to satisfy a thirst for alcohol that just won’t quit.

Not put off by the fact that the doors have just been locked and the establishment is closed for business, Scobie starts to pound on the door and is refused admittance by the publican, Bentley, who appears to take a very dim view of this young pup’s carry-on, as does his wife. Scobie appears not to care and shtill wants a little drink. After a further exchange of insults and the sound of breaking glass, a female voice is heard to cry, ‘How dare you break my window?’ From the sounds of it, Scobie is thrown into the street for his trouble.

And then?

And then the facts are in dispute. What is immediately thought to have happened, however, is that after Scobie and Martin head back towards Scobie’s tent, they have only proceeded some 150 yards when Bentley and his wife emerge from the hotel, accompanied by no fewer than four of their employees, Thomas Farrell, William Hance, William Duncan and Thomas Mooney, who all set off in hot pursuit. As he runs, Bentley is seen to pick up a shovel from outside Mrs Welch’s tent and lead the charge.

Mrs Bentley is heard to say, ‘That’s the man that broke the window.’

Then come the sounds of a serious beating taking place – sickening thuds, groans, bodies hitting the ground – before there is a cry and one man, at least, is heard running away in the darkness. Shortly afterwards, the pursuing party walks back towards the hotel, and a female voice says, ‘That’s the way to serve those sweeps.’

The sound of a spade being thrown to the ground is heard. When all is quiet and Martin comes back to check on his friend, it is to find the badly bloodied and unmoving Scobie still lying there. Martin shakes him by the shoulder, but there is no response. Panicking, he puts his hand on Scobie’s chest and though relieved to feel the heart beating – just – he now notices blood pouring from his fellow Scot’s mouth and nose. Martin immediately seeks help from the only medical man within coo-ee he knows of: Dr Alfred Carr, a middle-aged English medico of somewhat damaged reputation for the fact that two years earlier he had arrived on a catastrophic ship,
Araminta
,
and was found medically responsible for the deaths of many people.

Hurrying to Scobie, Dr Carr finds that there no longer seems to be a pulse. What is most urgently needed is light, and as the only place available is the Eureka Hotel, where all this started, that is where Scobie is carried. (In fact, it is a very familiar place to Dr Carr, who is a friend of Bentley’s. He is so constant a patron – he had been at the bar that very day – that he is very close to being part of the furniture.)

Now it is one thing to hit a man on the head with a shovel in a blind fury, and quite another to gaze upon your handiwork a short time later when, with a terrible bruise on his head from where the shovel struck, that man appears to be
dead
.
After the door to the hotel is opened and light falls upon Scobie for the first time, Dr Carr could swing a dead cat around him and not hit anybody, so reluctant are Bentley and his brethren to be anywhere near. At least one of Bentley’s men, however, Farrell – the one-time Chief Constable and Prosecutor at Castlemaine – is prevailed upon to help when, in the fashion of the day, the doctor cuts Scobie on his arm in the hope that bleeding will bring him back to consciousness. But there is nothing. Nor is there any response when Dr Carr vigorously rubs the Scot’s skin with cloths to warm him, and not even the tiniest cough is heard when the doctor pours strong alcohol down the supine man’s open throat. Certainly there is a wound left by the knife, but just like the gash in his head, not an ounce of blood seeps forth. There is no escaping the conclusion: Scobie is dead.

7 October 1854, out of the mouths of babes

The appalling news spreads rapidly. Scobie is dead. Killed by that bastard Bentley and his evil thugs. Uproar! Scobie had been a popular figure and his
murder
– for that is what it was, whatever the courts might say – must be avenged!

Few diggers are more appalled than Peter Lalor, who had been a friend of the young Scotsman and had come to know him well as they worked adjoining claims over the previous months. Beyond feeling sick at heart for the fate of James Scobie, he is devastated for Scobie’s brother, George, and their parents in Scotland, as he knows of George’s promise to them. Thus, Lalor follows closely the workings of the law thereafter, in the hope that justice will prevail and punish the people who have done this terrible thing.

Indeed, this very afternoon the inquest is held across the gully and up the hill at the Government Camp, with local doctor David John Williamson acting as coroner and – hopefully – a dozen plus one good men and true sworn in to determine ‘when, where, how and by what means’ Scobie died.

James Bentley’s evidence is firm: he had not even left the hotel the night before, and, as a matter of fact, had not even known of the death until the body was brought to the hotel, at which point, of course, he and his staff had done all possible to save the young man’s life.

‘You did not leave your room when first disturbed?’ the Coroner follows up.

‘No, not until aroused by Dr Carr,’ Bentley says flatly.

‘Did you hear any noise,’ a member of the jury asks, ‘between hearing the first disturbance and when Dr Carr came?’

‘No.’

He is supported in this contention by his rather nervous night-watchman, Thomas Mooney, who seems unaccountably pale.

‘I was on duty last night,’ he says falteringly, his eyes flickering. ‘I heard some men knocking at the door and heard Duncan the Barman speak and one of the men answered “all right”. The men then went away. There were two of them. Some time afterwards Dr Carr came with the deceased and asked to bring him into the house. I heard no noise between the time when the men made the first noise to when Dr Carr came. No one left the house after the men made the disturbance.’

The ‘Manager at the Bar’ of the bowling alley next door, Everand Gad, states emphatically, ‘I can positively swear that Mr and Mrs Bentley did not leave their bed-room, from the time I heard the first noise, until Dr Carr came at the front door to say that a man had been killed outside.’

Neither he nor the Bentleys ever left the hotel, and he knows
nothing
of who might have killed Scobie.

It is then, however, that a ten-year-old lad, Barnard Welch, is called to testify.

Young Barnard’s intelligent account, delivered with a respect for the courts beyond his years, is graphic and – in its way – devastating: ‘I live within about thirty yards from where Deceased was found dead. Mr Bentley, Mrs Bentley and three or four other men came last night between one and two o’clock and stood by the corner of our tent for about three minutes and then went on after picking something up which I thought was a spade, I do not know which of the party picked it up. They went a little way on when I heard a scuffle and a blow.’

Most outraged and uncomfortable at this testimony is Bentley himself, but there is a bigger outrage to come. For, against all legal precedent and over the protest of the jurors, the coroner allows Bentley to effectively cross-examine the young lad.

‘Will you swear positively that you saw me last night at your tent?’

‘No, I will not swear positively, but I believe it was Mr and Mrs Bentley I saw and heard. I do not know who the other parties were.’

The legal outrages continue. While Dr Carr gives his own testimony, Bentley sits right among the jurors and whispers to one of them. That man is Henry Green, a thoroughly disreputable character who is well known to prop up the bar at the Eureka Hotel every night.

Watching it all closely, his fury rising every minute, is none other than Peter Lalor, who had felt so protective of young Scobie, only to have this happen. All he can hope for now is justice and yet, from the looks of what is happening right before his eyes, there will be no justice for the dead Scot.

That opinion is confirmed when, as the jury retires, Lalor sees the Coroner speaking to Bentley ‘in a distant part of the room’ and doubly confirmed when the jury gives its verdict. It has failed to achieve unanimity in the view held by most of them – that Scobie had been murdered by Bentley and his accomplices – and without that unanimity, must return an open finding. Yes, Scobie had died ‘by a blow, but by whom it was given is at present unknown’.

The Coroner is clearly pleased and announces, rather pompously, ‘Gentlemen of the jury, you could find no other verdict.’

The gallery, however, is not pleased, and nor are the rest of those on the diggings when they find out. Unknown?
Unknown?
Every bastard knows it was that bastard Bentley and his thugs what done it! How could the jury have come up with such a result?

By the next day a public committee is formed, which most particularly includes the furious Peter Lalor, and together with no fewer than nine jurors from the coronial inquiry, he is one of the signatories to a letter to the editor that soon appears in the columns of
The Ballarat Times
,
bitterly criticising the conduct of the coroner, who had so clearly ignored ‘any evidence that might serve to incriminate any members of Mr Bentley’s establishment’. They demand that the case be properly heard in a court of law.