We Are the Rebels (22 page)

Even so, it was a world first, making Australia the most democratic nation on earth.
America would not pass the constitutional amendment that ensured these liberties
until 1920. British women would not enjoy such rights until 1928. Aboriginal women
(and men), of course, would not be fully enfranchised until the 1960s. But Australia's
world-leading position on women's formal political inclusion was born on the goldfields
of Ballarat.

COURTROOM 1

Catherine Bentley was one woman who was definitely not pressing for membership of
the Ballarat Reform League in mid-November. The only acceptance she needed was from
a jury of her peers.

On 19 October, Catherine had been arrested after her former servant, Moody, gave
evidence against her and claimed
the reward of £300 for information leading to a
conviction in the Scobie murder. On 1 November Catherine was transported to Melbourne,
where her husband was already in jail.

By and large this made the diggers happy, but not everyone was thrilled. There were
those who, like Ellen Young, believed that the Bentleys were being unduly scapegoated
for wider feelings of
envy, hatred and malice
towards the culture of corruption:
i.e. the Camp officials who were on the take, and those who were paying them off.

Certain merchants, storekeepers, diggers and residents of Ballarat and Melbourne
got up petitions to proclaim James Bentley's good character and innocence. One of
the jurors at the original inquest signed a petition stating that
there has been
heaped on Bentley's head a greater amount of odium than he at all deserves.

But by now the government needed a show trial to demonstrate their impartiality,
and Catherine would have to play her part.

A journalist for the Argus reported with alarm that when Catherine was conveyed by
steamer from Geelong Prison to Melbourne to stand her trial, she was handcuffed all
the way. Her keeper, Detective Cummings, refused
even to allow her to get dinner
regardless of the fact that she was by now seven months pregnant with her second
child.

Mrs Bentley has been moving in a respectable line of life
, protested the journalist.
She is not convicted of any offence, and it is not likely that she will be.
The only
cause to justify
such harsh treatment
and
cowardly brutality
, argued the journalist,
was
the supposition that it was in accordance with the public feeling to heap insults
on a defenceless woman
. Cummings' behaviour was
an insult to the community
, especially
as the public sentiment aroused by the case demonstrated
not so much a virulent hatred
of the alleged offenders as a mark that the people of the colony will not stand for
the abuse of power and privilege by judicial authorities
.

Others similarly came forward to declare that ‘the Bentley affair' was simply another
instance in a long line of disregard for the rule of law by the Ballarat authorities.

Three hundred diggers came to Melbourne for the Bentleys' trial before Justice Redmond
Barry, but it proved rather anticlimactic. The most scintillating drama occurred
when Catherine was given a chair during her cross-examination in order to rest her
swollen body. Dr Carr, who was there to give evidence, assessed the exhausted woman's
condition and Justice Barry called an adjournment for Catherine
to have proper attention
from the doctor. (No newspaper reported that she was pregnant.)

Apart from that, there were no shocks, scandals or bombshells to entertain the amassed
audience. The circumstantial evidence was piled up against the Bentleys. The best
John Ireland could do for the defence was to ask Mary Ann Welch whether she had any
ill feeling towards Mrs Bentley that might have motivated her testimony. No, said
Mary Ann.

In the end, Ireland could only argue that his clients had already
suffered enough
in losing all their property and being held up to
public execration
. And he subtly
pointed out that the most guilty-looking person, according to the evidence, was Catherine
Bentley, not the men.
If found guilty of this most serious charge
, Ireland told
the jury,
they must expiate this accidental calamity by death, involving too the
life of a woman
.

Would Catherine Bentley be the first woman to be hanged in Victoria?

Attorney-General Stawell had no problem with that. Though the reasonable man might
be
unwilling to believe that
a woman had gone out to commit murder
, Stawell thundered,
the jury should lay aside all such considerations
.

In summing up, Justice Barry addressed the jury for over an hour. The jury deliberated
for 45 minutes. At 9pm on Saturday evening the foreman delivered the verdict. James
Bentley, Farrell and Hance: guilty of manslaughter. Catherine Bentley: not guilty.
(
Scot free
was how Carboni put it.)

On Monday, as the sun slipped behind the moon, the men were sentenced to three years'
hard labour on the roads. Catherine was released to her own version of the wilderness.

She would not hang, but in February she'd give birth to her baby Louisa alone—a mother
of two with no lawful means of support. By Christmas 1855, Catherine would be brought
up on charges of illegally selling alcohol from a refreshment tent in Maryborough.

What a spectacular fall: from the owner of the largest building on the most prosperous
goldfield in the world to sly-grogger at an outlying diggings. The Bentley family's
brief flirtation with the world of chandeliers and champagne would never be reprised.
It was all downhill from here.

COURTROOM 2

It was a busy week for Redmond Barry and John Ireland. On the same day Bentley and
his co-convicted were sentenced, Thomas Fletcher, Andrew McIntyre and John Westoby
were in
the dock. This was a different sort of show trial. The government desperately
needed a win after the Eureka Hotel riot. In the mind of the diggers' leadership,
though, the conviction of James Bentley justified the action of the mob in burning
down the hotel.

The howls of protest were now coming from all quarters. The grievances at Ballarat
had quickly gone from begging letters about poverty and taxation to calls for self-government—even
secession from the Crown.

Hotham was eager to claw back some control of the good ship Victoria, which was veering
dangerously off-course. Added to the public pressure was the fact that the military
reinforcement of Ballarat was costing him a fortune, just when London was looking
for him to cut costs and balance the books.

In the trial of McIntyre, Fletcher and Westoby, the jury deliberated for over five
hours. A defence of provocation had been mounted, citing the wrongful conduct of
the Ballarat officials; Justice Barry rejected it. It was no big surprise when all
three accused were found guilty of
assembling together unlawfully, riotously and
tumultuously.

Then the jury added a rider to the verdict: if the government at Ballarat had done
its
duty properly, the jury would never have been called upon to perform this painful
obligation. The hushed courtroom exploded in cheering.

Barry was unmoved. He expressed particular disgust about the horses that had been
burnt to death in the hotel blaze and sentenced Andrew McIntyre to three months in
Melbourne Gaol, Fletcher to four and Westoby to six.

Richard Ireland had seen six clients jailed in the space of two days. He would get
the chance to redeem himself sooner than he knew.

THE DIGGERS ‘DEMAND' AND HOTHAM CRACKS IT

When news reached the diggings that the Ballarat Three had been convicted, the executive
of the Reform League met and decided to send George Black and Scotsman Thomas Kennedy
to Melbourne. There they met up with J. B. Humffray and made an appointment to see
the Governor himself. This delegation would present the concerns of the Ballarat
diggers directly, including a copy of the Diggers' Charter.

It is a measure of the small-town intimacy of the colony, despite its recent population
explosion, that the men could get an audience with His Excellency, the Colonial Secretary
and the Attorney-General on Monday 27 November.

The same familiarity had inspired Ellen Young to write to Hotham back in September,
offering him her detailed ideas for an alternative licensing system. It was also
the source of her resentment when Hotham went back on his promise to listen to the
people. Ellen's fury is not a sign of womanly temper but a reaction to the tantalising
proximity of colonial power: it was personal.

Nor did Black, Kennedy and Humffray come to the great man shaking at the knees. Hotham
might have been a darned sight more amenable if they had. Instead, the Reform League's
representatives followed Ellen Young's lead and presented Hotham with their
demands
.
Black
demanded
that Fletcher, McIntyre and Westoby be released. Hotham bristled.
I must take my stand on the word ‘demand'
, he said.
I am sorry for it, but that is
the position you place me in.

The delegation did not apologise, but tried another tack. Kennedy implored Hotham
to act on the diggers' grievances before blood was spilled. Black played to one of
Hotham's pet concerns: bringing women to the diggings.
I am desired by the married
men of Ballarat to make a request of your Excellency
, Black began,
that every possible
facility may be afforded by your Excellency to enable them to settle and have their
wives and families there. They are all anxious to settle upon the land, but at present
the difficulties of their so doing are too great.
(i.e.: Unlock the lands!)

Hotham softened.
That is a point which presses very much
, he conceded. But he could
not give an answer to take back to the married men of Ballarat, except to say that
he agreed
in the necessity of some provisions being made
.

Ten days earlier Hotham had announced a commission of enquiry into the administration
of the goldfields. It was to this decree that he now returned.

Tell the Diggers from me and tell them carefully that this Commission will enquire
into everything and every body, high and low, rich and poor, and you have only to
come forward and state your grievances, and, in what relates to me they shall be
redressed.

So the delegates left, with a pocketful of hollow promises.

On the same day, 27 November,
another batch of 150 military reinforcements from the 40th Regiment were sent to
the Camp at Ballarat. By the first day of summer, there would be a total of 546 officers
and soldiers stationed at Ballarat, almost five times the number that had been on
the ground over winter.

Mrs Elizabeth Massey and her friends went to see off the troops as they left Melbourne.
At the docks, she expected to find doleful faces, but was flabbergasted at the celebratory
atmosphere.

I think I never saw a more joyous party. They reminded me of happy schoolboys bound
for some party of pleasure, yet kept in unwilling restraint by the eye of the master…
many were bestriding the guns, and otherwise testifying their satisfaction at the
prospect of a fight.

Happy schoolboys. Unwilling restraint. The prospect of a fight.

Arriving at the barracks, Mrs Massey found an altogether different scene.

The women and children, who had turned out to see the departure of their husbands
and fathers, were weeping and bewailing their sad lot in not being allowed to follow
them, and kind people were doing their best to console, seemingly to no purpose,
these disconsolate ones.

The only solace, concluded Mrs Massey, was that the regimental wives didn't have
poverty to bear as well as loneliness
. But for some of the army wives and children,
there would never be compensation for the eternal grief about to descend.