We Are the Rebels (17 page)

If anyone was concerned that Sarah Hanmer was playing the gender card—bending the
rules to suit her own maverick ends—you don't get a whiff of it in the local press
or at the licensing bench. Official records show she was never denied a theatrical
licence, despite allegations from her male rivals that she was not of fit character
to hold one. There was no bureaucratic obstruction. Only gratitude that her theatrical
offerings, and (suitably feminine) charitable works, had raised Ballarat's intellectual
and moral standard.

In other matters she was not yet inclined to rock the boat. In that muddy winter
of 1854 she kept her purse open and her politics to herself. In a matter of months
she had converted herself from an actress and single mother into a respectable businesswoman
and civic identity. Sarah was getting ahead and that was enough.

For now.

SPRING

They didn't call this Bentley's Hill for nothing. Catherine Bentley had a commanding
view of the Ballarat diggings from the second-storey bedroom of her new hotel. From
there she could watch her neighbours emerge from their calico cocoons as the warm
breezes of spring began to replace lashing rain and wind. Spring had only just arrived
and already the whole vast tent city was dry and thirsty, the ground parched. A month
ago, Catherine's lad Thomas could chip ice from the water pail in the morning; now
she would have to chase him to put his sun bonnet on.

Even though the building was not quite finished, the Bentleys' Eureka Hotel was doing
well. By September 1854 she and James were raking it in. They took £350 on their
first night alone!

Now that the weather had fined up, the last stages of construction could gather
pace. The bowling alley was finally operational but there were still seven bedrooms
upstairs to be finished and the new concert rooms out the back. And of course there
were bills to pay, massive ones: £230 for paint; £320 to five contractors for the
stables and concert room; £96 to the sawyer. Rutherford and Tingman, the wine and
spirit merchants, would get £596 for 25 dozen bottles of champagne, 20 dozen sherry,
20 dozen port, 2000 cigars, 56 dozen bottles of four different types of ale, 68 dozen
porter, 22 gallons of whisky. Fifty single beds, ten double beds and 100 pillows
also had to be paid for.

Some people might have called the Eureka Hotel the
slaughterhouse
, due to the raucous
fun times to be had there, but James Bentley enjoyed a reputation as a fair dealer:
upright, well mannered, a good businessman. He could borrow money without too much
trouble.

As a wealthy and influential man, he must have attracted the usual amount of envy
and resentment. In addition, as magistrate John D'Ewes later said, Bentley had made
the enmity of a large class in the diggings, the sly grog sellers, whose trade had
been ruined by the licensed houses, of which Bentley's was the largest
.

The Eureka Hotel was not just a business, it was also a home—to Catherine, who was
expecting a new baby in the summer, and James and little Thomas. James was just an
ex-convict and Catherine a Sligo girl, only 22, but they had built themselves a fine
home. Practically a palace. The hotel was also home to Catherine's sister Mary and
her husband, and to a long list of staff.

Nineteen residents in all. It was quite a compound. Those who lived in a hotel were,
by Victorian law, called
inmates
. But the hundreds of people who flocked to drink
and gamble and bowl and dance there each night were hardly
outsiders
. It was Catherine
and James's job to make everyone feel welcome: to offer hospitality. They did it
well.

And then, just as the spring flowers were beginning to bloom, disaster struck.

MURDER MOST FOUL

The night of 6 October was crowned by a full moon and James Scobie, a young Scottish
miner, was in the mood to party. Scobie was already drunk when he bumped into his
mate, Peter Martin, and the two proceeded to the Eureka Hotel to try their luck at
getting an after-hours drink.

Scobie knocked loudly on the door. Catherine and James had gone to bed but Michael
Walsh, the waiter, was still in the bar. He told Scobie and Martin to nick off. Scobie
continued to make his presence felt, kicking at the door and smashing a pane of glass.
Catherine came downstairs to the bar and she too told him to go away. Scobie then
called Catherine a whore, or so Michael Walsh testified later. William Hance, the
watchman, who had joined the group in the bar, said
that was not language to use
to any woman
. James Bentley entered the bar in his trousers and shirtsleeves, as
did watchman Farrell and William Duncan, the barman. Scobie and Martin ran off towards
a cluster of tents about 70 metres away.

There are many versions of what happened next. The story has been told and retold,
and become a rats' nest of speculation, hearsay, sworn testimony and myth. The following
version is taken from what was said and written at the time, but even then, it is
a tricky job trying to work out what really happened.

After their property was damaged and Catherine was insulted the Bentleys, with Hance
and Farrell, pursued the drunken, staggering Scobie. When they caught up with him,
a fight broke out. Witnesses said they saw or heard a handful of
men and maybe a
woman; perhaps Mr and Mrs Bentley were among them but the witnesses
could not be
sure
. One of the men was said to have picked up a spade. There was a scuffle, and
Scobie received a blow to the head.

Martin ran to fetch help and returned with a doctor called Alfred Carr, who could
find no signs of life. Scobie's body was taken back to the Eureka Hotel. (The Victorian
licensing law required that hotels also serve as morgues and sites of coronial enquiries.)
There Dr Carr conducted a post-mortem on the deceased and concluded the cause of
death was ruptured blood vessels in the brain
caused in all probability by a blow.
His final conclusion was crucial:
I think the injury was inflicted by a kick and
not by the spade now produced.

A coronial inquest was held the following day, Saturday 7 October. Many more details—possible
fact and scurrilous fiction—emerged later, at the trials in Ballarat and Melbourne
of the Bentleys and two of their employees. But at the inquest no one mentioned the
alleged slur to Mrs Bentley's good name that became the centrepiece of the subsequent
Melbourne murder trial. Carr's autopsy conclusion ruled the day: that the death was
caused by a blow to the head from a scuffle, most likely from a fist or kick, not
a spade.

A BUSY WEEK

On 7 October, inflammatory gossip zipped around the diggings: a poor young Irish
miner had been murdered by a rich, well-connected English publican. And not just
any publican but the most successful liquor distributor on the diggings.

On the 8th, a deputation of miners visited the Camp.

On the 9th, James Bentley and his employees Farrell and Hance were arrested, then
bailed while the case was remanded for three days. During this time, the accused
men and their supporters, including the numerous residents at the hotel, were able
to get their stories straight. That fact was not lost on the grieving relatives and
aggrieved countrymen of James Scobie.

Bentley was also spotted at the Camp, where it was assumed he was communicating with
Police Magistrate John D'Ewes. There had long been a rumour that D'Ewes owed Bentley
money.

On Thursday 12 October, an enquiry into Scobie's murder was held before D'Ewes,
Robert Rede and James Johnston. (Maggie Johnston's diary mysteriously stops between
11 September and 22 November, so we don't know what she thought of this dramatic
week's events.)

The decision of the bench that day saw a family's dreams go up in smoke. No one could
have predicted that the verdict would also be the wayward spark that would set a
wildfire raging.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Another match was struck in the three days between Bentley's arrest and his appearance
before the magistrates. This incident had nothing to do with James, or Catherine,
or the hotel, or even alcohol, but it would add fuel to the mounting bonfire.

On Tuesday 10 October, an Armenian named Johannes Gregorius was visiting a sick man
in his tent on the Gravel Pits. Gregorius was the servant of Father Patrick Smyth,
the priest for Ballarat's nine thousand (mostly Irish) Catholics who congregated
at St Alipius Church, where Anastasia Hayes was schoolmistress and queen bee. The
servant was also, in the language of the time,
a cripple
, with a disability that
made walking difficult.

Gregorius had no reason to fear licence hunters. Ministers of religion and their
live-in servants were not required to hold a miner's licence. On this day, however,
a young policeman stopped Gregorius and demanded to see his licence. In faltering
English, Gregorius attempted to explain that he was exempt.

But the trooper was in no mood to listen.
Damn you and your priest
, the trooper spat,
an unprovoked and unforgivable insult. The trooper then dismounted to assault the
man. Horrified onlookers watched as the horse, unrestrained by his master, proceeded
to trample Gregorius.

As luck would have it, Assistant Commissioner James Johnston was nearby. The crowd
expected he would discipline the policeman, who was so clearly out of line. Johnston,
however, decreed the ‘missing' licence had to be dealt with and ordered Gregorius
to attend court the following day. Father Smyth arrived on the scene and gave Johnston
£5 as bail, so he would be allowed to take his injured servant home.

What began as a tragedy ended as a farce. In court the next day, in front of John
D'Ewes with James Johnston as witness, the battered Gregorius was fined £5 for being
unlicensed, despite the fact that he didn't
need
a licence. As Smyth had already
paid that sum, that should have been that—however unjust the fine was in the first
place. But Johnston decided to flex his muscles. He charged that it was the disabled
Gregorius who had in fact assaulted the mounted policeman. D'Ewes found this new
indictment proved and fined Gregorius another £5.

Bad move.

AN OFFENDED PEOPLE

The Catholics of Ballarat were ropable. Autocratic and illogical miscarriages of
justice were not unusual in Ballarat, but the Catholic community took this one as
a direct affront to its priest. A petition was raised on behalf of
the aggregate
Catholic body at Ballarat
.

The petition, supposedly headed up by Timothy Hayes, was probably the project of
his wife Anastasia, who was the beating heart of St Alipius. Anastasia, as later
events would
prove, was a woman with a burning sense of justice, quick to assert
her own rights and defend the rights of those she cared for. In 1854, Anastasia Hayes
cared most about the Catholics of Ballarat.

Her petition wanted
the feelings of an offended people recognised
, and these people
held James Johnston personally responsible for the slight. Johnston had never been
popular, but now he was even more on the nose. The petition called for the immediate
removal of Johnston from Ballarat and an enquiry into his
ungentlemanly and overbearing
character. As if pre-empting an accusation that the victimised petitioners were
just a bunch of Irish ratbags, the petition stated:
The Catholics of Ballarat are
a large and influential body comprising inhabitants of every recognised country under
heaven
. This body begged leave
to observe that the constitutional means taken to
obtain a redress of the wrong here complained of evinces our respect for the law
.