We Are the Rebels (19 page)
Authors: Clare Wright
Envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness.
That's how Ellen Young summed up the
burning of Bentley's Hotel in a letter to the editor of the Ballarat Times.
It was obvious to all that no attempt had been made to control the crowd or protect
life and property on Bentley's Hill. Commissioner Rede blamed Police Inspector Gordon
Evans, who had authority over the police, for not clearing the crowd or defending
the hotel despite the fact police officers had been in the hotel all morning. Other
police testified that Evans had
lacked determination
to stop the rioting. Rede also
claimed he had no power over the military, who were dispatched only after the fire
began.
Evans defended himself against the charges of inaction.
My hands were completely
tied
, he said,
I must obey my orders
. Only the Resident Commissioner, Evans argued,
could read the Riot Act.
McLISTER: THE COMPLAINANT
Gordon Evans was not a popular man. He was a bully whose appointment had met with
great dissatisfaction
in Ballarat. He was also, it seems, a sexual harasser.
Mrs Catherine McLister, a 28-year-old daughter of Irish Protestant gentry, was the
wife of one of Evans' sergeants. On 27 October, eleven days after the Eureka Hotel
riot, she served an explosive complaint to the Chief Commissioner of Police. Evans
had
grossly insulted me
, she wrote,
by indecently expressing his person
.
At a board of enquiry held the next day, Gordon Evans came out swingingâdenying Catherine's
claim and implying she had been making a play for him. But she was not to be intimidated,
and gave this extraordinary testimony:
Mr Evans came behind me and put his arm round my waist. He was dressed, the front
of his pantaloons were open and his person exposedâ¦He said âlook at this' and then
I saw his trousers were undone.
The board threw Catherine's charge out because she had not told anyone at the time.
They also found it improbable that such a
gross insult
âEvans flashing his privatesâwould
not have made her cry for help. If Catherine had made a more âwomanly' sceneârunning
away shrieking, perhapsâshe might have been believed. In calmly instigating an official
enquiry she found her claim dismissed as malicious.
Interestingly, the board's decision was not quietly buried, but was sent to Governor
Hotham. Catherine's stand was viewed as yet more evidence of the mounting rebelliousness
in Ballarat, about which His Excellency needed to be kept informed.
What a fiasco.
Evans blamed Rede, Rede blamed Evans, and nobody seemed to know who exactly was in
charge of Ballarat. It was only after the Eureka Hotel riot that Rede was given a
letter of
absolute power
. It was clear now that he headed a chain of command that
included the police and the military.
But many believed the damage had been done. The people had carried the day. They
had sensed their own power. And the government forces had been shown as ineffectual
fools.
Samuel Huyghue assessed the mood of the police and government on the afternoon of
the riot. A silent hush had settled over the Camp. Troopers and traps (cops) spoke
in low mutters in their tents. There was
angry humiliation
that Rede had tried to
calm things down rather than take swift action. There had been a
loss of prestige
.
How could it be regained?
A huge downpour came in the night, temporarily settling the dust.
The fine weather soon returned. Licence hunting stepped up with a new vigour now
the winter mud was gone. Suddenly, large, armed military forces were sent out from
the Camp
to patrol the diggings. Foot police carried batons. Soldiers wielded carbines,
swords and holster pistols. Some were mounted, parading frisky horses through the
tents and holes in search of unlicensed miners.
A new chum
, wrote âAn Englishman' to the Geelong Advertiser on 10 October, might
think the show of force was to intimidate criminals against the dog poisoning, horse
stealing and tent breaking that had become endemic this spring. But no, it was merely
digger hunting, pursued with an
unusual degree of severity
. The Englishman attributed
the new regime to Commissioner Rede
proving his utility.
Others saw that, as it has been throughout the ages, it was about the economy. The
new governor had pledged to balance the colony's books and was going about it energetically.
The public service was being slashed to reduce expenditure.
On the income side of the ledger there were only taxes on alcohol and mining licences
to lift the bottom line. The diggers were helping out with the liquor excise by drinking
as much as ever. But they showed increasing reluctance to produce a valid licence.
The Governor ordered his minions to crack down and carry out more licence hunts.
If once a week was not enough to demonstrate that this government meant business,
then make it twice. Or every day except Sunday.
Is it to be endured
, wrote the Englishman,
in a possession of the British Crown, that an armed police force may âbail up' and
require the production of your badge in all places at all times? Does this happen
in London?
He finished by calling for some
more influential pen
to take up the cause
of the unrepresented diggers.
Ellen Young patriotically obliged.
On 4 Novemberâfollowing Scobie's murder, the Eureka
Hotel riot and the fireâEllen
captured the mood of her clan in a long letter to the Ballarat Times.
Alas for the poor diggers, over whose spoil the whole tribe are squabbling. Alas
for the honest of each party that he should be sacrificed to the dishonest. Alas,
alas for us all that we cannot get a snap of land to keep a pig live pretty, and
grow cabbages on; and three times alas; let it three times be for us (the people)
poor dupesâ¦following in high hopes the jack o' lantern dancing over the land, his
false light blinding all.
It was Governor Hotham whose
false light
, Ellen believed, had led the foolish diggers
down the garden path with empty promises. Hotham had betrayed Ellen's early trust.
She would now place her faith in the power of the press.
Her letter continues:
We ought to congratulate ourselves in possessing so admirable
a vent as your paper for the spleen.
That estimable organ, the Ballarat Times, was about to get a good workout.
While Ellen Young waxed lyrical, tales of mutiny were being spread on the streets
by gossip and rumour. Gossip can be malicious and judgmental, or simply informative
about comings and goings central to the community's wellbeing. Either way, it has
always been a powerful tool for people with no formal voice or
influence. And, traditionally,
gossip was women's work.
The public record of Ballarat's rumourmongers is surprisingly resilient. Ellen Clacy
described the interior of your average shop on the diggings:
Pork and currants, saddles and frocks, baby linen and tallow, all are heaped indiscriminately
togetherâ¦added to which, there are children bawling, men swearing, storekeeper sulky,
and last, not least, women's tongues going nineteen to the dozen.
Raffaello Carboni begins his account of the Catholic servant affair this way:
The
following story was going the rounds of the Eureka
. The Times revealed that prior
to the destruction of the Eureka Hotel, rumours had been flying thick and fast. Rumours
such as: Police Magistrate D'Ewes was a partner in Bentley's business. Bentley had
paid thousands of pounds to be exonerated. The licensing bench was bribed. And the
ultimate tall story: Catherine Bentley was in fact James Scobie's wife!
On 19 October, James and Catherine Bentley, along with Hance and Farrell, were re-arrested
to stand trial in Melbourne for Scobie's murder.
On 21 October, two miners, 24-year-old Scot Andrew McIntyre and Charles Evans' business
partner, Thomas Fletcher, were named at random, out of thousands of rioters, and
charged with the arson of the Eureka Hotel (a third, John Westoby, would later be
added).
Here is Henry Seekamp's Ballarat Times editorial on 21 October:
In all the history of Australiaâ¦never has there been a more eventful period than
the present of Ballarat. Public feeling is so great that no rumour, however absurd,
but
what gains credenceâeverything is believed and everything is expected. The people
have, for onceâ¦begun to feel their own strengthâ¦the first taste of liberty and self-government.
Seekamp saw the cascade of events that October as an inevitable step towards freedom:
a child beginning to walk, in a little time the child will be able to stand alone
.
But although 26-year-old Henry was now stepfather to Clara's children, he had never
brought up babies. He was not in the best position to know about infant development.
When children separate themselves from the domination of their parents there is always
defiance and turmoil. Doors slammed. Names called. Boats rocked.
Surely some malignant spell
, surmised the Argus,
must blind the Captain, that he
cannot see the rocks a-head
.
On 24 October, the Age reported
an eventful week at Ballarat
: Monday, a bank robbery;
Tuesday, rioting; Wednesday and Thursday
taken up guessing at what might be next
looked for
, including speculation about simultaneous uprisings at Avoca, Maryborough
and Creswick Creek; Friday, arrest of the manager of the Bank of NSW; and Sunday,
a meeting of the Irish regarding the Reverend Smyth and James Johnston incident.
The Age's Ballarat correspondent revealed rumours that the Avoca Camp had been burned
down, the Maryborough Camp was under siege by diggers, that the unemployed of Melbourne
had risen up at the news of the Ballarat riot, and that the Bank of Victoria was
broke.
Added to the talk about such matters
, wrote the correspondent,
was an interminable
controversy as to the pros and cons of Bentley's case
. You didn't need a soapbox
to be heard in Ballarat. A person could not blow her nose
without drawing around
them a crowd of sympathisers
.
This tittle-tattle was all good clean fun. But when James Bentley fled from the flames
of his ruined empire to the protection of the commissioners, a genuinely damaging
rumour started doing the rounds.
The government compound was going to be attacked! The diggers were going to come
that night. Vengeful miners were going to drag Bentley out of his refuge and back
to his smoking lair. Justice would be done, even if it meant a mob lynching.
Government spies brought the news from the diggings to the Camp. The garrison was
put under arms. No one was allowed to enter or leave. The night, according to Camp
resident Samuel Huyghue,
passed alert in expectation
of an attack.
The next day, 18 October,
the females were ordered to leave the Camp, as it was considered
that at such a time they would be safer anywhere than with us.
Families split up.
Anxious wives abandoned their husbands to the fury of the mob.
Some poor souls
, said
Huyghue,
were ultimately permitted to remain on the plea that they had no home or
protectors elsewhere
. (Was Maggie Johnston one of them? She certainly had no family
in Victoria apart from her dear Jamie. Again, Maggie's diary says nothing about
her movements.) These women and children took refuge in the commissariat store
whenever
there was an alarm
. The walls of the store were partly bulletproof, being formed
of roughly hewn slabs.
But you could still insert a finger between them
, worried
Huyghue.
And rumours could slide under doors like shape-shifting vapours in the night. They
could waft between slabs. Seep beneath skin. Penetrate the soundest of minds. Gossip
and rumour could fuel a fire as surely as any kindling and flame.
Shaken to its core by the power of an idea, the Camp would never recover.
To the diggers and storekeepers, the Government Camp was a hive of treachery and
deceit: a bastion of vested interests, arrogance and inconsistency. But how did the
Camp's inhabitants feel? Were they sitting pretty up on their hill? Enjoying a room
with an enchanting view? Living the high life?
Sadly, no. Even before the exoneration of James Bentley made the government compound
a target, its residents were far from being happy campers.
A series of letters from the top dogs of the Ballarat Camp to their Melbourne superiors
written in the autumn and winter of that year reveals the sort of discomfort that
the inmates of the Camp experienced: overcrowding, poor sanitation, disintegrating
tents, makeshift offices. Even the post office was a dark, dirty tent open to the
elements at both ends. The mail was sorted on a stretcher. On a blustery day, noted
the Geelong Advertiser, letters were distributed on the wind
to a grateful public
.
Each of the Camp's three independent factionsâthe Gold Fields Department, the police
and the militaryâhad its own chain of command and its own internal codes of conduct.
As we have seen, this could cause paralysing confusion in a crisis. But on a day-to-day
basis, the main problem was that some had better facilities than others. The bickering
was fierce and continuous.
The Gold Commission had the biggest slice of the pie. It occupied the lion's share
of the Camp groundsâabout twice as much space as the police. Most of the police grounds
were
taken up by the tents of the married non-commissioned officers. There was not
enough room for the foot and mounted constablesâgenerally young, poorly paid single
menâto be accommodated.