Massacre

Date: 1 Jan 1824 – 31 Dec 1824
Place: Unknown (may be already referred to)
in 1854, missionary Lancelot Threlkeld wrote in the Christian Herald newspaper that he had been told about events at Bathurst in the 1820s by an ‘informant’ who was ‘a Magistrate’. This may well have been Lieutenant Percy Simpson, who had been commandant at Wellington during 1824. According to Threlkeld, the magistrate told him that at Bathurst ‘a large number were driven into a swamp, and mounted police rode round and round and shot them off indiscriminately until they were all destroyed!’ Then, ‘when one of the police enquired of the Officer if a return should be made of the killed, wounded there were none, all were destroyed, Men Women and Children! The reply was; - that there was no necessity for a return’. The ‘long reach of water’ on the Cudgegong at Dabee, the Bogee Swamp or the Brymair Valley all fit the description of a ‘swamp’. While the Mounted Police were not formally established until 1825, Threlkeld was relating events from thirty years before. It certainly seems to have been a story from 1824, as the ‘commanding officer’, Threlkeld recalled, left for England ‘shortly after’; Commandant Morisset returned to England in early 1825. (It could not have been his successor, Lieutenant John Fennell, who died in Bathurst in 1826.) It is possible that on his voyage back to England the ‘commanding officer’ at Bathurst had some extra baggage. According to Threlkeld’s informant, ‘forty-five heads were collected and boiled down for the sake of the skulls!’ The magistrate apparently ‘saw the skulls packed for exportation in a case at Bathurst ready for shipment to accompany the commanding Officer on his voyage’. Threlkeld also described how a ‘certain officer’ ‘on his return from one of these cruel exploits, made his boast that it was fine sport, for it was only to draw his pistols from the holster, and he dropped the blacks down like partridges!’

People involved

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Sources

  • Threlkeld in Gunson (ed.), Australian Reminiscences, pp. 19–25, 49, 74; Christian Herald, 5 August 1854, Christian Herald, 14 October 1854, p. 206

Event mentions

  • Massacre
    1 Jan 1824 – 31 Dec 1824 — Unknown (may be already referred to)
    in 1854, missionary Lancelot Threlkeld wrote in the Christian Herald newspaper that he had been told about events at Bathurst in the 1820s by an ‘informant’ who was ‘a Magistrate’. This may well have been Lieutenant Percy Simpson, who had been commandant at Wellington during 1824. According to Threlkeld, the magistrate told him that at Bathurst ‘a large number were driven into a swamp, and mounted police rode round and round and shot them off indiscriminately until they were all destroyed!’ Then, ‘when one of the police enquired of the Officer if a return should be made of the killed, wounded there were none, all were destroyed, Men Women and Children! The reply was; - that there was no necessity for a return’. The ‘long reach of water’ on the Cudgegong at Dabee, the Bogee Swamp or the Brymair Valley all fit the description of a ‘swamp’. While the Mounted Police were not formally established until 1825, Threlkeld was relating events from thirty years before. It certainly seems to have been a story from 1824, as the ‘commanding officer’, Threlkeld recalled, left for England ‘shortly after’; Commandant Morisset returned to England in early 1825. (It could not have been his successor, Lieutenant John Fennell, who died in Bathurst in 1826.) It is possible that on his voyage back to England the ‘commanding officer’ at Bathurst had some extra baggage. According to Threlkeld’s informant, ‘forty-five heads were collected and boiled down for the sake of the skulls!’ The magistrate apparently ‘saw the skulls packed for exportation in a case at Bathurst ready for shipment to accompany the commanding Officer on his voyage’. Threlkeld also described how a ‘certain officer’ ‘on his return from one of these cruel exploits, made his boast that it was fine sport, for it was only to draw his pistols from the holster, and he dropped the blacks down like partridges!’
    Source: Threlkeld in Gunson (ed.), Australian Reminiscences, pp. 19–25, 49, 74; Christian Herald, 5 August 1854, Christian Herald, 14 October 1854, p. 206