While many bushrangers are celebrated as rebel leaders, the one man who might really fit the bill—Ralph Entwistle, leader of the Ribbon Boys—is all but unknown. It was his naked swim that led to Australia’s biggest convict uprising—1830’s The Bathurst Rebellion—and resulted in one of the largest mass hangings in our history. Yet the entire tragedy wouldn’t have happened if it not for a police magistrate’s fondness for handing out brutal punishments.
This is how Truth newspaper in 1952 envisaged the murder of John Greenwood.
The start of George Suttor’s 1830 letter about the Bathurst Rebellion.
Part of The Sydney Gazette’s report on the trial and execution.
Part of the September 1833 list of convicts Thomas Evernden had flogged.Lionel Long remembered the events in his 1963 song “The Bathurst Rebellion”. You can hear it in full at the end of the episode.
Henry Bialowas’s Ten Dead Men is the best resource on the Ribbon Gang and was very useful in researching this episode. For more information, visit his website.
Elected to state and federal parliament, Thomas Ley’s career in 1920s politics was marked by hypocrisy, corruption, ruthless manipulation and the lingering suspicion that he may have killed his rivals. The worst fears of his critics were confirmed in 1947, when Ley was convicted of cold-blooded murder in one of England’s most sensational court trials.
Thomas Ley was dubbed “The Minister For Murder”.Former federal MP Frederick McDonald went missing in 1926 after a public falling out with Ley over bribery allegations.
NSW state politician Hyman Goldstein died in mysterious circumstances in 1928 after pursuing Ley for fraudulent business practices.
In 1947, in England, the law finally caught up with Ley when he was tried for the sensational “Chalk Pit Murder”.The 1947 murder case led to renewed interest in whether Ley had been involved in Frederick McDonald’s disappearance.
Australians are no strangers to big cat stories, but only one mystery resulted in the capture of not one but two monsters. In the early 1890s, witnesses claimed to have seen a tiger in the Tantanoola region of South Australia and graziers often found their sheep mutilated and partly devoured. Search parties failed to capture the beast until an expert marksman joined the hunt. Yet even after the creature was slain, sheep kept disappearing, falling prey to an even more terrifying predator.
The beast was shot and stuffed in 1895, but the sightings and killings continued.As soon as the sightings began, a Mount Gambier business cashed in.One of the lonely farmhouses that was a stalking ground for the creature.The Tantanoola football team called themselves the Tigers and embraced their mascot.
While many believed in the Tantanoola Tiger, there were legions of doubters, with this Melbourne Punch cartoon poking fun at news editors who turned to the beast on slow news days.The other Tantanoola Tiger – a real creep whose crimes were more horrifying than sheep theft.
Robert Charles Edmondson’s slaughteryards, hidden in remote ti-tree stands, became morbid tourist attractions.
The Tantanoola Tiger Hotel has for more than a century embraced the mythical monster who roamed the countryside.
