5 From Camp to Garrison

Although HIS BODY had been interred by his grieving brother, the spirit of James Scobie was not permitted to rest in peace. There were those, principally on Eureka, who were determined to ensure that his death was avenged by the due process of law. To that purpose a meeting was called for Tuesday, 17 October, on the place where Scobie met his death. Because of its immediacy to the Eureka Hotel, the venue had a touch of the melodramatic about it. This was not lost on the proprietor who took steps to inform D’Ewes, his protector in the Camp, of what was afoot for the following day. He had legal business elsewhere on that Tuesday morning and, as Bentley had asked for police protection which was not D’Ewes’s province, the magistrate sent his request to Gordon Evans, Police Inspector. D’Ewes himself set out on horseback to deal with a case of robbery with violence, at Buninyong, which kept him occupied until evening. It was probably as well that it did, for other scenes of violence were to be witnessed at Ballarat, from which, for his own sake, he was better absent.1

Bentley’s letter to D’Ewes had been quite explicit. A certain Dr Mount had informed Bentley that the meeting was designed to foment ‘Riot and Violence’ against both his house and person, that the proprietor of the Ballarat Stores on the Gravel Pits was its instigator, and that the ‘mob’ proposed to burn the Eureka Hotel to the ground. Bentley was particularly alarmed lest ‘intoxication should exist to any extent’ and requested ‘a strong force of protection to ensure that the law was not violated’. He went to see Evans who promised to be present, but Bentley remained alarmed at the casual manner in which his predicament was treated by the Camp authorities. It was almost as if they had decided that in one way or another he had brought it all upon himself. Perhaps a bit of sport in the form of hotel burning would not go astray, even if it achieved no more than allowing the mob to let off steam. It would, perhaps, serve to divert attention from the Camp where there was sufficient disarray resulting from the Bank of Victoria robbery which had taken place almost under their very eyes.2

When life awakened that morning in and around Eureka and the Gravel Pits it was evident to all that a nasty day was brewing. The wind had not abated from the previous day, and there were signs that the heat presaged a storm to disperse the pent-up humours of nature itself. Human nature has its own ways of release, of which drink and work are two and are often found in both unison and moderation. But six in the morning was an unlikely time for the former, while work was ever present on the goldfield and, in this case, in fact required postponement for more weighty matters. Notices had been posted calling the meeting and word had spread that it was to be held. Soon an immense crowd had assembled both near to the spot and ‘far, far off, on every hill round about’.3 Commissioner Rede had not taken much notice of what was afoot, but merely sent a minor official, John Green, J.P., to observe the proceedings and act as his representative, providing him with a copy of the Riot Act in case of need. He also sent Inspector Evans along with a ‘disposable force of police’, but neither Evans nor Rede anticipated any ‘disturbance’.4

The meeting itself got off to a quiet start. Thomas Kennedy was both a former Chartist of Scottish origin and a Baptist preacher with a wife and four children. As one who mourned Scobie, he was regarded as having a rightful interest in the proceedings. In Carboni’s opinion, he did himself and his cause a disservice when he ‘blathered with long phrases . . . bubbling with cant’.5 There were, however. those present whose commitment to ensuring justice left no room for cant. Hugh Meikle, who had been a juror at the coroner’s inquest, chaired the meeting while the main resolution was seconded by James Russell Thompson. Its intention was made even clearer by virtue of the fact that Thompson had been foreman of the jury. It read, ‘this meeting, not being satisfied with the manner in which the proceedings connected with the death of the late James Scobie have been conducted either by the magistrates or by the coroner, pledges itself to use every lawful means to have the case brought before other, and more competent authorities’. A letter had appeared in the Ballarat Times on 14 October from certain ‘Storekeepers, Diggers and Inhabitants of Ballarat’ which supported Bentley and proclaimed his innocence. The meeting rejected the views expressed in the letter and passed a motion calling for subscriptions to raise a reward for the prosecution of Bentley. The committee formed for this purpose included two other persons, besides Thompson, who were present at the coronial inquest and who had come away disquieted. They were Archibald Carmichael and Peter Lalor.6

Evans, together with his few policemen, watched these proceedings carefully, but found nothing ‘objectionable’ in them. During the meeting Sub-Inspector Ximines had arrived with about thirty police (armed, at Evans’s orders, only with staves) whom he stationed in the hotel to protect it if necessary. Bentley had sent his friend, Charles Dyte, along as an observer and both he and Ximines returned satisfied that nothing inflammatory had been said. Dyte remarked to Bentley that the diggers would probably come up, ‘groan’ before the building and pass on ‘as is usual with English crowds’.

The day, however, was well advanced and the heat had not abated, so that some took to slaking their thirst while others chafed at the inconsequential outcome of the whole affair, especially as remunerative work had ceased on the diggings. Some 10,000 persons were assembled by noon and a large portion of them were gathered near the complex of buildings of which the Eureka Hotel formed the major part. It was of eminently flammable material itself, but the bowling alley adjacent to it was even more so because it was, in large measure, constructed of canvas. John Emery, a Bostonian, was its part-owner and he watched anxiously as Evans and his mounted police came the short distance from the meeting place to the hotel followed by those whom he deemed fit to call ‘the mob’.7 Cries soon broke out demanding that Bentley show himself, so Ximines offered his horse to the hotel keeper with the request that he show himself to the ‘mob’ and then ride away to the Camp, thus drawing his would-be assailants away with him. Bentley, understandably, was reluctant to entrust himself to the judgement of the diggers so he quickly mounted, coatless and hatless, and fled in the direction of the Camp. This manoeuvre stirred an ardent soul, Yorkey, to strike the hotel with his fist and exclaim, ‘I propose that this house belongs to the diggers’, which proposition caused widespread excitement.8

The prevailing atmosphere proved too much for some small boys who began throwing stones, one of which struck and broke the outside lamp of the hotel. Once the work of destruction was afoot it quickly gathered momentum. More stones were thrown, windows were broken, wooden boards were torn from the walls, and, amid pleas for restraint by the more level-headed, the diggers became increasingly enraged. While the stone throwing was in process John Edward Broadhurst, a lieutenant in the 40th Regiment, arrived with his men, whom he lined up on the right of the building. Rede, informed of the violence, rode across the field from the Eureka Police Station, three minutes distant, and ordered Broadhurst to station his soldiers within the hotel while he himself mounted a window sill to address the diggers in an attempt to quell them. It was all to no avail.

The one person carefully delegated by higher authorities to be responsible for the ultimate exercise of demanding order by reading the Riot Act was Green. His normal function was that of gold receiver, which had not entailed involvement with such dangerous proceedings as he was then forced to witness. Several anxious persons intimated to him that he ought to produce his document and proclaim its formidable contents, but perhaps he thought that men who had braved the dangers of fall-ins on their deep shafts would scorn the sanctions threatened by a mere Riot Act. In any case the arrival of Rede, the chief authority on Ballarat, was in his view sufficient to relieve him of any such responsibility and, as Rede did not seem disposed to engage in other than scarcely heard and totally ignored exhortations, the Act remained unread.

How the fire started was a mystery but the bowling alley was first alight. The wind blew furiously and the flames quickly spread. The military refused to attempt to extinguish them, as such an activity was not regarded by Broadhurst as within their duties. However, the police did try unsuccessfully to beat the flames down, while the military retreated to the Camp. In what seemed an instant the Eureka Hotel was a blazing inferno. Carboni was not surprised to see the general reaction for he had been present at several fires in London which had led him to conclude ‘that a characteristic of the British race is to make fun of the calamity of fire’. He noted laconically how those present enjoyed ‘their real sport on this occasion’. He had another observation to make which was more to the point than those on the behaviour of British pyromaniacs: ‘The diggers are lords and masters of Ballarat; and the prestige of the Camp is gone for ever’.9

In the Camp the arrival of Bentley had caused some concern. It was already clear that he was the object of very considerable odium from the digger population. Furthermore, no one doubted that the fortifications of the place itself were entirely inadequate if a decision were made to break in and remove him by force. The violence of the dust storm, which changed to one of hail and rain late in the afternoon, added to the tension, particularly when word came that an attack was to be made that night to capture Bentley. Arrangements were made for the removal of the women and children resident in the Camp, and 1,000 rounds of ball cartridges were issued. For some of the women it was a case of having nowhere else to go, so they remained to share the general anxiety which, by that Tuesday evening, had assumed proportions clouding reality and making cool judgement well-nigh impossible.10 Nonetheless, it was clear that positions had been taken up which made further conflict inevitable.

At the Eureka Hotel authority had been flouted on a grand scale even in its highest representative, Robert Rede, who had been made a fool of, and made himself a fool by his efforts to quell the spirits of the crowd. Eggs and refuse had been thrown at him, while his words requesting moderation were shouted down. Even more to the point, the police had shown themselves ineffective and, worst of all, the military had taken no more than a perfunctory role in the affair, firstly by refusing to help stem the flames and secondly by riding off with an air of nonchalance when they deemed their presence no longer effective. Finally, the police had shown some inclination to assert a modicum of law and order by arresting two diggers suspected of being responsible for the fire. The diggers were quickly rescued from their hands so that Evans and his men had to return to the Camp in disarray.

If the burning of the hotel had a predicted effect on the minds of those in the Camp it had an entirely different one on that of John Humffray. He took up the pen rather than the sword, and addressed himself in the first instance to the editor of the Ballarat Times, rather than to Commissioner Rede or to Hotham himself. The editor, Henry Seekamp, was happy to print the letter signed simply, J. B. Humffray, Digger, and dated 19 October. It began in a temperate enough manner, for Humffray was disinclined to attempt ‘in the abstract’ to justify the wanton destruction of that commodity so dear to civilized man, private property, which the Eureka Hotel unquestionably was, whether owned by Bentley or Bentley and D’Ewes conjointly. What mattered to Humffray was that the law had been ‘partially administered’ which had resulted in Bentley getting off scot-free, and only angels rather than men could have exhibited forbearance in such circumstances. As a consequence, effect followed cause, wrong was done and retribution followed. In those ‘circling flames’ he saw a warning to the government that the ‘people’ were demanding administrative justice in full measure which, if not granted according to law, would be replaced by ‘men of more impartial justice and political honesty’.

Furthermore, to this ‘Digger’ it was false to blame either drunkenness or a preconcerted plan for the act of arson. Rather, their ‘evident suspicion’ of the Camp authorities had goaded the diggers in those final hours and worse would follow if more military force was requested by the Camp because ‘The people ask for justice, not bullets!’ To Humffray it was incumbent upon the authorities to recognize that they were dealing with men, not unlettered savages; men who were fully aware of their rights as citizens; men, furthermore, who knew that they had ‘the power to enforce’ those rights, preferably legally and peacefully, but, if not, by other means. It was time for Hotham, and all those whom he led, to recognize that three paramount questions stood unanswered—the land, the licence system and the lack of digger representation—each of which demanded an immediate and a satisfactory response. Meanwhile, as a reminder, the Eureka Hotel was reduced to ‘a heap of charcoal’ with its rafters providing ‘a bundle of crayons with which to write the black history of crime and colonial misrule’. With that, and with an appeal to his fellow diggers for solidarity while they waited to ‘see whether the liberty-loving professions of our “new-chum” governor are honest’, Humffray put down his pen.11 It was now up to the authorities to make the appropriate response. The diggers returned to their shafts, to begin bailing out the waters which had flowed in while they themselves were about the business of thirsting after justice.

The committee set up to further Bentley’s prosecution decided to bring the whole matter to Hotham’s attention and its members remained unperturbed as to any possibility of implicating them in the burning of the hotel. In their eight-page submission they set out the facts, as known to them, of Scobie’s death and asserted that the evidence of Mrs Walshe and her son, clearly implicating Bentley, had been set aside in favour of evidence from men who were all in Bentley’s circle of friends, relatives and employees. The committee used the name of Lord Denman as their highest legal authority to substantiate their claim that the case should have gone to a full trial, and urged Hotham to act immediately. Down in Toorak the ‘new-chum’ governor was able to reply with a certain air of self-satisfaction, for he had already acted by offering a reward for the apprehension of Scobie’s killer. While he concurred with his petitioners that the law had to be properly administered in order to preserve society, he took pains to remind them that he was always ready to further the interests of the goldfields community but, were he to order an investigation into the proceedings at Ballarat, it was essential that it be preceded by ‘obedience to the law of the land’. In this latter point Hotham could rest content for the committee, of which Lalor was secretary, were men known for their adherence to the law and they were able, rightly in the circumstances still then prevailing, to beg to subscribe themselves as ‘your Excellency’s most devoted and obedient servants’.12 So anxious were they to co-operate in allaying the state of excitement prevailing on the diggings that they ‘thought it unnecessary and impolitic’ to provoke possible unrest by seeking other signatures to their petition. Furthermore, they were able to assure him that his promptness in acting was ‘rapidly restoring confidence’ in his administration. Meanwhile, other matters were afoot that bade fair to test those laudable qualities of loyalty and docility to breaking point and even beyond it.

While it had been generally acknowledged that the actual crime of setting fire to Bentley’s hotel could not be laid squarely at anyone’s feet, it was nonetheless necessary for Rede to take action in an attempt to salvage something from the ruins. It was idle to image that merely holing up in the Camp and hoping that the whole problem of unlawful behaviour would solve itself by the efflux of time was a solution open to a resolute servant of the Crown. It apparently escaped Rede’s attention that the immediate arrest of Bentley, especially as it was now known that a Crown witness was available to testify to the facts of the killing, would quickly restore respect and calm. What irked him was that these damnable diggers seemed to think that they could insult his person, make his goldfield a hotbed of subversion, engage in a wild spree of incendiarism and go on about their daily business as if nothing untoward had occurred. No, it was necessary to grasp the rod of authority and wield it with vigour, if not discretion, so he had two men arrested as ringleaders in the affair despite the fact that, if implicated in it at all, they were not more so than any others randomly selected from the thousands who had been present. In fact, one of the accused, McIntyre, ‘had used his best endeavours to restrain the crowd’ at Bentley’s, while the other, Fletcher, a printer, was said not to have left the immediate surroundings of his office that day except for a quick visit to the Prince Albert Hotel.13

It was a Saturday afternoon and D’Ewes was on the Bench when McIntyre and Fletcher were brought up. He was aware that a committee had been formed to bail the prisoners. He also remembered that Bentley, against whom the charge was far graver, had been bailed for £200 with a £100 surety. The diggers’ resolution to accept the nicety of bail for McIntyre and Fletcher had narrowly prevailed over the resolution formulated by hotter hearts to storm the Camp and release them by force. Henry Holyoake, formerly a London Chartist, had addressed the impromptu meeting held on Bakery Hill. He managed to contain the diggers and townspeople there present, whose fury was unbounded at the indiscriminate arrest of the selected two whom they knew to be innocent of any malicious involvement in the riotous behaviour of the previous Tuesday.14 D’Ewes met the twelve delegates from the diggers and agreed upon bail of £100. Such a sum was simply not acceptable to Rede who, heedless of the existing opinion on the machinery of law, thought it a mere bagatelle which would ‘have the effect of lowering the Bench here in the estimation of the people’. A very large crowd had gathered on the outskirts of the Camp where they met a strong force of police, and angry murmurs could be heard within the court as negotiations proceeded regarding bail. The forceful view of Rede won the day so it was set at £500 with £200 security each, making McIntyre and Fletcher together worth five times the price of Bentley to the Crown. The delegates, however, were determined to keep the peace so the money was paid. They retired with the accused who had been committed to Geelong on the presumed and reasonable grounds that a conviction was unlikely before a Ballarat jury. As the crowd dispersed along Main Road ‘revolvers were drawn and fired’, which resulted in an unfortunate digger being seriously injured. Accidental though it was, the first blood shed ‘in defiance of the authorities’ was digger blood.15

Perhaps the cool nerve of former surgeon Robert Rede had begun to desert him a little, what with egg throwing, hotel burning, bank robbery and dust storms all coming together to addle him further. He had some serious thoughts on future action which he shared with his superior in Melbourne, Chief Commissioner Wright. In Rede’s considered opinion two courses were open both to him and to those responsible for Ballarat. The one he rejected was that of letting things ‘settle down quietly’ as, even if it were successful, it would result in lessening the authority of the government. The other, which he strongly advised be adopted, was ‘to arrest all concerned in the outrage as soon as possible and if any resistance is made to give a frightful lesson . . . which should prove that the Government could insist’. He did not make it clear how the diggers could be restrained except by the bayonet, but he followed with some pertinent observations regarding the collection of licence fees which, were the current regulations to remain in force, had to be done ‘by coercion and the sooner the miners are shown that coercion can be used successfully the better’. He had talked the matter over with Captain MacMahon, acting head of the police force, and decided to postpone further arrests until after the arrival of a detachment of the 12th Regiment so that, were resistance offered, they would be ‘in sufficient force to punish’. Finally he proposed to send his traps out on the following day, a Monday, to hunt for unlicensed miners, as he thought that such behaviour would ‘test the feelings of the people’.16 It was a very heady brew that the Resident Commissioner was concocting at Ballarat, and it gave promise of testing feelings in a manner which even Rede had not dared hope to achieve.

By the weekend of 21–22 October such forces had begun to assemble on Ballarat as to give every appearance of being designed to strengthen a beleaguered outpost at the Crimea rather than a small camp in a Crown colony of the Empire. Captain MacMahon had arrived with Mr Sturt at 2 p. m. on the Saturday before the bailing of McIntyre and Fletcher. They were just in time to witness the gathering of the ‘large mob principally composed of the idle class of Diggers together with a great number of bad characters’. Both men were considerably alarmed, and Sturt lied to the digger delegates by telling them that he had been sent up from Melbourne with the explicit role of ‘investigating the matter’, although what particular matter was never made clear. The delegates’ acquiescence in this explanation was welcomed by MacMahon who thought, nonetheless, that he was dealing with insolent and unwholesome persons who possessed ‘a sort of bullying spirit’ and who lacked entirely ‘proper respect’ for authority. Some of these impressions were conveyed to him by two spies who lived amongst the diggers and in whom he placed ‘implicit confidence’. Though he professed himself determined to avoid a ‘collision’, in contrast to Rede who already appeared to lust after such an outcome, MacMahon was nonetheless anxious that more police and a further strengthening of the military should take place as rapidly as possible. After penning a document to this effect to the Colonial Secretary he spent a sleepless night, and by five o’clock on Monday morning he was at his desk again. His attention had been drawn to the posting of large placards calling for a monster meeting at 1 p. m. and, even worse, Wednesday was set down for a ‘Meeting of the Tipperary Mob’ whom he regarded as most powerful and troublesome and bent on mischief. He proposed to call in more men from other stations and he fervently hoped that the expected detachment of the 12th Regiment would arrive before Wednesday, if not at once. In the event of trouble, which he now regarded as certain to occur, he felt the Camp could only be defended by a large force or ‘a couple of Guns’, by which he meant large artillery, but he still hoped to hold the fort and maintain order ‘till we are in a position to assume a higher tone’.17

Lieutenant Broadhurst, since his excursion to the Eureka Hotel, had been turning his mind to the possibility of an attack on the Camp, and on 18 October he had communicated a fear to Rede that it would prove impossible to defend it ‘against overwhelming odds’. Rede himself received an urgent message from Melbourne which gave him Hotham’s further authority to read the Riot Act. He was instructed, moreover, to take whatever measures seemed necessary if the diggers persisted in turbulent behaviour manifested by their assembling for ‘violent or illegal purposes’. The Governor hastened to add that he trusted to Rede’s well-known aptitude for discretion in the exercise of the powers that had been confided to him. It was an unlikely outcome should Rede confront a situation which he was sure he could control by superior force rather than by discretion.18 Acting on his own concept of justice, Hotham had determined to brook no further nonsense from the goldfields, and especially from Ballarat. He had concluded after his visit in September that all would be well if the men responsible for the maintenance of authority were to act decisively. Now this extraordinary story had come to him of a group of useless police, soldiers and officials standing idly by while rabble had destroyed the property of a British citizen. Even D’Ewes had written to say that a lack of resolution had been shown in putting down the ‘mob’ when it first reared its ugly head. As a consequence the position of officialdom was rendered infinitely more dangerous and difficult than would have been the case had those responsible acted with promptitude. Even worse, it appeared that the creeping weed of disaffection had struck deep roots in Ballarat. D’Ewes reported that he had caused circulars to be printed which called upon ‘all loyal and respectable inhabitants of the Goldfields to come immediately forward and be sworn in as special Constables’. It was a step which presumably ought to have swollen the numbers in that profession to some tens of thousands, and such a conviction must have been strengthened in D’Ewes’s mind when he went around the town personally and ‘most of the inhabitants’ promised that they would attend for the swearing in. D’Ewes’s disappointment was extreme when only three of that multitude actually appeared, among whom not one was a digger.19 Clearly something had to be done to bring order into this situation, ensure that the respect due to authority was restored and make certain that the mining population paid its taxes. It was no time for weakness or compromise. Force was needed at Ballarat, and it was Hotham’s responsibility to see that the means needed to make it felt were provided.

The strength of the Camp was increased on Thursday, 19 October, by more police—thirty-five mounted and seventeen on foot—and within the next few days Captain White had arrived, with a further detachment of the 40th Regiment. Rede reported on 21 October that the conduct of the population was very bad and, despite the fact that the number of men and women had increased by 2,450 since the previous week, the number of children had curiously decreased from 3,420 to 3,030, as though the parents of the absent 390 had decided that Ballarat was no longer a salubrious place for the upbringing of their offspring. No marked decrease had taken place either in the number of licences issued, or in the amount of gold sent away or deposited locally. There appeared to be some anomaly in this because ‘in consequence of the late disturbance’ very little activity took place on the Ballarat fields—Eureka, the Gravel Pits, Red Hill or the Canadian. The maintenance of gold output was due to the rush to Creswick’s Creek where the diggers were bottoming with great success at eighteen feet, realizing eight ounces of gold to the tub. Four thousand diggers had started work there, which meant that on Ballarat itself a decrease in population to the number of some two thousand persons had taken place in those few days since the burning of Bentley’s hotel.20

Within the Camp the level of activity was frenzied. Rede felt strengthened by the arrival of further forces and, by 25 October, he had decided to arrest several more men ‘tomorrow morning at daylight’. A great deal of planning went into the exact disposition of forces so as to repel any attack, and provision was made for the removal of non-combatants—women and children. At the sounding of a ‘General Assembly’ every individual would be expected to take his set position, without the need for a ‘previous parade formation’. Tents near the fence were to be pulled down, houses protected by bags of grain, axes provided to cut loop holes, water casks kept filled to extinguish fires and ‘responsible persons’ nominated to see to the provision of ammunition. Everyone was commanded to preserve ‘ The Utmost Silence’ with no talking above a whisper and any necessary commands given in the lowest possible tone. Captain Thomas, in charge of the 40th Regiment, was at the head of all these arrangements and he now began to call himself the commander of the ‘Garrison’. As a result, a force which had been set up at great expense and maintained on the strength of the licences exacted from the diggers was no longer a force provided for their protection and comfort, but one in full military array prepared to put them down were they to be so rash as to attack that place which embodied the very authority of their Sovereign Queen.21 When Rede wrote to town on Saturday, 28 October, he was pleased to report that all of this military and police power had scored one singular success. The digger who had struck Bentley’s hotel with his fist, one Yorkey, had been arrested. He was comforted further to state that ‘the determination shown by the Government has intimidated the riotous and gives great confidence to the well disposed’. Nonetheless, he was not disposed to recommend any withdrawal of forces because a delegation had arrived from Bendigo with a view to agitating on the licence fee, and he felt it better to maintain the strength of the Camp ‘till those meetings are over’.22