Depredations by bushrangers
Bushrangers, usually escaped convicts, were a serious problem from the earliest days of white settlement in the Hunter Valley. Their depredations lasted for decades as they targeted inns, stores, settlers on their holdings and travellers on the roads. They took whatever they could ─ food, money, cheques, firearms, clothing and whatever else they could carry on horseback. At times their attacks were frequent. Their activities were regularly reported in the Maitland Mercury.
The following Maitland Mercury account of events on the road between Maitland and Singleton early in 1843 provides an example.
Maitland Mercury, 18 February 1843
The article continues, detailing further bushranging activities that week: the robbing of the Singleton mail, the robbing of two men (a Mr Hentig and a Mr Hungerford), a police chase, and the encounter of Mrs Smith, a local lock up keeper’s wife, with a bushranger seeking her husband and demanding a bottle of rum!
The Mercury piece analysed
In the 1840s none of this was rare, or even unusual, on the main road up the Hunter Valley between Maitland and Singleton. What might have been rather uncommon was several victims being attacked in close proximity to each other in such a short space of time.
Messrs Green, Singleton and Crawford and Mrs Smith were apparently victims within a few days of each other and, not far away, the Singleton mail coach and Messrs Hentiq and Hungerford were robbed soon afterwards. All up, the Mercury article enumerates seven separate incidents, all within about 20 miles (32 kilometres) of each other. Police resources, thin everywhere but especially so outside the towns, were severely stretched when they had to deal with such frequent attacks.
The main road was evidently a dangerous one to travel, and side roads were too. Dwellings off the main road (like Green’s Old Red House) were clearly not immune.
At least two bushrangers were involved in these incidents. One of them died when the people he’d attacked fired at him and he later succumbed to the injuries they’d inflicted. But the bushranger who struck the Singleton mail seemingly escaped into the bush, no doubt to plunder again.
References
Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: Mercury’s account of bushranger cases – 1843’, Maitland Mercury, 1 April 2022.
Maitland Mercury 18 February, 1843. Bushranging
