The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (43 page)

The night of 6 October was crowned by a full moon. James Scobie, a young Scottish miner, was encouraged by the bright evening to prolong his drunken revelries. Scobie bumped into his mate, Peter Martin, and the two proceeded to the Eureka Hotel. The day had been hot and the air was even now stagnant, sultry. It was well after midnight, but in Ballarat every businessman had his price. Surely they could get a nightcap from Bentley.

The hotel was shut up when they arrived. Scobie knocked loudly on the door. Catherine and James had retired for the night, but Michael Walsh, the waiter, was still in the bar. He told Scobie and Martin to go away. Scobie continued to make his presence felt, kicking at the door, and smashing a pane of glass. Catherine came downstairs to the bar and told him to go away. Scobie, as Walsh testified at James and Catherine's subsequent murder trial, called the landlady a whore. William Hance, the watchman who had now joined the posse in the bar, said
that was not language to use to any woman
. James Bentley now entered the bar in his trousers and shirtsleeves, as did Farrell, and Duncan the barman. Scobie and Martin scampered away towards a cluster of nearby tents, about seventy metres from the hotel.

What happened next has been told and retold in history books, literature, song and dance, an indissoluble amalgam of speculation, hearsay, sworn testimony and myth. The following version is synthesised from the primary sources only. Even then, there are multiple layers to the onion and trying to peel them apart is a fiddly exercise in perseverance, if not tears.

After their property was damaged and Catherine insulted, the Bentleys, Hance and Farrell pursued Scobie. A violent altercation occurred once the party caught up to the drunken, staggering Scobie. Eleven-year-old Bernard Welch was asleep in his family's tent when he was woken by voices outside. He peeped through a flap to see Mr and Mrs Bentley, and three or four men. One of them picked up a spade from the corner of the Welches' tent. Bernard couldn't say, when he was later required to give a sworn testimony, which of the party picked it up. Bernard's mother Mary Ann also awoke and heard the voices. She thought they might belong to Mr and Mrs Bentley
but could not be sure
. The party moved on. Bernard heard a scuffle and a blow struck. Peter Martin later testified that he was struck down by a group of men and one woman, but he could not identify them. Scobie received a blow to the head. Martin ran to fetch help. He returned with the local butcher, Archibald Carmichael, and Dr Carr. Carr could detect no signs of life. Carr and Carmichael took the body to the Eureka Hotel. (The Victorian licensing law required that hotels also serve as morgues and sites of coronial enquiries.) According to William Duncan, no one from the hotel left the premises from the time the drunken men tottered off to the time Dr Carr arrived with Scobie's dead body.

According to Catherine Bentley, in the note she scrawled almost forty years later, the dead body dragged into her hotel that night did not belong to Scobie at all, but another young miner. Scobie, she argued, was transported surreptitiously to Melbourne by another Irish miner, Peter Lalor, and secreted in the Abbotsford Convent. Catherine believed that James Scobie had gone on to marry and live a fruitful life in Dowling Forest. Remarkably, there is no death certificate for James Scobie to prove her wrong.
¹⁴

It was now past 2am. At the Eureka Hotel, Dr Alfred Carr conducted a post-mortem on the deceased.
The stomach
, he found,
was filled with a large quantity of partially digested food and when opened the odour of spirits was very perceptible.
Carr believed the cause of death to be the rupture of one or more vessels within the substance of the brain
caused in all probability by a blow.
He determined that
the state of the stomach from food and spirituous liquor would render a blow more dangerous and more likely to cause a rupture of the blood vessels
. His final conclusion was crucial:
I think the injury was inflicted by a kick and not by the spade now produced.
¹⁵

All these details came to the fore at the coronial inquest held the following day, Saturday 7 October. Many more particulars—potential fact and scurrilous fiction—emerged at the subsequent Ballarat and Melbourne trials of the Bentleys and two of their employees.
¹⁶
That James Bentley was still in his slippers when he left the hotel. That Catherine and James were not really married. That James Bentley boasted he had taken over £200 on the day of the inquest. That Mary Ann Welch heard Mrs Bentley say
how dare you break my windows
before the fatal blow was struck. That Mrs Bentley was heard laughing in the dining room shortly before Scobie's body was dragged to her front door. When the waiter asked why the landlady was laughing, the barman said
Oh, that fellow has got a clip what was at the door.
One witness said Scobie did not call out
you whore
or use any bad language. Another said he heard Mrs Bentley say
that is the sweeps what broke my windows
. Yet another witness said he heard a woman say
that serves you right
after the blow was struck but swore that woman was not Mrs Bentley. The watchman, Thomas Mooney, who turned Crown witness against his former boss, said there was no foul language used by Scobie—but also conceded [I]
cannot swear I am in my right mind.

At the coronial inquest on the morning of 7 October, no one mentioned the alleged slur to Mrs Bentley's good name that became the centrepiece of the subsequent murder trial in Melbourne. Carr's autopsy conclusion ruled the day: that the death was occasioned by a blow to the head from a scuffle, most likely from a fist or kick, not a spade. But that day was short lived.

Word soon spread that a poor, young Irish miner had been murdered by a rich, well-connected English publican. And not just any publican but the most successful liquor distributor on the diggings. Magistrate John D'Ewes himself later said that Bentley had made
the enmity of a large class in the diggings, the sly grog sellers, whose trade had been ruined by the licensed houses, of which Bentley's was the largest
. The fact that Bentley was the president of the Licensed Victuallers Association only
added venom to their gall
.
¹⁷
On the 8th, a deputation of miners visited the Camp. On the 9th, Bentley, Farrell and Hance were arrested and bailed (at £200 each), and the case was remanded for three days. During this time, the accused and their supporters, including the numerous residents at the hotel, were able to get their stories straight, a fact that was not lost on the grieving relatives and aggrieved countrymen of Scobie, particularly his older brother George. Bentley was also spotted at the Camp, where it was assumed he was communicating with Police Magistrate John D'Ewes. There had long been a rumour that D'Ewes was financially indebted to Bentley. On Thursday 12 October, an enquiry into Scobie's murder was held before D'Ewes, Robert Rede and James Johnston.

The decision of the bench that day saw a family's dreams go up in smoke.

Summer set in in ernest
, recorded Thomas Pierson, though it was only early October. North winds. Dust. Oppressive heat. In the three days between Bentley's arrest and his appearance before the bench, another inflammatory incident occurred. It had nothing to do with James, or Catherine, or the hotel, or even alcohol, but it would start a devastating domino effect on the Bentleys' future.

On Tuesday 10 October, a crippled Armenian servant named Johannes Gregorius was visiting a sick man in his tent on the Gravel Pits. Gregorius had limped from his residence, a flimsy vestibule attached to the cavernous tent that served as the Catholic church. Gregorius was the servant of Father Patrick Smyth, the young Irish priest who had recently been transferred to minister to Ballarat's nine thousand (predominantly Irish) Catholics. Gregorius had no reason to fear being spotted at large among the diggers; ministers of religion and their live-in servants were not required to hold a licence. On this day, however, a callow mounted policeman stopped Gregorius and demanded to see his licence. In faltering English, Gregorius attempted to explain his exemption. But the trooper was in no mood to listen.
Damn you and your priest
, the trooper spat,
¹⁸
and dismounted to assault the lame man. Horrified onlookers watched as the horse, unrestrained by his master, proceeded to trample Gregorius.

As luck would have it, James Johnston was in the vicinity. The crowd expected their assistant commissioner would discipline the policeman, who was so clearly overstepping the line. Johnston, however, drew his own arbitrary limits: regardless of any alleged assault, there was the assumed issue of the outstanding licence to deal with. Gregorius would have to attend court the following day. Father Smyth arrived on the scene and offered Johnston £5 bail to take his injured servant home.

What began as a tragedy ended as a farce. In court the next day, in front of John D'Ewes with James Johnston as witness, the battered Armenian was fined £5 for being unlicensed, despite his legal exemption. As Smyth had already paid that sum, the slate should have been cleared—however unjustly the offense was accrued. But Johnston decided to up the ante. He charged that it was the cripple Gregorius who had in fact assaulted the mounted policeman. D'Ewes found this new indictment proved and fined Gregorius another £5.

The Catholics of Ballarat were ropable. Autocratic and illogical miscarriages of justice had become commonplace in Ballarat that winter, but the Catholic community took this one as a direct insult to its priest. A petition was raised on behalf of
the aggregate Catholic body at Ballarat
. The petition, nominally headed up by Timothy Hayes, was undoubtedly the project of his wife Anastasia, who was working as a teacher at the Catholic school. Anastasia, as later events would prove, was a born litigant: quick to assert her rights and defend the rights of those she cared for. In 1854 (though not later) Anastasia Hayes cared most about the Catholics of Ballarat.

The petition wanted
the feelings of an offended people recognised
, and these people held James Johnston personally responsible for the slight. Johnston had never been popular, but now he was in complete disgrace. The petition called for the immediate removal of Johnston from Ballarat and an enquiry into his
ungentlemanly and overbearing
character. (Frederick Vern later called Johnston the most
insolent and unscrupulous
of all the government officers.) As if pre-empting an accusation that the victimised petitioners were but a bunch of Irish ratbags, the petition stated:
The Catholics
of Ballarat are a large and influential body comprising inhabitants of every recognised country under heaven
. This corpus begged leave
to observe that the constitutional means taken to obtain a redress of the wrong here complained of evinces our respect for the law
.
¹⁹
Not just Irish. Not a mob either. Constitutional. Lawful. Legitimate.

Governor Hotham, alerted to the sectarian crisis brewing at his most populous goldfield, momentarily considered transferring Johnston to another district, but decided it would be
impolitic
to do so. Robert Rede made clear his intention to stand by his right-hand man. It would not be in the best interests of the Camp for its leader to undermine his deputy. Johnston stayed. Margaret Brown Howden Johnston bought a cradle for her gestating baby, noting the purchase in her diary. The Irish of Ballarat considered sewing a large flag to make their point; a
Monster national banner
, reported the
ARGUS
, to fly over
the disputed ground of the Eureka.
²⁰

Another turn of the screw. The coil tightens.