The earliest surviving prison photography in Queensland seems to have been the 1875-6 images of inmates of the Brisbane Gaol. The photographs are a haunting record of the offenders and their crimes.
The series contains several hundred pictures, and I have endeavoured to discover the stories behind the inmates and their offences.
Kelah
Kelah could never really explain what happened in the labourers’ hut at Mr H. Corfield’s property near Maryborough. There were three Pacific Islanders working on the property – recruited from their countries by heaven knows what method. Kelah was from Apii and shared the hut with two labourers from Santo. He didn’t speak the Santo language, and only spoke limited English. The journalists covering his trial stressed his social isolation.
In October 1874, Kelah remained in the hut, nursing a very sore foot, while his cabin-mates went out and enjoyed a visit with other Santo labourers. The men returned in good spirits and went to bed.
Around midnight, one of the Santo men woke to see Kelah attacking his companion with an axe, cleaving the poor man’s skull nearly in two. He scuffled with Kelah, but got away to raise the alarm at the main house.
Kelah ran away but was soon captured by Corfield and the police. Kelah immediately shut his eyes, and braced himself for a fatal blow when caught, as though he was expecting to be executed on the spot.
When he first appeared in Court, Kelah’s leg injury was so severe that he had to be supported by two policemen. He shunned the Apii man who was brought in to interpret and gazed around the Court warily as the (to him) unintelligible proceedings wore on.
Kelah was eventually tried and sentenced to death. It was hard for the Court to elicit an explanation of reason for the murder of his hut-mate, even when he cooperated with an interpreter. The Executive Council decided to commute his sentence to a lifetime of penal servitude. His Brisbane Gaol photo shows him still wary and confused, and his gaolers could not get him to provide a year of birth, or of arrival. He passed away in June 1882. The record of his death simply put the word “Islands,” as his mother. Kelah would probably have agreed.
Charles Pritchard
Charles Pritchard killed a man named Israel Griffiths in Gympie in 1875. The two men had been drinking in town in the afternoon and returned to Pritchard’s mother’s home in good spirits. During dinner, Griffiths and Pritchard quarrelled over the important question of whether a miner or a bushman could earn more money. A drunken barney ensued, and Griffiths, much larger than Pritchard, gave his opponent a black eye.
Mrs Pritchard tried to intervene in the fight, but her son picked up a bush knife and stabbed Griffith to death. Mother and son concocted a story for the neighbours and police and raised the alarm. The police looked at a double-stab wound in Griffiths’ chest and doubted the Pritchards’ intruder story. Mother and son were charged with murder.
At the trial, Mrs Pritchard was found not guilty, and Charles Pritchard – ably defended by Ratcliffe Pring – escaped a murder conviction and the noose. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years penal servitude. He had two prior convictions, common assault and assault with intent to commit rape. Clearly a violent man, he more or less got away with murder.
William Boyd Lawson
Another man who engaged in a drunken argument that terminated fatally was William Boyd Lawson. On April 13, 1875, he encountered a fellow Scot, John Little, at Stacey’s Hotel at Burenda, in the Augathella district. John Little opined loudly that “Scotchy Lawson was a loafer,” and Lawson punched him, causing him to fall on the floor and hit his head. Little died several days later.
Accounts varied as to the aftermath of the punch. The initial report stated that Little was a man of sober habits, who stood up shortly after being felled, then collapsed again, never regaining consciousness. The evidence at trial had Little “knocking about the house,” and drinking nobblers frequently afterwards.
At any rate, the medical evidence was “concussion of the brain” caused by his head striking the floor. One punch can, and did, kill. Lawson was found not guilty of manslaughter. He was in Brisbane Gaol to serve out sentences for contempt of court, obscene language and assault, no doubt thanking his lucky stars that he wasn’t facing a sentence for a more serious crime.
Moreton Bay and More 