The Killer with 300 Names: 1898: The Scandalous Escape of the Gatton Murderers

INTRODUCTION

Boxing Day 1898

Gatton, Queensland

After the culvert at Moran’s Gully, Tenthill Road runs uphill on its way into Gatton. In 1898 at the top of the hill on the right-hand side, slip-rails gave access to Moran’s paddock. On Boxing night of that year, a bright moonlit night – you could read a newspaper by the light of the moon and stars, it was said, a man was seen by passers-by standing alone beside the road opposite the slip-rails.

Unseen, on the other side of the road, concealed by the shadows of the bush in Moran’s paddock, several men waited silently. The road was empty.

At last from the direction of Gatton, the soft clop-clopping of unshod hooves on the gravel road and the faint jingle of harness could be discerned, and soon the muted murmur of voices. At last the trap and its passengers were in view in the bright moonlight …

At 5 o’clock next morning Daniel Murphy was first up and went out to a kitchen that was empty and a stove that was cold. There was no horse in the yard and the trap was nowhere to be seen. It seemed that his children had not yet returned from last night’s dance in Gatton.

Yesterday was Boxing Day and after the race-meeting at Mt Sylvia which most of the Murphy family had attended, Michael had taken two of his sisters, Norah and Ellen, to Gatton to attend a dance that had been organized by a few of his Mounted Infantry friends.

Mrs Murphy was not keen on the girls going but Michael had over-ruled her.

‘I’m going to take the girls to the dance, missus,’ he told his mother.

‘Stay home, bother the dance!’ she replied.

Michael had then said to the girls: ‘Oh, get ready and come.’

Michael Murphy was a young man with a good reputation as a hard worker and was presently engaged in agricultural research on his own initiative in Toowoomba, at the Westbrook Experimental Farm. He had recently begun work there, having previously worked at Gatton Agricultural College. As well as his farming pursuits he and his brothers tendered for road-works and were usually successful in their bids, causing some resentment amongst the less entrepreneurial of the local young men.

In his spare time Michael was a member of the Gatton Mounted Infantry in which he had recently been promoted to the rank of Sergeant.

He had served with distinction in the north-west during the Shearers’ Strike in the capacity of ‘Special Constable’ in 1893 and 1894 at Barcaldine, Longreach, Hughenden and Kynuna under Lt. Harry Chauvel and earlier in the Moreton Mounted Infantry in 1891 when the government called out the defence force ‘in aid of the Civil Power’ in the first Shearers’ Strike.

The Murphy family’s dairy farm which they had occupied for about three years was spread along the lush banks of Blackfellows Creek, a branch of the Lockyer, in the verdant valley which lies beneath the towering Toowoomba Range. Previously they had lived at Spring Creek, a few kilometers north of Gatton where they grew cotton and tendered for roadworks and fencing.

They were a large Irish family of ten children, Michael the second-oldest was aged 29. Norah, the second daughter, was 27 and Ellen, who had recently left school, a mere 18 years old.

Norah Murphy was an exemplary young woman – she ran the household for the entire family as well as having taken on the care of her older sister Polly’s two year old daughter, her sister having been recently invalided.

Polly and her two children, had, since her illness, moved back home into the Murphys’ Blackfellows Creek farmhouse, her husband William McNeil visiting for weekends from his Toowoomba butchery.

McNeil, a Protestant, was not very popular with the Catholic Murphy family. Sectarianism was a fact of life among the Irish people of the Lockyer Valley, brought with them on the immigrant ships from the old country.

It was McNeil who first voiced anxiety that Michael, Norah and Ellen had not yet returned from the Gatton dance, worried he said that his decrepit little cart, which they had used to convey them to the dance, pulled by their own horse Tom, may have broken down.

At last Mrs Murphy agreed that someone should ride out in search of them. Two of the Murphy brothers, Johnny and Jerry, busy milking, were unconcerned about their siblings’ absence, as was the oldest brother William, cutting chaff in the hayshed.

McNeil, riding the blue horse, brought Norah’s grey horse up from the paddock, saddled and mounted it, and took off at a canter.

Enquiring along the way as to whether the three Murphys had been seen, McNeil eventually reached Tenthill Road and turned in the direction of Gatton.

He was only about fifteen minutes from town, he was later to say, when he noticed on the surface of the gravel road the marks of a vehicle which he recognized as his own. The nearside wheel had a wobble that left a distinctive print. The tracks came from the direction of Gatton, and appeared to veer gradually from the road towards the gateway of a paddock known locally as Moran’s paddock. Coming from the Murphys’ farm, the road ran alongside Moran’s paddock on the right-hand side as it ascended a hill, beyond which were the home, slaughter-yards and butcher shop of a Mr Clarke.

Three slip-rails were in position at the gate-way to Moran’s paddock. The tracks appeared to enter the paddock, so McNeil pulled down the slip-rails and entered, replacing the rails behind him. He then rode to the top of a gentle slope where he thought there might be a dwelling in which Michael and his sisters may have spent the night. Finding none he returned to the slip-rails, dismounted, then climbed through the rails to inspect the tracks on the road for a second time. Returning to the paddock he began, this time on foot and leading his horse, to follow the wheel track into the paddock.

William Lane: editor of the Worker and champion of the working man, and life long Utopian, architect of New Australia

‘The direction lay due east for a few chains,’ he was later to state, ‘until the top of a spur was reached, where the track following the ridge of the hill swerved gradually to the south-east and passed through country thickly timbered with wattle trees. For a distance of about half a mile the direction of the wheel tracks varied between east and south-east until at last the track turned rather abruptly to the south and ran down a slope into a valley. When reaching the termination of the track,’ he continued, ‘at a point about one hundred and twenty-five yards from where it had turned into a spur, in the distance, about fifty yards away, I saw what appeared to be three heaps of clothing, a cart and a horse. Still I did not think they had been murdered. I thought they were sleeping in the sun. After I got a bit closer I saw the clothing of the girls was disarranged, and then I could see the ants crawling all over them.’

McNeil realized with horror that all three were dead

Cover of the Brisbane Worker, March 7th 1981 in support of the Shearers’ Strike

CHAPTER 1

A Shock for the Citizens

The political firestorm of the Shearers’ Strike that engulfed the infant Queensland colony in 1891 was over in June, five months after it began, but it left the colony’s struggling economy with a huge repair bill. Much of the rural infrastructure was damaged or destroyed and the pastoral industry had suffered huge losses at the hands of out-of-control unionists and their city criminal collaborators. It was to curb these destructive elements that military forces had been called out, young men such as Michael Murphy leaving their farms and their jobs, in answer to the government’s call, ‘in aid of the Civil Power.’

Imagine then the astonishment and anger of Queensland’s capital city residents when on the morning of June 19th 1891 in the strike’s dying days, they opened their copies of the Brisbane Courier and read this:

Brisbane Courier – June 19th 1891:

The Late Shearing Strike

What Queensland Has Escaped

A Socialistic Plot

The Central Districts to be Seized

Eight Thousand Men – Twenty Thousand Pounds

Our ‘Strike Correspondent’ at Barcaldine, writing on the 12th instant sends us the following:

"’The people of Queensland may congratulate themselves that the difficulties and disturbances in western Queensland have so far ended without a shot being fired or a life sacrificed: but they do not know how narrow an escape they have had from what might have been a disastrous civil war. The details had all been considered and arranged, not by the ignorant men now languishing in gaol but by wiser men of whom the chief plotter was a resident in Brisbane. His plans were at one time written on paper and possibly might have been secured but it is certain that since the arrest of the first conspirators at Barcaldine they existed in black and white no longer. It was the rash precipitancy of these bush leaders which brought to confusion the carefully planned scheme of the arch conspirator in Brisbane. He had counselled them to wait for 12 months or at all events until August or September; to work under protest if necessary and to hoard up all the money they could earn. There were 8000 of these men who had shown blind obedience to their leaders and had contributed thousands of pounds of their earnings to the unions, and by an extra effort the organizers could have obtained from the combined unions during a good season £20,000 at the lowest calculation. With this money he proposed to procure extensive supplies of arms and ammunition, all of which could be purchased at different places without exciting suspicion that anything unusual was taking place. Depots of these were to be formed at a centre near the railway line where the men would all be required to assemble when the signal was given to strike. Then the movement was to be rapid and resolute. The horsemen were to travel rapidly through the stations calling upon all men employed there to join the union of the republic. At Barcaldine, 2000 men fully armed would immediately take possession of the Central Railway and pass an armed force down the line, calling upon all officials to join them as they proceeded to the coast. In this arrangement it was confidently asserted that the railway men would rapidly acquiesce recognizing the authority of the revolutionary leaders as a governing body. At the same time they would take possession of the post and telegraph office and place at the instruments two men who were in the unionist ranks. The cash in the banks would be seized and form the nucleus of the treasury. It was pointed out that in this manner they could carry all before them as resistance would be useless. Having taken possession of the railway and all the various stations on the line the main force would proceed by train to Rockhampton and if required easily overpower the local military; but this, it was stated by the gentleman from Brisbane would be unnecessary as the Mt Morgan miners and the union men in all the Rockhampton companies would form the new Republican Government and add their force to that of the bushmen. Rockhampton would be looted of treasure and arms. Having possession of the telegraph offices the new Government would know what was going on elsewhere but would impart no information concerning what was happening in Central Queensland and when they proclaimed the republic in this division of the colony their success would compel the existing Government to make terms or else plunge the whole of Australia into civil war.’

Editorial:

"An extravagant programme this was, and more suited for the Argentine Republic than peaceful Queensland but this is how it was sketched out in February last. It is possible the leaders themselves did not think the men would have proved so cohesive and loyal to the union as subsequent events showed. At that time the idea of revolution was enthusiastically received and when 600 men had collected in Barcaldine their enthusiasm acted upon the leaders in such a way they threw caution to the winds and openly stated what they could do and what they would do. Men with military experience were seen at work drilling the footmen in companies and battalions and the whole of the country seemed as if its inhabitants at the command of the then dominant party would either join the union or submit quietly to the inevitable. Had the unions been then possessed of this £20,000 worth of arms and ammunition there would have been a terrible struggle, and the threats that if the unions went down they would drag all Queensland with them would very nearly have been accomplished before the insurrection could have been stamped out. Fortunately the leaders were embarrassed at the outset by wet weather, insufficient funds and scarcity of the munitions of war and the promptitude of the Government in occupying the disaffected districts with large bodies of troops completely upset the revolutionary programme.

The originator of that sublime conception is still at large in Brisbane, sorrowing doubtless over his gigantic scheme to convert Queensland into a socialistic republic. In the Argentine, to which republic he declares his intention of proceeding, his socialistic and revolutionary ideas will have fuller scope, and, let us hope, a greater measure of success; for failure in that country means, not a few years’ imprisonment in gaol but a short shrift and a long rope.

The ‘arch conspirator,’ ‘originator of that sublime conception’ and ‘chief plotter’ was a man called William Lane, the communist editor of ‘The Worker’ newspaper and an anti-Chinese publication called ‘Boomerang.’ He was lying low and at the same time organizing the preparation of the sailing ship ‘Royal Tar.’ It sailed for Paraguay exactly one month after this article was published, filled with pilgrims ready to start a new life in an ideal socialist republic they planned to establish.

On the day following the Brisbane Courier’s dramatic exposé of the socialist plot that was behind the Shearers’ Strike this notice to fellow-unionists was published in the ‘Queenslander’:

‘We call upon the members of the unions to remember the past, to treasure their wrongs and to strike when, where and how they can’ … (and not be) ‘afraid to say revengefully: ‘God help our foes.’ There will be several hundreds of the worst characters scattered about the country who … will do considerable damage before they are stopped.’

(Pugh’s Almanac) On June 14th 1892 the strike was officially declared ‘off,’ with many men now destitute. The Government issued instructions that all men genuinely looking for work were to receive rations, and assistance in getting employment.

CHAPTER 2

1893 – The Name Game

"O, be some other name!

What’s in a name?..."

Did Joe remember from his long-ago school-days in Tipperary, Juliet’s entreaties to Romeo to change his undesirable name?

That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet … she pleaded. Doff thy name …

Joe understood the need to discard a name that had become a liability – he did it constantly. From Winton in the north-west to Bourke in western New South Wales and south to Sydney, around every campfire and in every lock-up in between, Joe Quinn was known by a different name. Only his brother Martin and a few other intimates knew his real one. His name was actually John Joseph Quinn but it was a long time since he had used it, and with a cousin of the same name he had always been called ‘Joe’ within the family.

He had good reason to dissociate himself from his birth name for it had a long and violent criminal history attached to it. Some of his names were on record as belonging to him, most were not. To trace his false names from alias to alias was well beyond the power of the police. While many criminals used a fictitious name or two, Joe had countless numbers of them which his fertile imagination would conjure up at the drop of a hat in his frequent confrontations with the law. Sometimes he changed only the first name of an already used alias.

A heavily-set bearded man with graying hair, a sallow complexion, a strong jaw and a swagger to his walk, he was in no way physically memorable, except perhaps for his walk, sharing his general description with many other swagmen along the road. Few cared if his name was Tom, Dick or Harry, and from time to time it could be any of those.

It was not only to conceal his true identity that Quinn adopted his catalogue of bogus names; the fact was, it gave him great pleasure to confuse and out-wit the police and the court officials that he constantly confronted. Most importantly though and the real reason for his resolute pursuit of anonymity, it provided no traceable record of his movements and activities as he travelled backwards and forwards across the colony, challenging the system.

To him it was a game that his Irish sense of humour allowed him to thoroughly enjoy, especially as it gave him a certain