Gangland Robbers Read Online Free Page A

Scott’s first bushranging exploit was also his last, and that he and his group of young friends had merely set out to walk to Sydney to find work. Whether they were true bushrangers is another question. Some say they were genuinely looking for work. They did, however, take weapons with them, purchased with Moonlite’s lecturing earnings.
    The life of a bushranger was not always whisky and women. On 15 November 1879 his gang bailed up the Wantabadgery station, near Wagga Wagga, after being refused work, shelter and food. Starving, and having sold their clothes for bread, and with the cold and rainy nights in the bush, Moonlite, in his words, succumbed to ‘desperation,’ terrorising the staff and family of Claude McDonald, the unsympathetic station owner. He also robbed the Australian Arms Hotel of a large quantity of alcohol, and took Edmund McGlede prisoner at his farmhouse, where he and the gang holed up. The number of hostages now totalled twenty-five.
    During the subsequent police raid, Nesbitt was shot and killed while attempting to lead them away from the house so that Scott could escape. While Scott was distracted by seeing Nesbitt shot down, McGlede took the opportunity to disarm the gang leader. According to newspaper reports at the time, as Nesbitt lay dying, ‘his leader wept over him like a child, laid his head upon his breast, and kissed him passionately’. Scott was hanged at Darlinghurst, along with another member of the gang, Thomas Rogan, on 20 January the following year. His last wish was:
    Â 
    to be buried beside my beloved James Nesbitt, the man with whom I was united by every tie which could bind human friendship, we wereone in hopes, in heart and soul and this unity lasted until he died in my arms.
    Â 
    He had planned their joint headstone:
    Â 
    This headstone covers the remains of two friends … Separated 17/11/1879 and United 20/1/1880.
    Â 
    At the time, his final wish was not granted, but in January 1995 Scott’s remains were exhumed from Rookwood Cemetery and reburied at Gundagai, next to Nesbitt’s grave. In recent years, Scott has become something of a championed figure in the gay community.
    It would not be surprising if many of the bushrangers were gay. Certainly, there have been suggestions that members of the Kelly Gang were. Sidney Nolan’s 1946 paintings of them depict Steve Hart wearing an attractive floral frock and riding sidesaddle. Frederick Standish, the police commissioner who supervised the hunt for the Kelly Gang, may also have been gay. He was said to have been attached to two of his men , Frank Hare and Stanhope O’Connor, whose relationship with him was described as being like that of David and Jonathan, a clear reference to the biblical homosexual pair.
    Just as, later, robbers and standover men would claim the soubriquet of ‘Captain of the Underworld’ or ‘King of the Underworld’, or the ‘Grey Shadow’, so there were a number of claimants for the title of ‘The Last of the Bushrangers’. These included John Vane who was the only member of the Ben Hall Gang not to be killed or hanged, dying of Crohn’s disease in January 1906.
    An early candidate for the title was Michael Howe. A pamphlet published immediately after his death named him ‘The Last and Worst of the Bushrangers of Van Diemen’s Land’ but this was wishful thinking. He was probably not the worst and, since he was killed—beaten to death and decapitated—as early as October 1818, he was certainly not the last.
    Howe had been a merchant sailor, then a military man, before turning to highway robbery, for which he was transported to Australia in 1812. He almost immediately rebelled against his merchant boss and bolted for the bush, where he had heard that John (or James) Whitehead led a large gang—some say as many as eighty-strong. Like the Romans with the Sabines ,they raided an Aboriginal camp and