Jimmy Governor

Jimmy Governor (1875 – 1901) was an Indigenous Australian who was proclaimed an outlaw after committing a series of murders in 1900. His actions initiated a cycle of violence in which nine people were killed (either by Governor or his accomplices). Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe were on the run from the police for 14 weeks before Jimmy was captured and Joe was shot and killed. 
In July 1900 Jimmy Governor and Jacky Underwood murdered four members of the Mawbrey family and a school-teacher at Breelong near Gilgandra. Underwood was captured soon afterwards, but Governor and his younger brother Joe took to the bush. During the period they were at large, ranging over a large area of north-central New South Wales, the Governor brothers committed further murders and multiple robberies. A manhunt involving hundreds of police and volunteers was initiated, with the Governors occasionally taunting their pursuers and deriding the police.
In October 1900 Jimmy Governor was wounded and, a fortnight later, captured near Wingham. Four days after his brother’s capture Joe Governor was shot and killed north of Singleton. Jimmy Governor was tried for murder and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol in January 1900.
Jimmy Governor's life and crimes formed the basis for Thomas Keneally's 1972 novel "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith", which explored themes of Aboriginal dispossession and racism. Fred Schepisi's 1978 movie of the same name was an adaptation of Keneally's novel.
Early life.
Family background.
Jimmy Governor was born in about 1875 on the Talbragar River near Denison Town (in the vicinity of Dunedoo), the son of Tommy Governor (or Grosvenor) and Annie Fitzgerald. Jimmy was the eldest of eight children (five boys and three girls). The children's father, Tommy Governor, was a full-blood Aborigine from the Namoi River region. He was a hard-working and intelligent man who had arrived in the Mudgee area as a young man in the mid-1850s and found steady work engaging in bark-getting, driving stock and other bush work for a variety of employers (setting an example that would be followed by his sons). Jimmy’s mother, Annie Fitzgerald, was raised on ‘Caigan’ station north-east of Mendooran, the daughter of a white Irish stockman named Jack Fitzgerald and an Aboriginal mother named Polly, who worked as a house servant. Annie's father died before her birth and she was raised by Polly and her Aboriginal step-father named Henry. Annie was described as “a half-caste, but had all the manners and customs of the pure black”. 
Tommy Governor took work wherever he could find it, and his growing family went with him. The children attended a number of different schools as they moved from place to place. In 1887, while mending a dam east of Dunedoo, Tommy Governor found “samples of metal-bearing ore” which he showed to George Stewart, manager of ‘Pine Ridge’ station. Stewart had them assayed, revealing that they contained silver, after which he took up mineral leases of 70 acres and formed a company of Mudgee businessmen to work what became known as the Mount Stewart mine. In 1888 “the original promoters of the Mount Stewart and Grosvenor leases” presented Tommy Governor, on his departure with his family to the Paterson River district, ”with a purse of sovereigns to help the old fellow on his journey”. The fact that he “received no substantial benefit” for his discovery of the “silver field” remained a source of resentment for Tommy Governor. 
Tommy and Annie Governor relocated with their family to the Paterson River and Singleton districts from 1888. Tommy and his sons worked on stations along the Paterson River (west of Dungog), often receiving rations only as remuneration. Increasingly, however, the Governor family were drawn into the Aboriginal reserve system which sought to confine and control indigenous people by separating them from the white population. In January 1890 family members participated in a community event at Gresford, but by the following July they were living under canvas on the St. Clair reserve north of Singleton. In August 1890 Tommy Governor was involved in an altercation with another Aboriginal man at the Singleton "blacks' camp". During the fight Governor stabbed the man several times with a small knife. He was subsequently tried on a charge of malicious wounding in the Singleton Quarter Sessions. Tommy Governor was found guilty, “with a recommendation to mercy, prisoner believing himself justified in self-defence”. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour in Maitland Gaol.
After his release from gaol Tommy Governor moved his family westwards back to the Gulgong district. The family set up camp on the Aboriginal reserve in the police paddock across the creek from Wollar township. Tommy Governor died in May 1900.
Education and work.
Schooling for the eight Governor children was irregular as the family moved from place to place contingent on their father finding work. The eldest, Jimmy, attended school at Denison Town and Wollar, and possibly also at Gulgong, Coonabarabran and Allynbrook (in the Paterson River district). A former pupil of the Wollar school recalled that Jimmy, Joe and Jackie Governor attended school there “and could read and write tolerably well”. Jimmy Governor was described as a “smart, athletic and cheerful native” and his younger brother Joe as “rather sullen and morose”. 
At Yass in 1883, when white parents objected to “aboriginal and half-caste” pupils attending the public school, the local school board decreed that the indigenous children were forbidden to attend. The Minister of Public Instruction, George Reid, upheld the decision of the school board after being requested to rule on the case by the teacher at the school. This precedent determined subsequent public education policy in New South Wales whereby local objections were sufficient to preclude Aboriginal children attending a specific school. 
In 1890, aged fifteen, Jimmy Governor was lopping trees on properties in the Dunedoo district. Later he and his brother Joe worked along the Allyn River and in the Singleton district, doing a variety of jobs including fencing, mustering stock and breaking horses. His father’s example had given Jimmy Governor a strong sense of independence and a determination to work hard and survive in the white world. He had experienced life in Aboriginal reserves and reacted against the degrading conditions he witnessed, resolving to work for wages, not rations and handouts. At his trial in November 1900 Governor stated, “I was never a loafer like some blackfellows”, before adding: “I always worked, and paid for what I got, and I reckon I am as good as a white man”.
During this period of his life Jimmy Governor had his first significant adverse encounter with the justice system. In February 1893 he was convicted of “stealing” at Denison Town (near Dunedoo) and received a sentence of one month imprisonment. Other sources describe the offence as “horse sweating” (riding a horse without the owner’s permission), a less serious offence than the actual theft of a horse. 
By the mid-1890s, with his family living on the Aboriginal reserve at Wollar, Jimmy Governor worked on stations and farms in the district. In July 1896 Governor, aged 21 years, enlisted as an tracker with the New South Wales Mounted Police and was stationed at Cassilis. His stint as a police tracker lasted seventeen months (to December 1897). A police officer claiming to know Jimmy Governor provided an explanation as to why Jimmy left the police service, stating that he had “seduced the daughter of a selector, who threatened to shoot him unless he married the girl”. Whatever the reason, soon after Governor’s departure a formal inspection of Cassilis police station by Superintendent Atkins revealed “everything in a fairly satisfactory condition except the conduct of the Senior Constable and Constable” which Atkins intended to bring “under the notice of the Inspector General of Police”.
After leaving the police Governor returned to Wollar for a while, after which he was engaged cutting wood near Gulgong by Jonathon Starr. Then he worked as a shed-hand on 'Digilbar' station north of Dunedoo, before returning to Gulgong.
Marriage.
While Jimmy Governor was cutting wood for Starr he met fifteen-year-old Ethel Page, who was working at Ryan’s bakery in Gulgong township. Ethel had been born in 1882 in the Macleay River district near Kempsey, the eldest daughter of Charles Page and Julia ("née" Moore). The Page family arrived in the Gulgong district in about 1890, and by 1898 Ethel’s parents were living north-west of Gulgong on the Dunedoo-Dubbo road.
Whenever he could get to town Jimmy Governor courted Ethel Page and in August 1898 she became pregnant. The pair married in December 1898 in the rectory of St. Luke’s Anglican church at Gulgong, with Jimmy wearing a borrowed white cricket suit for the occasion. A later report claimed that the celebrant, Rev. Haviland, had only consented to perform the ceremony “at the earnest solicitation of the girl’s mother, who, for reasons which may be understood, wished to save her daughter’s reputation”. The writer added a further comment: “One naturally wonders what manner of woman the mother was who insisted on uniting her daughter for life to a low-bred savage aboriginal”. When Ethel was later asked “if she did not think it would have been better to have remained single rather than marry an aboriginal”, she replied: “You might think so, but I was very fond of Jimmy”.
Jimmy and Ethel Governor lived in a house in the Gulgong district next to Ethel’s parents where she gave birth to a son named Sidney in early April 1899. Charlie Page didn’t approve of his daughters marriage to Governor and after the birth he relocated to Dubbo, where his wife and family later joined him. By the end of 1899, after a difficult year of opprobrium and disapproval of his marriage from Ethel’s family as well as Gulgong locals, Jimmy Governor determined to move his family away from the district.
The Breelong murders.
Fencing contract.
Jimmy Governor had met John Mawbey of 'Breelong West' when he was breaking horses in the Gilgandra district. He made contact with Mawbey who offered him a fencing contract, to commence in January 1900.
John Mawbey owned a property known as ‘Old Breelong’ or ‘Breelong West’ on the Wallumburrawang Creek at its junction with the Castlereagh River, ten miles south-east of Gilgandra. The locality was once a coaching change-station on the Mendooran-Gilgandra road, and the family’s first home was in the old Breelong Inn. By 1900 Mawbey’s original selection had expanded to 1,500 acres and a new house had been built north of the old inn. By this stage John and Sarah Mawbey had nine children. Sarah Mawbey’s younger sister Elsie Clarke also lived with the family. In late January 1900 a 21-year-old teacher, Ellen Kerz, joined the household. ‘West Breelong’ had been declared a provisional school, so Miss Kerz boarded at the new house and taught the Mawbey children there (as well as others from the district). Generally the Mawbey men slept in the inn while the women and young children occupied the new house.
Jimmy and Ethel Governor arrived at Mawbey’s property in January 1900, after leaving their young baby with Ethel’s parents in Dubbo. Jimmy was contracted to construct three miles of fencing, a job that would take about a year. The Governors made their camp further up the creek, about three miles from the Mawbey home and near where Jimmy would be working. Jimmy and Ethel constructed a gunyah at the camp from bark sheets propped against a large log and laid bark and leaves on the floor for bedding. John Mawbey had agreed to supply rations of flour, meat and sugar, but any extras would be charged. The arrangement also involved Ethel working in the house several times a week as a domestic servant.
Grievances.
From the outset Ethel Governor was subjected to ridicule and sarcasm from the women of the household, particularly Mrs. Mawbey and her 16-year-old daughter Grace, as well as the teacher Ellen Kerz. The comments were directed at her lowly position as a household servant and the fact she was married to an Aborigine. The manner in which Ethel was treated during the day was an issue that festered and became magnified in the ensuing months. After they had settled at Breelong Jimmy and Ethel decided to fetch their baby and a subsequent incident seems indicative of the tensions that had developed. Ethel rode to Dubbo on a borrowed horse to collect her child; when she arrived back with the baby at the Mawbey homestead it had been raining. The women took the baby to warm it by the fire. While Ethel was unsaddling the horse she watched through the window as the women ridiculed and laughed at her child. Ethel then went into the house, grabbed her baby and walked the three miles to the camp seething with anger.
In late June the Governors received a visit from Jimmy’s brother Joe and a friend Jack Underwood. Underwood was aged about 38 years; he walked with a limp and was blind in one eye. The two men were on their way to the Redbank Mission near Coonamble to visit family members. They returned after nine days to help Jimmy with the fencing work, accompanied by 80-year-old Jack Porter and the Governor brothers' young nephew Peter Governor. Joe Governor and Jack Underwood set up their camp about a hundred metres from the Governors’ campsite and Porter and young Peter camped another hundred metres further away.
Bitterness towards the Mawbeys increased in Jimmy Governor's mind as the weather turned colder at Breelong. Jimmy had complained that Sarah Mawbey had overcharged him for rations when she compiled the bill and often remarked to Ethel that “Mrs. Mawbey was a swindler”. Another grievance arose in early July when John Mawbey rejected about a hundred of the posts that had been split; after negotiation he agreed to pay half-price as "they will do for a cross fence". As the grievances began to pile up and his resentment increased Jimmy Governor began to fantasise about bushranging. In a statement made after his capture Governor said that he, Ethel, Joe and Jack Underwood “were talking about bushranging at night after our work was done”, with the discussions taking the form of boastful talk and bravado between the men.
The murders.
On Friday evening, 20 July 1900, Jimmy and Ethel Governor were quarrelling at their camp. Jimmy was extremely agitated, accusing Ethel and his brother Joe of being “sweet on each other”. When the conversation turned to the subject of the Mawbeys, Governor later claimed (in evidence at his trial) that Ethel had goaded him by saying: “They rub it in; they do as they like with you”, to which he replied: “You come down and I will see about it”. Then, in Jimmy Governor’s words: “So we got ready and made off – me and my wife, Joe, and Jacky Underwood”. By this stage it was late in the evening, between ten and eleven o’clock. Several of the men carried weapons: Jack Underwood had a rifle and a tomahawk and Jimmy Governor had a nulla-nulla. They had no bullets or gunpowder, so taking the gun suggests that the weapons at this point were being carried for the purpose of intimidation. The group went first to the old inn where John Mawbey, his brother-in-law Fred Clarke, and the two eldest Mawbey sons were staying. Jimmy and another man (probably Underwood) approached the inn and called for Mawbey, who came outside. Jimmy asked him for a bag of flour and a bag of sugar, to which Mawbey replied that he would provide them some time the following day.
By Jimmy Governor’s account he then returned to where the others were waiting and said to his wife: “I am going to see Mrs. Mawbey about those words she has been saying, I’ll make her mind what she is talking about”. The group then walked to the Mawbey house in order for Jimmy to confront Mrs. Mawbey. According to Jimmy's version of events Mrs. Sarah Mawbey and Ellen Kerz came to the door and Governor said: “Did you tell my missus that any white woman who married a ---- blackfellow ought to be shot? Did you ask my wife about our private business? Did you ask her what sort of nature did I have – black or white?". The women (by Governor’s account) responded “with a sneering laugh” and he then “struck Mrs. Mawbey in the mouth” with his nulla-nulla. Miss Kerz is then quoted as saying: “Pooh, you black rubbish, you want shooting for marrying a white woman”. Jimmy then hit Ellen Kerz on the jaw, knocking her down. In his own words he then “got out of temper and got hammering them, and lost control of myself” (after which he claimed: "I do not remember anything after that").
When Jimmy Governor starting attacking the women it set off a series of chaotic and murderous events. A panel of the front door was shattered by a tomahawk, indicating it had been closed against the assailants. Sarah Mawbey was mortally wounded by five dreadful gashes to her neck and head inflicted by Jimmy Governor. Ellen Kerz and 16-year-old Grace Mawbey retreated to an adjoining bedroom where Hilda Mawbey and Elsie Clarke were in bed. Three boys – 'Percy' Mawbey (aged 14), 'Bert' Mawbey (aged 9) and their cousin George (aged 13, known as 'Jack') – were sleeping in an enclosed verandah and woke to the noise. Jack hid under a bed and Percy went to confront the attackers but was “chopped down" and killed by Jack Underwood as he entered the front sitting-room where his mother lay. The door to the bedroom where the women had retreated was smashed in, but Miss Kerz and the two Mawbey girls managed to escape by climbing out a window. However 19-year-old Elsie Clarke was caught and attacked with a nulla-nulla, receiving severe wounds to her face and head. After they had climbed out the window Miss Kerz and the two girls started running towards the inn and Jimmy set off in pursuit. He caught up with Ellen Kerz and Grace Mawbey, killing the teacher with tomahawk blows to the face and mortally wounding Grace, her head and face smashed with a nulla-nulla and a cut from a tomahawk. Hilda Mawbey was ahead of the other two, but stumbled and fell down the steep bank of the creek. Jimmy caught up with her and hit her with repeated blows from his nulla-nulla, leaving her head “completely crushed in”.
Amidst the chaos and slaughter young Bert Mawbey managed to slip out of the house. The terrified boy hid in the bushes near the creek for some time before running to the old inn to tell his father the dreadful news. John Mawbey grabbed his gun and hastened to the house, closely followed by his son Reggie and Fred Clarke. They arrived barely ten minutes after the murders had begun, but the assailants had left the scene. The only family members who remained unscathed were Bert, his cousin Jack (who had hidden under the bed) and the two youngest children (who had been sleeping in a separate kitchen behind the house). Percy Mawbey, Hilda Mawbey and Ellen Kerz were dead. Grace Mawbey lingered for two days before succumbing from her wounds. The children’s mother, Sarah Mawbey, had suffered multiple tomahawk wounds and died on July 24.
On the run.
Jimmy Governor and Jack Underwood then took to the bush, together with Jimmy's younger brother, Joe Governor. Underwood was captured just a few days later on July 24. On July 25 a reward of £200 each for the capture of Jimmy and Joe Governor was offered by the government, later increased on 25 September 1900 to £1,000 each. The government instituted a process on 2 October 1900 to proclaim the Governor brothers outlaws so that, when they failed to appear at a police station by the afternoon of 16 October 1900, they became outlaws, who could legally be shot and killed on sight.
Jimmy and Joe had parted early from Jack Underwood at 'Digilah' Station north of Dunedoo on Sunday July 22 when they were first shot at by a settler named Simpson. Underwood was almost 40 years old (he told a gaoler 37 yrs), had lost the sight of one eye in childhood and had a lameness in his leg that caused him to drag his left foot. He would not have been able to travel on foot as quickly as the Governors. Underwood was captured two days later on 24 July at Redbank near Leadville, taken to Mudgee Gaol, and then Dubbo Gaol where he was held until his September trial and execution on 14 January 1901. Over the next three months the two Governor brothers, styling themselves bushrangers, committed four more murders and carried on a series of break-ins, robberies, and assaults. They showed great skill, ingenuity and bush craft in avoiding their pursuers. The manhunt that got underway to capture them was reputedly Australia's largest. Up to 2,000 volunteers and police were involved in the hunt for them across 3,000 km of country.
A hunt for the men ensued, as Jimmy, Joe and friend Jack Underwood went on a robbing, murderous spree eastwards in the Hunter Valley area, resulting in a large manhunt that followed was of over 100 constables and 12 trackers.
Atmosphere of Terror- The Governor brothers' violent spree while at large created a reign of terror in the areas where they were moving through or had once lived, which "completely monopolised public interest". People residing in the large region between Dunedoo in the west and Singleton in the east, and later northward as far as Port Macquarie, lived in paranoid fear of attack. Settlers moved out of their homesteads on any news that the Governors were heading to their area, and women and children were brought together in towns for safety while men in their local area joined the pursuit. Business was at a standstill in many places in the Wollar/Denman/Merriwa areas. In particular, Jimmy first targeted the area of the Goulburn River around Wollar where he had once worked, to settle scores with men who had treated him badly. As the brothers outwitted and even taunted the police and trackers hunting them, public pressure grew for the police to capture them. They were proclaimed outlaws on 23 October 1900, the last persons to be so declared in New South Wales. Jimmy was captured by locals near Wingham on the Manning River on 27 October, and Joe was shot dead north of Singleton on 31 October 1900. 
Other murders along the way were not random events, but had a motive of revenge for slights given at some earlier time in Jimmy's life.
One of the most notable trackers involved in the pursuit was a friend of Jimmy, James Gillis McDonald from Mudgee, at whom Jimmy fired a warning shot that ricocheted off his saddle. It was later revealed that during the terror, the woman who raised James Gillis McDonald's daughter was hiding under a bed, was shot in the leg and had it amputated.
Alexander McKay was killed near Ulan on 23 July. Elizabeth O'Brien and her 18 month old son were murdered at Poggie near Merriwa, on 24 July; and Keiran Fitzpatrick near Wollar, on 26 July.
Jimmy Governor was shot in the mouth on 13 October, and was subsequently captured on 27 October 1900, several months after the massacre. His brother, Joe Governor, was shot and killed four days later on 31 October at Mount Royal near Singleton.
Trial and execution.
Jack Underwood was tried at Dubbo for the murder of Percy Mawbey, and found guilty. Underwood was hanged at Dubbo Gaol on 14 January 1901.
Jimmy Governor was tried for murder in November 1900, and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 18 January 1901. 
The police cell in which Jimmy Governor was first detained after his capture can be seen in Wingham, on display at the Manning Valley Historical Society Museum opposite Central Park and The Log in the centre of Wingham.
Cultural influence.
The life and crimes of Jimmy Governor was the basis for Thomas Keneally's 1972 novel "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith", which was filmed by Fred Schepisi in 1978.
Jimmy Governor was the subject of Australian poet Les Murray's poem "The Ballad of Jimmy Governor".