Indigenous ExecutionsAfterthe 1861 and 1875 Amendments
The long held view in South Australia and Western Australia that the �terror' of public hangings could pacify Indigenous resistance on the frontier made their selective reintroduction particularly attractive to lawmakers.
Yet, the question must be asked, how widespread were these spectacles of frontier intimidation in the years following the passage of the amendment? For South Australia there is only a small number of cases to discuss. On the Eyre Peninsula in late 1861, two Indigenous men were publically hanged at Fowler's Bay and another two at Venus Bay, on both occasions for the murder of a European settler.[650] In September 1862, the hangman returned to Venus Bay to execute Meengulta who speared a hutkeeper after a dispute over rations.[651] Meengulta was the last Indigenous Australian to hang in the history of South Australia.[652] This means that only on five occasions were Indigenous offenders executed in the post-amendment era and all within two years of it being passed. Thus, despite the rhetoric of the colonists and the push for legislative changes, a public execution in South Australia was never seen again after 1862.Curiously, Western Australia hanged many more Indigenous offenders after 1875 but the sites of these executions were, more often than not, the colony's gaols rather than the frontier. After the amendment's assent in December 1875 until the last Indigenous execution in Western Australia in May 1900, a total of eighteen Indigenous people were executed.[653] Only on one occasion—at the triple execution of Terribie, Corrondine and Tchawada in February 1892—was the hanging held at the scene of the crime. It was reported that around seventy â€?able-bodied natives' saw the execution at Mount Dockrell, near Halls Creek in the north of Western Australia.[654] The correspondent thought that the triple execuÂtion successfully communicated â€?the penalty they risk in attempting the lives of white men'.[655] Otherwise, Indigenous executions after the 1875 amendment were performed in Rottnest Island (5), Roebourne (5), Derby (3) and Perth (2)—all in that particular location’s gaol precinct.[656]
Despite the decision of the authorities to execute Indigenous crimiÂnals within the prison setting rather than at the scene of the crime, these Western Australian executions were still viewed by a great number of Indigenous inmates detained in these locations. At the dedicated prison for Indigenous offenders established on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth, there are accounts in 1879 and 1883 of every resident prisoner being forced to watch the hangings.[657] On another occasion at Roebourne Gaol in 1893, the â€?native prisoners’ and â€?town natives’ witnessed the execution of Cooperabiddy.[658] As suggested by the wording of the 1875 amendment, public executions at the scene of the crime were an option for the Governor, not an obligation.
Perhaps it was an option less readily taken up after a prison system was established in Western Australia that was already heavily populated with Indigenous peoples. Displaying the consequences of crime in front of a contained audience of Indigenous prisoners may have been just as effective as a public hanging in front of their own people in public in the eyes of the authorities.In Western Australia the 1875 amendment was wholly repealed in 1952, after surviving two substantial consolidations of the Criminal Code in that jurisdiction in 1902 and 1913.[659] In South Australia the right of the Governor to hang an Indigenous offender at the scene of the crime was not officially revoked until 1971.[660] It survived both the 1876 and 1935 Criminal Law Consolidation Acts, the latter being (notwithstanding on-going revisions) the primary legislative vehicle in South Australian criminal law that codifies crimes and penalties to this very day.[661] Nevertheless, the amendment was a dormant feature of South Australian and Western Australian criminal law following the last Indigenous executions many years earlier and it remains unlikely that a subsequent Governor would have exercised the option, especially in the twentieth century.
More on the topic Indigenous ExecutionsAfterthe 1861 and 1875 Amendments:
- Indigenous ExecutionsAfterthe 1861 and 1875 Amendments
- Anderson Steven. A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900. Palgrave Macmillan,2020. — 279 p., 2020