Seeds of suspicion at Southport
By Barrack
The Northern Territory gold rush of 1873 saw diggers pour into the fields from the goldfields of Queensland, and with them came the inevitable spate of crimes and misdemeanours. As claims dried up, many of the diggers moved on but scores stayed and the opening up of grog shanties and the continuing lawlessness made it necessary for the Chief of Police, Inspector Paul Foelsche, to set up a police station at Southport. This small community, 25 miles south of Darwin, was one of the wildest places close to the diggings and men bound for the goldfields loaded up their supplies from here. Southport was wild and woolly squalid and untidy. And then one day Southport policeman, Mounted Constable Edwin Ferguson, reported that 202 ounces of gold to the value £740 had been stolen from the safe at the Post Office on the night of the 8th of July, 1880. Inspector Foelsche sent one of his best men, Senior Constable Becker, to investigate this matter. On arrival, the postmaster, Joseph Johnson, informed the Senior Constable that five parcels of gold he had placed in the safe the night before, were missing when he opened up the office the next morning. He explained that he’d found the key to the safe still in the lock, but the door was unlocked. Mounted Constable Ferguson had searched the quarters of the Chinese cook, who had a key to the office but not to the safe; the quarters of the office keeper and the nearby Chinese market gardeners, all of whom he said he suspected. He had also made a thorough search of the surrounding area and found the wrappings from the parcels of gold in an unoccupied store near the market gardeners’ quarters behind the Post Office.
The Estelle moored at Southport short quay on the Blackmore River in 1876. The photograph was possibly taken by Inspector Paul Foelsche. Southport was a thriving river port during the Pine Creek gold rush of the 1870s
A WATCH ON THE CHINESE
It was decided to keep a watch on the Chinese and Becker and Ferguson did just that until 10pm, when Becker told Ferguson to turn in as he would wait a while longer. An hour later Becker heard the police station door open and wondered if his suspicions about Ferguson were correct. Since his arrival in Southport the Senior Constable had harboured serious doubts about the integrity of his colleague. Becker challenged Ferguson next morning and the latter hesitated and then admitted that he had left the police station after supposedly retiring, to have another look at the Chinese. Becker was not satisfied but he had no concrete evidence on Ferguson and told him to take the natives and keep searching for any more evidence. More wrappers and papers were conveniently found in a hole and Becker’s suspicions deepened. As a pretext to get Ferguson out of the way, Becker sent him off to Darwin with the Chinese whom Ferguson had by now arrested for the gold robbery This gave the Senior Constable time to search Ferguson’s quarters. After a 3-hour struggle with a strong box and eventually finding the key to this box in another box, Becker opened it to find the parcels of gold along with a corked bottle. Senior Constable Becker summarily arrested Ferguson who, for some unexplained reason, had not left the town. The Chinese were released and Ferguson stood in the dock eight days later before two Justices of the Peace, charged with stealing gold to the value of £740 pounds. Ferguson’s only defence was that he claimed he had brought 800 gold sovereigns to the Territory when he had first arrived however this didn’t explain how they had somehow turned into unminted gold and what was the story regarding the corked bottle, which looked as if it contained gold too? He was ordered to stand trial at the next sitting of the Circuit Court in Darwin.
STEALING A FURTHER 23 OUNCES
Then, on information from Inspector Paul Foelsche, Ferguson was charged on the 7th of August, 1880, with stealing a further 23 ounces of gold, the property of former Mounted Constable A. A. Fopp. The contents of the corked bottle were indeed gold! Ferguson then lamely told Becker he had merely been looking after the bottle while Fopp was away in Adelaide. But this was not the end of the transgressions of the now demounted constable. Further information from the Inspector, this time to do with Inspector Foelsche himself, led to Ferguson being charged on a different writ on the 20th of September, 1880. This offence happened before the gold robbery. Inspector Foelsche had advanced monies to Ferguson to recompense him for fees paid for the burial of a Chinese but no such burial had taken place. On the 1st of May, 1880, Ferguson was charged “that he obtained a money order for four pounds with intent to defraud Her Majesty’s Government.” It seems Ferguson had been busy with this particular vice long before the gold robberies. Four other cases of a similar nature all relating to the interment of departed Celestials, were afterwards disposed of and the prisoner was committed for trial on each count, so said the North Territory Times and the Government Gazette. The trial of Edwin Ferguson, former Mounted Constable, was held at the Circuit Court in Darwin on the 23rd of September, 1880. He was found guilty on all counts with sentences to be served concurrently – gold stealing, seven years imprisonment with hard labour; theft of a bottle of gold, two years; and for obtaining money under false pretences, he got three years.
Inspector Paul Foelsche, Chief of Police of the Northern Territory. Foelsche was an avid amateur photographer but his treatment of Aborigines, while lauded by some, is regarded by others as abhorrent and a black mark against a succession of South Australian administrations