would tell of his whereabouts. Not even all expiree men would give refuge to an escapee; it was a practice fraught with danger that they themselves would again get in the clutches of the system. The native constable sometimes personated his savage habits. He dressed again in his grease and coloured pigments, he wore feathers and sticks, and what not, in his hair, and carried spears and boomerangs, as if on a serious hunting expedition. He guilelessly drew near to the determined convict, whom it was unsafe for white constables to approach for fear of being shot down. He made friends with him and begged the loan of his gun or offered to share some captured game with him, until an opportunity arose to seize the weapon. Then pointing it at the fugitive he took him prisoner with the threat of death if he evinced opposition or violence.
When the conditional-pardon certificate was abolished more desperate attempts to get away from the colony were made than previously. Five prisoners crept out of the depot at Geraldton on the night of 22nd October, 1865, got into a boat and rowed to the schooner Lass of Geraldton, then in port. The crew was below and the convicts were able to scramble on deck. The leader, with a pistol, threatened to blow out the brains of the first man who offered opposition. Not one of the fugitives was a sailor, and what the objective was is difficult to understand. Harry O'Grady, captain of the craft, managed to get overboard and swim ashore. He gave the alarm. The noise and moving lights on the beach when the escape was made known seemed to frighten the convicts. They knocked down a member of the crew, returned to the boat, and amid a volley of shots pulled towards a quiet spot near the depot. Four of them then proceeded to creep into their quarters again as if to escape recognition; one of them did not return and was supposed to have been shot. On the 29th October the four men were sentenced to three years in irons, and the leader to fifty lashes in addition. A few days earlier a convict at Albany stole the pilot boat and sailed into the night. The craft was afterwards found a total wreck in South West Bay. In 1867 the body of a convict was found dead east of Albany. Another and equally fruitless attempt to seize a coastal vessel was made in 1866 at Fremantle.
By the Edward Fox, convict ship, which arrived at Fremantle in November, 1858, two prisoners, notable in England, were landed. These were the Hon. Rev. Beresford and Redpath. At different times Western Australia was visited by many men famous in the criminal annals of England, such as members of the trio—the business-like butcher, the ingenious stamper, and the garrulous messenger—who succeeded in forging Bank of England notes, and Robson of Crystal Palace notoriety. The clever butcher was said by his local keeper to be a man of excellent conduct. Beresford, of noble lineage, pursued a quiet and not unpopular career in Western Australia. After treading the gradations of the convict system he became a journalist, and a tutor to a publican's family at York. With the remittances he was understood to receive from his aristocratic relations he was liberal, and many were the hungry natives who obtained plenty from his simple charity. For some years he was a constant contributor to a Fremantle paper. The last stages of this promising yet sullied career were spent as an enfeebled battered old man in an invalid depot.
Redpath's history would be considered a famous feat of imagination if written in story. It may be excusable to mention it shortly. Newgate Chronicles announce that he began life in a small way as a lawyer's clerk, afterwards becoming a clerk in the P. and O. Company's office, until he set up as a broker on his own account. Of a charitable turn, he gave the money of his creditors to the poor, and was soon bankrupt. Then he obtained a clerkship in the Great Northern Railway Office, rose quickly and became assistant registrar, and finally registrar, with control of the share transfers. Both as assistant registrar and registrar he developed colossal frauds and launched out into extravagant expenditures. He set up in a princely residence, and was known as a Mæcenas and a patron of art. Leading social and artistic people gathered round his board; his dinners were costly, and attracted the attendance of peers of the realm. But his chief extravagance was in unbounded charity; he headed subscription lists, and not content, even sought out deserving cases. At Weybridge, his country residence, his name was revered by the poor. He was a governor of hospitals, and a patron of other charitable institutions. When the crash came, says the Chronicles, there were pensioners and other recipients of his bounty who could not believe that so good a man had been for years a swindler and a rogue. His detection was dramatic. The chairman of the Railway Company observing a peer shake Redpath warmly by the hand, asked, "Do you know our clerk?" to which his lordship replied, "Only that he is a capital fellow, and gives the best dinners and balls in town." Redpath had caused it to be believed that he had been successful in speculation, but the chairman immediately required an audit to be made of his books. Redpath fled to Paris, whither police officers followed him; Redpath secretly returned to London, where he was arrested while at breakfast in an obscure house. For a period of ten years this clever rogue had appropriated by forgery vast sums of money; the exact amount was never exactly made out. The false stock issued by him was estimated to have brought £220,000. His assets at the time of his arrest, in lands, house, furniture, and works of art, were valued at £50,000, even though he had lived at the rate of £20,000 a year. The stock market was greatly affected when the arrest was announced; society was convulsed. He was sentenced to transportation for life, and heard the mandate without showing emotion or surprise.
Thenceforth Redpath, in prison, degenerated and "behaved" (Newgate Chronicles) "so as to justify a belief that he had been a gaol-bird all his life." He was not in Western Australia a great while before he received a ticket-of-leave certificate. Mr. Willoughby described him as a tall man of good appearance and address. Even in prison he never made his own bed or cleaned his own cell. These menial offices were obsequiously performed by some ignoble convict, anxious for the reward of the great man's smile—a reward not frequently but judiciously bestowed. Among ticketers he preserved an equally elevated demeanour, and lived on the proceeds of sundry shipments of fancy goods consigned to him from English friends. His brother ticketers touched their hats to him; he wrote clever letters to the press under a nom-de-guerre, and was the founder and honorary secretary of the Working Men's Association. The leading settlers shunned him and termed him a "social agitator," or a "complete scoundrel." While in prison he did good service as a clerk in the Commissariat Stores. Governor Kennedy told Earl Grey's Committee that a large saving was thus effected, and of Redpath he said, "His conduct was exemplary, and he obtained his four marks which reduced his period of probation." On 29th November, 1871, Redpath left Western Australia for Adelaide; he was afterwards understood to be thriving in Melbourne. He was a prototype of those who apply the cloak of piety and philanthrophy to base uses.
