‘CAUTION BURGLARS – A MAN SHOT!’ A grain robbery on Old Wharf, Hobart, 1845
by Terry Newman
In April 1845 two men, both ex-convicts, brought a boat up to a grain store in Hunter Street, Old Wharf, Hobart, and set about robbing it, unaware that someone slept on the premises. Using all capitals, the press reported the outcome, ‘CAUTION BURGLARS – A MAN SHOT!’ One of the robbers, named John Dakin, paid the ultimate price, while his accomplice William Grant tried unsuccessfully to escape.
Background
As background, the ‘Old Wharf’ Hobart was created using landfill out into Sullivans Cove to reach Hunter Island, which was otherwise only accessible via a sandbar. Initially the small island was used as a storage location, and by June 1816 a report read; ‘commodious and very useful wharf has lately been erected on Hunter’s Island.’ The same report also argued that it would be a ‘great utility to have a causeway erected’ to connect the island to the main shore. The item was also pleased that the gallows and gibbet used to execute and display prisoners had been removed.
A small stone jetty was constructed in 1821, followed by the recommended sea-wall and stone-filled causeway from the island to the shore. Thereafter, the location flourished and became known as ‘Hunter’s Street’, which continued to serve Hobart shipping even after the ‘New Wharf’ was built along Salamanca Place in the 1830s. Naturally, merchants set up businesses on the ‘old wharf’.
For example a soap factory and at least two grain stores stood where today a hotel, private accommodation, restaurants and an art school operate. One of the old wharf’s colonial businesses belonged to William M. Tennent, a Scotsman and wholesale ‘wine and spirituous liquors’ dealer, who supplied or used grain to distil alcohol. The other adjacent grain store belonged to W. H. & C. Harper, who sold ‘oats, barley and grass seeds’.
Grain Robbery
Tuesday night 8 April 1845 followed what was described as a period of ‘frost and severe weather’, one such night reaching just 30.10 Fahrenheit [-1.05 Celsius]. Taking advantage of people avoiding the chill, John Dakin, with William Grant on board, took his own boat named Isabella [a 7 ton cutter] and moored it near Tennent’s grain store.
The two robbers then rowed closer in a dinghy, and ‘removing a board’ from the building, they were able to ‘push back the wooden bolt from a locked window’. Once inside Dakin and Grant began moving 33 bushels of wheat and 11 sacks of grain to transfer it to the Isabella, which was ready to ‘receive the plunder’. But someone was sleeping in the building against such criminal activity, the 11 sacks of grain only making it onto the wharf near the dinghy!
The Hobart Town Courier reported the crime and its fatal outcome:
BURGLAR KILLED.- A most daring attempt at wholesale robbery at the stores of Mr. Tennent, of the Old Wharf, has been luckily defeated. Mr. Livingstone [Tennent’s clerk], who sleeps at the store, going his usual rounds about half-past nine o’clock on Tuesday night, to see that all was secure, observed that the stable window was open; he instantly went up to it and listened, but hearing nothing he concluded the robbers had gone. He then went next door to Harper’s store and knocked for assistance; as he was thus employed he heard the hinges of the window creak; he went towards it armed with a pistol, and called out- “I’ll shoot you if you stir!”
A fellow [Dakin] then jumped out of the window and advanced towards Mr. Livingstone, who snapped his pistol at him without effect. The man continued to advance upon Mr. Livingstone, who drew back, and, cocking his pistol again, fired at the man. Upon firing his pistol, Mr. Livingstone ran out into the street, calling for assistance, and a constable promptly answered.
A second man [Grant] had by this time jumped out at the window, and made for a boat alongside Mr Harper’s wharf, but being prevented by Mr. Livingstone and the constable, was chased round into Mr. Tennent’s yard, and captured.
The other man [Dakin] got into a dinghy, and from thence into the cutter boat [Isabella]… The guard boat hearing the noise approached, but was sent on a wild-goose chase by the man in the boat, calling out “they have gone towards Battery Point,” whither the guard boat proceeded. Upon going to the boat after the capture of the second thief, the man was found to be dead. His name is Jonathan Dakin; he was known to be a bad character; and has left a wife and three children. William Grant is the name of the robber captured alive. He was only acquitted in January last on a charge of stealing fowls. Both villains came from the Old Beach. Dakin was formerly a servant of Mr. Livingstone’s father. This makes the third attempt at robbing the stores of Mr. Tennent, and the result, it is to be hoped, will prove a warning to such rogues in “grain.”
The Plan annotated by Russ Gloster, with thanks.
The Robbers
The Jonathan Dakin mentioned in the Burglar killed article was actually a different man. The correct John Dakin, who also had two aliases [Deakin, Deacon], was born in Manchester in 1810. He was a labourer and shoemaker, and was tried at Salford, Lancashire in July 1831 for stealing 40 shillings, which at that time was a relatively large sum and could have seen him hanged. But Dakin’s father lodged a plea for clemency based, in part, on John coming from a ‘respectable family’. The death sentence was commuted to be transported for life, despite, or because of, Dakin being described as a ‘bad character, very bad, twice before convicted and twice before imprisoned’ for theft and housebreaking. A life sentence in that era meant a minimum of fourteen years.
Dakin arrived in Tasmania in 1832 on the Katherine Stewart Forbes, and during the voyage his conduct was again noted as ‘very bad’. His Tasmanian conduct record shows him as aged 22, albeit quite short, yet ‘stout made’, with tattoos [see absconding notice]. The record is also littered with misdemeanours, and several attempts to abscond. For each of these attempted escapes, one of which saw a £2 reward offered, he received periods of hard labour, a number of lashes, or both. But harsh punishments doubtless engendered Dakin’s desire for freedom.
In February 1833 he was apprehended and sent to a road gang for nine months. Where, within weeks, he was guilty of ‘breaking his irons’, gaining 30 lashes, followed almost immediately by 50 more after another escape attempt. Undeterred, Dakin then stole a hat and some boots, but was caught and sent to trial, gaining more time on another road gang. He next ‘purloined government tools to aid in his escape’- earning yet another 50 lashes.
Sent to Port Arthur, Dakin was, not least, guilty of being drunk in the hospital. But he must have become somewhat compliant because he was later assigned to work outside the settlement for a local farmer. Confirming his apparently better behaviour, in November 1839 Dakin was granted the required government permission to marry another convict named Margaret Ross.
At aged 27 years, Ross was described as a ‘house-maid and plain cook’ and had arrived in 1836 to serve seven years for perjury, otherwise her conduct was ‘good’; hence her permission to marry. In fact, as was the case for a proportion of convicts, Margaret’s conduct record bears no misdemeanours at all. It only notes that her ticket-of-leave was granted to her in 1841 and her Free Certificate in September 1843.
Dakin earned his ticket-of-leave in January 1842, and three years later, albeit, on the brink of the grain robbery, his name was publicised amongst a list of convicts obtaining their free pardon in January 1845. By which time he was prosperous enough to acquire the Isabella, but he had obviously not forsaken criminal tendencies.
Dakin’s accomplice, William Grant, a boatman by trade, was born in Dorset in 1785, but was apparently known locally as ‘Old Billy the Carpenter’. He was considered an ‘old man’ because he was, in fact, twice the average age of other prisoners. He had been transported, aged 41, in March 1831 for seven years for stealing barley – another grain!
Grant arrived in Tasmania on the Strathfieldsay that November, with a ‘good’ behaviour report. And it three years before his Tasmanian conduct record saw an entry in August 1834 for being drunk at muster, which earned him 14 days hard labour. But within the next two months Grant’s fortune changed, he was given 20 lashes for disobedience, and six extra weeks hard labour for neglect of duty. Over the next few years Grant was declared drunk several times, each time earning degrees of punishment, eg; more hard labour.
Then in November 1835 his fate turned again. He stole a pine board worth a mere 1 shilling, for which his remaining period of transportation was extended for three years, to be spent at Port Arthur. This was where he probably met Dakin, and picked up his taste for freedom. Either way, in August 1838 Grant was discovered with a ‘file in his possession’, perhaps intended for himself and or Dakin to use on their irons?
Luckily for Grant he was only ‘severely reprimanded’, after which he gained a ticket-of-leave a year later. Then in 1841, having served his extended sentence to ten years, he was ‘free by servitude’. But within four years he was in double trouble, first going to trial for the robbery of the fowls and then onto Tennent’s store.
Inquest and trial
An inquest into Dakin’s death was held on Thursday 10 April at the Tasmanian Inn [Campbell Street] before the coroner, and a ‘highly respectable’ jury of seven men. In that era hotels were often used for public meetings, inquests, even elections, because they had suitable rooms.
Libraries Tasmania; CON 31-1-10, p.90 [extract, erroneous date].
After viewing Dakin’s body, and visiting Tennet’s store, the jury returned to the hotel, where they heard from a constable that:
five minutes after the shooting he heard groans proceeding from a small cutter fifty or sixty yards from the shore … [and] called for another boat… [in which they] brought the deceased on shore; he was then alive, and bleeding a little from under the right arm; he did not speak any distinct words; Dr. Crook was sent for, and on his arrival, in about ten minutes, he pronounced the man to be dying.
After the inquest a formal court hearing followed on 26th April, at which Grant was found guilty. Before this verdict, Livingstone explained that because Dakin had worn a ‘handkerchief over his head’ it was the reason he did not recognise him as his father’s former employee. He also explained why he was armed:
I never slept without my pistols at my head; I always carried a pistol about me, as I was fearful the keys of the stores might be demanded of me.
Another constable added:
On going to the Isabella, he found the deceased on board; he was standing with his back against the gunwale; he asked witness what he wanted there and said, “It’s all right.” Witness said, “You are the man I want,” and caught hold of his right arm, when he groaned… [then], ordering the man into his boat, he found he could not move without assistance; he was accordingly assisted.
On the reason for Dakin’s groaning, Dr Crook detailed his autopsy:
death to have been caused by a gun-shot wound [to the right armpit], which penetrated the upper portions of the right and left lobes of the lungs, passing behind the large blood-vessels and the windpipe; the ball, having thus traversed the posterior part of the chest, lodged against the third rib on the left side: such a wound was necessarily mortal. Dr. Crook produced the bullet, which he found in the chest of the deceased; it was a leaden bullet, not so large as an ordinary marble.
In Livingstone’s favour, the jury were advised that ‘every person was perfectly justified in protecting his master’s property’. Therefore, their verdict on Dakin’s death was ‘justifiable homicide’. That left only the Judge to hand down Grant’s sentence, which proved ‘lucky’ for him:
On Saturday, the Court met at 12 o’clock, when the judgment passed upon William Grant, for breaking into the warehouse of Mr Tennent and stealing therefrom was cancelled, His Honor… being of opinion that the building was not in law a warehouse. The prisoner, therefore, escaped with the sentence of seven years’ transportation for larceny.
Grant was lucky in the sense that the Judge said that seven years was the ‘extreme sentence’ that he could invoke for larceny. Otherwise, a life sentence was possible. Even so, Grant was ‘to be sent to Port Arthur for [a minimum of] two years’.
Finally, years later, in what was his sixty-sixth year, a reference to Grant indicates that he was still a convict because a fresh ticket-of-leave granted to him was revoked, but why remains unknown. However, because of his common name his later years remain a mystery. Of course, Grant probably had more future years than Dakin…
Terry Newman was the Parliamentary Librarian, publishing works including Becoming Tasmania; renaming Van Diemen’s Land. Since retirement he continues researching convicts and colonial citizens of Tasmania. Recent items include a story in the 2018-19 Van Diemen History Prize and three on the Female Convicts Research Centre website.