Jimmy Governor ( – 18 January 1901) was an Indigenous Australian who committed a series of murders in 1900. A total of nine people were killed by Governor or his accomplices. Governor and his brother Joe evaded police for fourteen weeks before the former was captured and the latter killed by authorities.
In July 1900, Governor and his accomplice Jack Underwood murdered four members of the Mawbey family and a schoolteacher at Breelong in what was then the Colony of New South Wales. Underwood was captured soon afterwards, but the Governor brothers took to the bush. During the period that they were at large, ranging over a large area of north-central New South Wales, the 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, Governor was wounded and, a fortnight later, captured near Wingham. Four days after his brother's capture, Joe was shot and killed north of Singleton. Governor was tried for murder and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol in January 1901.
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, Colony of New South Wales, the son of Tommy Governor (or Grosvenor), an Aboriginal man, and Annie Fitzgerald. Jimmy was the eldest of eight children, with four brothers and three sisters.Moore & Williams, page 3. The children attended a number of different schools as they moved from place to place contingent on Tommy being employed in various bush work.
Governor's father, originally from the Namoi River region, was a hard-working and intelligent man who had arrived in the Mudgee region in the 1850s.Tommy Governor, (portrait, woodblock print), Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 27 August 1892, page 481; Mining in New South Wales: Leadville and Mount Stewart, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 27 August 1892, page 502. His mother had been raised northeast of Mendooran and was the daughter of Jack Fitzgerald, a white Irish stockman, 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 stepfather, a man named Henry. Annie was described as "a half-caste, but had all the manners and customs of the pure black".Governor Tribe, The Sun (Sydney), 4 June 1923, page 10.
In 1887, while mending a dam east of Dunedoo, Tommy 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, on his departure with his family to the Paterson River district, "with a purse of sovereigns to help the old fellow on his journey".Mudgee, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 23 June 1888, page 1358. The fact that he had "received no substantial benefit" for his discovery of the "silver field" remained a source of resentment for Tommy.
Following the Governor family's 1888 relocation, Tommy and his sons worked on stations along the Paterson River, west of Dungog. They often received rations only as remuneration. Increasingly, the 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,Gresford, Maitland Mercury and Hunter River Advertiser, 11 January 1890, page 3. but by the following July they were living under canvas on the St Clair reserve north of Singleton.Singleton Police Court: Tuesday, July 20th, Singleton Argus, 30 July 1890, page 3.Moore & Williams, pages 4-5.
In August 1890, Tommy stabbed another Aboriginal man during an altercation at the Singleton "blacks' camp".Singleton Police Court: Tuesday, August 12th, Singleton Argus, 13 August 1890, page 2. He was subsequently tried and convicted on a charge of malicious wounding in the Singleton Quarter Sessions, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour in Maitland Gaol.Singleton, Maitland Mercury and Hunter River Advertiser, 16 September 1890, page 5. Following his release, Tommy moved his family westwards back to the Gulgong district, where they set up camp on the Aboriginal reserve in the police paddock, across the creek from Wollar township.Moore & Williams, pages 6-7.
Education and work Schooling for the eight Governor children was irregular owing to the family's circumstances. Jimmy, the eldest, attended school at Denison Town and Wollar, and possibly also at Gulgong, Coonabarabran and Allynbrook (in the Paterson River district).Moore & Williams, page 9. A former pupil of the Wollar school recalled that Jimmy and his younger brothers Joe and Jackie "could read and write tolerably well". Jimmy was described as a "smart, athletic and cheerful native" and Joe as "rather sullen and morose".The Breelong Tragedy, Western Mail (Perth), 17 November 1938, page 10.
In 1883, when white parents in Yass 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 this decision after being requested to rule on the case by the teacher at the school.No title, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June 1883, page 7. This precedent determined subsequent public education policy in New South Wales whereby local objections were sufficient to preclude Aboriginal children attending a specific school.Setting It Straight, Lynda Burney, Tharunka (Kensington), 7 June 1983, page 4.
In 1890, at age 15, Jimmy 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 a strong work ethic and a sense of independence, and he resolved to work for wages instead of rations or handouts.Moore & Williams, pages 12-13. At his trial Jimmy later 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".Trial of Jimmy Governor, Maitland Weekly Mercury, 1 December 1900, page 12.
During this period of his life, Jimmy had his first significant adverse encounter with the justice system. In February 1893 he was convicted of "stealing" at Denison Town and received a sentence of one month imprisonment.Darlinghurst Gaol Photograph Description Book, Jimmy Governor, No. 8194, 4 November 1900. 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.The Governors, Dungog Chronicle: Durham and Gloucester Advertiser, 31 July 1900, page 2; the source also states "Jimmy was sent to the training ship Vernon", a claim that seems unlikely given the short sentence and the distance between Dunedoo and Sydney, and not least because the Vernon reformatory training ship moored at Cockatoo Island was decommissioned in 1892 (replaced by another ship, the Sobraon) – refer to []
By the mid-1890s, with his family living on the Aboriginal reserve at Wollar, Jimmy worked on stations and farms in the district. In July 1896 he enlisted as a tracker with the New South Wales Mounted Police and was stationed at Cassilis.Moore & Williams, pages 14-18. This occupation lasted only seventeen months, with a police officer who claimed to know Jimmy stating he had left after seducing the daughter of a selector.The Aboriginal Murderers, Clarence River Advocate, 14 September 1900, page 4. Whatever the reason, soon after his 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, Jimmy returned to Wollar and was engaged in cutting wood near Gulgong by Jonathon Starr. Then he worked as a shed-hand on 'Digilbar' station north of Dunedoo, before returning to Gulgong.Interview with Jimmy Governor, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 1900, page 7.
Marriage While Jimmy 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 northwest of Gulgong on the Dunedoo-Dubbo road.Moore & Williams, pages 17-20.
In August 1898, Ethel became pregnant by Jimmy. The pair married in December 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".The Mysterious White Woman, Singleton Argus, 26 July 1900, page 2. 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 Governor's Wife, Walcha Witness and Vernon County Record, 11 August 1900, page 3; reprinted from the Gilgandra Telegraph.
Jimmy and Ethel 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. Ethel's father didn't approve of the marriage 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 determined to move his family away from the district.
The Breelong murders Fencing contract Jimmy 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.Jimmy's Statement, Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, 31 October 1900, page 3.