Introduction
These poignant words were written by the then Governor of New South Wales, Lord Charles Robert Carrington, on 4 January 1887.[760] They serve as an introduction to the sense of isolation as well as the burden of responsibility he felt at the time of writing.
The circumstances of the Mount Rennie case, which his words refer to, had taken its toll. The Mount Rennie case involved the violent rape of a young 16 year old girl called Mary Jane Hicks by a local gang of young men. The case was described at the time as being a crime of the most “revolting brutality and ferocity”[761] and the Mount Rennie case remains one of the most well-known cases in Colonial Australian criminal history. The crime occurred in Moore Park, an area then of low-lying scrub and swampland on the outskirts of the City of Sydney, adjoining the industrial suburb of Waterloo.[762] The place was known locally as Mount Rennie. The circumstances surrounding this notorious case were subsequently branded in the colonial press as “The Waterloo Outrage”[763] or the “Mount Rennie Outrage”[764]. The first term is clearly a reference to the location of the crime. The second term, “outrage”, was employed widely throughout the daily press in the reporting of the case and appears from its use to be a term synonymous with “rape”.[765]An examination of this high profile crime enables us to gain insight into the workings of the colonial justice system between November 1886 and January 1887. It also tells us something about the nature of the changing values of the society. Previous scholarship on the Mount Rennie case has analysed the “colonial mythology”[766] of rape operating in the Colony, the colonial perceptions of women, and the views of youth including the culture of larrikins or Iarrikinism.[767] The aims of this chapter are to consider the ramifications of the sentence imposed upon the nine youths found guilty of the outrage, particularly in terms of the politics of justice operating at the time the crime occurred.
Further, unlike previous scholarship, this chapter is less concerned with the details of the crime itself and focuses more exclusively on the implications of the death sentence imposed on the young offenders and the enormity of the decision faced by the then Governor of New South Wales as to whether to exercise Executive clemency.This perspective has been developed through a close analysis of available primary resources. The New South Wales State Records have a collection of materials known as the Colonial Secretary’s Special Bundle, which contain Lord Carrington’s notes on the Mount Rennie case.[768] [769] There are further Carrington papers available at the State Library of New South Wales but these are accessible on a read-only basis and are subject to stringent publication restrictions. Official court documents for the Mount Rennie case are scarce.11 However, there was extensive reporting of the trial throughout the Colony in the daily newspapers and in regional broadsheets. These proved to be a rich source of material. The newspapers were also valuable with regards to understanding the public responses to the trial and the intimate workings of the colonial legal system; as those in the limelight, the Judge, the Governor and the Premier were all called upon to respond to the controversy created by this case. Public attention surrounding the case at the time was extremely high not only because of the shocking nature of the crime, but because it accentuated the problems of social morality and the unruly gangs of youths within Sydney. Such sentiments were reflected in the letters to the Editors of the daily press including those of Francis Myers who complained about the “[u]ndisciplined licentious boys wandering uncontrolled through the scrub through long hours of leisure...”[770] and of Frank Ward who considered that “the parents of the unfortunate boys are in the first instance answerable for the crime they have committed, having reared them in crowded and unwholesome localities.”[771] The age of the offenders in this case was also a matter of significance and moreover was pivotal to the debates about whether the death sentence should be carried out. In 1886, when the crime occurred, rape was a capital charge in New South Wales.[772] It was no longer, however, a capital offence in England. Since 1841, murder and treason remained the only capital offences in England.[773] The exercise of the death penalty against British subjects had subsided with the move to transportation and later to a system of penal servitude.[774] The Mount Rennie case can then also be seen to shed light on changing public views that were occurring around the turn of the century on the death sentence in Australia. The case highlights that there were serious concerns about what the nature of this crime said overseas of the character of the Colony when Australia was in the throes of celebrations for the upcoming Queen’s Jubilee year in 1887[775] As portrayed in the words of Lord Carrington in the quote at the outset of this chapter, “the Judge who tried the case having sailed for England” to take part in these centenary commemorations.