Black Bunny's Bushrangers (T) - Matthew Brady New South Wales, Australia
By Black Bunny on 22-May-21. Waypoint GA6042

Matthew Brady

Matthew Brady

Matthew Brady (1799-1826), was convicted for stealing a basket and some butter, bacon, sugar and rice and was sentenced to transportation for seven years.  During four years under convict discipline he received a total of 350 lashes for attempts to abscond and for other misdemeanours. He was sent to Macquarie Harbour in 1823, a new penal station for secondary offenders and desperate prisoners, he escaped next year with a group of confederates.  They sailed a small boat to the Derwent and for two years roamed the island as bushrangers.  Rewards offered by the government were increased from 25 guineas to 100 guineas or 300 acres (121 ha) of land, with the added inducement of a free pardon for any convict who succeeded in bringing Brady and his banditti to justice.

The Brady gang's most audacious feat was the capture of the township of Sorell. A dozen Hobart Town citizens, assembled near Sorell for a dinner, were taken and marched to the town where several soldiers, lately returned from searching for the bushranger, were surprised, disarmed.  During the two years that Brady was at large he fought a number of running battles with government troops and private settlers. After the bushrangers were reduced through the vigorous efforts of the lieutenant-governor, who took the field himself, and of Lieutenant-Colonel William Balfour of the 40th Regiment, Brady was captured near Launceston. His capture was credited to a band led by John Batman, but prisoners of the Crown had been instructed to join the gang in order to betray its members. In April 1826 Brady was brought to Hobart to stand trial and his firm deportment excited much attention. With others he was charged with stealing a musket and bayonet, with setting fire to the premises of William Lawrence at the Lake River and stealing horses from him, and with the murder of Thomas Kenton. He was hanged on 4 May 1826.d in the lock-up.

Bushrangers.

Over 2,000 bushrangers are estimated to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan.

Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term "bushranger" had evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.

Bushranging thrived during the gold rush years of the 1850s and 1860s when the likes of Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner and John Gilbert led notorious gangs in the country districts of New South Wales. These Wild Colonial Boys typically robbed small-town banks and coach services.

In other infamous cases, such as that of Dan Morgan, the Clarke brothers, and Australia's best-known bushranger, Ned Kelly, numerous policemen were murdered.

The number of bushrangers declined due to better policing and improvements in rail transport and communication technology, such as telegraphy. Kelly's capture and execution in 1880 effectively represented the end of the bushranging era.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushranger

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