The shadow of political assassination which darkens the state affairs of other countries does not fall as heavily on the Australian political landscape.
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We don’t have the morbid love affair with political killers as the United States has: the endless exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s motives, the doomed romantic sic semper tyrannis of John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley Jr obsessing about Jodie Foster. No Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Squeaky Frome. We don’t have a tryst with the gun as the arbiter of democracy.
We don’t have the kidnappings and car bombings of the Red Brigades, the seminal plunging of the yoroidoshi into the abdomen of the Japanese Socialist Party leader by Otoya Yamaguchi.
Perhaps it’s the more prosaic nature of our politics, its mundanity. One killing directly attributed to political motivation, committed by the odious Phuong Ngo when he murders NSW Labor MP John Newman in 1994, is more a tawdry attempt by a second-rate gangster to secure a seat in parliament and shore up a racket than any declaration of idealism.
Percy Brookfield, NSW Legislative Assembly member, is murdered by a deranged Russian emigre in 1921, but the killing took place in his trying to prevent injury to the public. And the infamous Thomas Ley may have been involved in three or more murders. Ley seems to have been a genuine psychopath.
Peter Kocan famously attempts to shoot the federal Opposition leader Arthur Calwell with a sawn-off .22 rifle in 1966 because ‘he didn’t like politics.’ He shoots Calwell through a car window which shatters and sprays Calwell’s impassive slab of a face with glass shards. The window saves his life by deflecting the bullet into his suit coat lapel.
Ngo receives a life sentence for the murder of Newman, as does Kocan for the attempted murder of Calwell. Kocan is released after three years, and becomes a noted writer and poet. Ngo remains in a high security prison.
The one assassination attempt in our history directly attributed to political idealism was really an attack by a desperate, deluded and damaged man looking to make a name for – or to destroy – himself. Like all political acts by outsiders, it is furiously dragooned into the vicious debate of the time – then sectarianism – to make a degraded political mileage. In this aspect it succeeds. The sectarian divide is for decades made concrete, abetted by politicians with motives of their own.
The would-be killer goes to the gallows for his crime. Attempting to assassinate a member of the Royal Family at a time of royal fervour is suicide. His name is Henry James O’Farrell, he is Irish, and he comes from Ballarat.
1: Sectarian dissonance – ‘The Irish problem’ and Fenianism
Most of the convicts – and a number of the Royal Marines – who arrive in Sydney Harbour in 1788 are Catholics of Irish descent. From the first moment of colonisation the ‘Irish problem’ vexes the minds of the mostly Protestant overseers, who live in fear of rebellion. Compounded by the actions of the rebels at Vinegar Hill in 1804, the uprising reinforces the stereotype that the Catholics are simply waiting for the first opportunity to rise up and seize power.
Although many Catholics rise to positions of prominence in the law and politics as the colonies grow, the sectarian chasm remains wide. One of the causes is the belief Irish Catholics have ‘divided loyalties’; their support for freedom from British rule in their homeland means they are inherently untrustworthy here.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the slur of ‘Fenian’, used commonly by their detractors.
The Fenian movement seeks to gain independence from British rule for Ireland by acts of violence. Stemming from such groups as the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Fenian Brotherhood, it receives foreign financial aid from and has extremely strong support in the United States and Canada.
Rising gradually from the 1840s onwards, it culminates in a series of bombings and other attacks in Ireland and England in the late 1860s, most of all 1867. These fail, and the public support and sympathy engendered by the idea of Irish freedom largely sours.
In Australia, so far removed from the immediacy of world news but with its high proportion of Irish immigrants, the sectarian split which has been successfully avoided for much of the gold rush begins to fester. The Irish look to reports of what is taking place in the struggle for their homeland’s freedom with sadness and anger; the ruling classes with fear and revulsion.
Into this rising and roiling tide of public debate was thrown a young man of religious fervour, alcoholic disposition and no little mental instability.
2: Henry James O’Farrell: dreamer, drinker
If ever there were a man more destined to destroy himself, then O’Farrell would be his ideal model. Contemporary photographs show his wild stare and battered complexion. Life has played him harshly; he’s a man on the edge. He’s tall for the time, 5’11”; blue-eyed and for the most part presents himself well despite his alcoholism. Prone to flights of fantasy and elaborate, convoluted stories, his mind teeters as he seeks a reason to exist.
Henry O’Farrell migrates to Australia in 1841 at the age of seven. Educated in Melbourne Catholic schools, his father is a land agent and his brother Peter a successful lawyer. O’Farrell feels the religious vocation is for him and in his early 20s travels to Europe with deacon’s orders. However on his return to Melbourne in 1855 he argues with the Bishop of Melbourne James Alipius Goold and is never ordained. This argument has a tragic postscript many years later.
O’Farrell turns to sheep farming outside of Clunes, and then becomes a grain merchant with his cousin Joseph Kennedy. Sadly it appears a strain of mental instability and a dependency on alcohol flows through the family genes. Joseph dies of the ‘horrors’, the withdrawal symptoms of chronic alcoholism which include terrible hallucinations and awful physical tremors, in 1864. At the same time O’Farrell’s brother is caught in a libel dispute, his reputation is destroyed and he leaves Melbourne.
O’Farrell’s mental health declines as his financial ventures fail, and he too falls into the grip of alcohol. He begins to suffer persecution paranoia and delirium tremens. He wanders the streets of Ballarat with two loaded pistols threatening to kill people. By January 1867 he has a complete mental breakdown, consumed by his own failures and obsessed by the woes of his place of birth. He is sent to Melbourne by his sisters to ‘recover’. Whatever that recovery is, it is rudimentary and tragically unsuccessful.
Returning to Ballarat, he ekes out a miserable existence selling vegetables and fruit from a filthy barrow at The Haymarket, now under the Civic Hall. In September of that year he decides to head to Sydney, ostensibly to reconnect with his religious studies. He is 35, and has just over six months left alive.
3: The Prince comes to Ballarat
Prince Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria, is a popular and athletic figure. The first genuine royal to visit the colonies, he has command of HMS Galatea and is undertaking an extensive world tour. He’s young, just 23; not tall but handsome, intelligent and cultured.
Part of his Australian tour brings him to Ballarat. Indeed he spends a whole four days – December 9 to 13 - in the golden gem of the colony of Victoria, and its inhabitants spare no expense in preparing the city. A room is specially furnished for him in Craig’s Hotel, where he entertains his entourage and guests.
He takes a tour down the Band of Hope gold mine, does a bit of pick mining, miraculously finds 'tolerably large nuggets' and surfaces mud-encrusted and laughing to have his photograph taken with his mates in their flannel and dungaree coveralls.
The city will build a suitably majestic edifice for his public reception and banquet. The Alfred Hall is, by newspaper accounts, second only to the Exhibition Building in Melbourne in terms of magnificence.
“The building is on the model of a large ancient basilica and it might be called a secular cathedral, if such a phrase be permissible,” the Ballarat Star enthused.
“The building is lighted by stencilled clerestory windows by day, and by hundreds of star jets of gas by night. A large number of the windows open, and thus by those apertures and ventilation spaces in the floor, a satisfactorily free change of air is obtained even when large numbers are congregated within the building.
“The floors are all of planed pine, and the frame work is of hardwood, much of which was of living trees in the adjacent forests at the time the foundation posts of the hall were fixed in their places a few weeks ago.”
The visit is a gala affair, as would befit a city used to throwing parties in the years of gold fever. A torchlight procession of German residents marches from the Ballarat East Town Hall to greet the Prince at his hotel. Songs are performed: Die Kapelle and Des Deutschen Vaterland. He dines with the Ballarat and district fire brigades. Some of them travel from Smythesdale, Clunes, Talbot, Creswick, Daylesford, Ararat.
Another night is spent at Her Majesty’s watching light plays of 60 years earlier: Matrimony: a petit opera in two acts, and The Honey Moon by the tragically unsuccessful writer John Tobin. A levee complete with interminable speeches from every mayor and clerk of the region is held at the Alfred Hall one morning into afternoon; so many speeches that most are presented in written form and not spoken.
There is a huge banquet and a children’s presentation in the Hall; an interrupted foundation-stone laying (rain) an abortive regatta on Lake Learmonth (more rain) and a trip to Buninyong.
At least there are no tragedies in Ballarat. When the Prince travels to Bendigo a large scale-model of his frigate Galatea combusts and explodes in a lantern parade, killing three young boys on board; and the Alfred Hall built for him there also catches fire before the royal banquet, and burns to the ground.
Ballarat’s Alfred Hall survives until the 1930s.
4: An act of madness or of treason? Clontarf
By 1868 Prince Alfred’s tour takes him back to Sydney, where an invite is extended to visit the northern seaside suburb of Clontarf for a fundraising picnic for the Sydney Seamen’s Home.
O’Farrell is already in Sydney. He’s evicted from his lodgings at Tierney’s Currency Lass Hotel in the city for his erratic behaviour, making prolonged outbursts whenever the Prince’s name is mentioned.
He takes up residence at another hotel, The Clarendon, with money from his sister. The outbursts continue: the indecencies committed upon the Irish body, the perfidious English. The day before the Prince is due to visit Clontarf he’s across the harbour in the eastern suburb of Waverley, practising target shooting with pistols.
The die is cast.
Alfred’s transport to Clontarf on March 11, 1868 is a small steamer called The Fairy. As elsewhere throughout the tour, a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd is waiting to welcome him. The Prince lunches and after emerging from the luncheon tent, hands Sir William Manning, patron of the Seamen’s Home, an envelope with a donation cheque inside. Sir William suggests they should walk around to Cabbage Tree Point to watch local Aborigines perform their indigenous sports.
Emily Nuttall Thorne is there with her family when O’Farrell steps from the crowd with a small revolver. He has a larger one concealed on his person. He stands five or six feet, two metres, from the back of the Prince and aims.
...(her sister) Annie said 'We had better walk on a little it seems so rude to stand staring at him here' & I was just going to say something to her when we heard a sharp noise like a chinese cracker & looking towards the place from which the sound came I just saw the Prince fall. Then the whole flashed across our minds in a moment & we all exclaimed 'The Prince is shot'. I covered my face with my hands & hardly any thing all I can remember is someone falling down beside me (Annie) some one falling down beside the Prince, people rushing up from all directions & then Annie Grier & I were alone. We heard another shot. Presently we saw Papa limping out of the crowd. I almost screamed out 'Oh Papa what is the matter' & he said 'I'm shot I'm shot. (Emily Thorne’s eyewitness account)
O’Farrell shoots Prince Alfred in the back. In echoes of Kocan’s attempt almost 100 years later, the projectile is deflected from the Prince’s spine by his India rubber and metal braces and lodges in his side to the right of the spine, above the ribs. The Prince falls onto his hands and knees.
"Good God, my back is broken," he cries.
The crowd rush O’Farrell, infuriated. A second shot discharges and lodges in George Thorne’s foot, Emily’s father. He faints. Pandemonium takes hold, and it appears O’Farrell will be lynched, torn apart by the crowd on the spot. A Mr Vial of Castlereagh Street pinions his arms and thus the pistols. The enraged, roaring mob seize their opportunity to punch and kick O’Farrell repeatedly in the face and head. His clothes are ripped to shreds. The police rush in to arrest him and it is with only the greatest difficulty they get him onto The Fairy, whereupon the crew produce a rope to hang the assailant.
The crew are dissuaded from summary justice by Francis Needham, Lord Newry, the Prince’s friend and travelling companion. The steamer hauls out into the harbour despite the angry entreaties of those on the wharf to return and deliver O’Farrell to his fate. He is taken to Sydney Harbour and conveyed to the Darlinghurst Gaol by Superintendent of Police Orridge.
Inside the royal tent the Prince tells his attendants to inform those waiting outside he is not badly injured. The bullet is just under the skin on the right side of his abdomen. While his case is serious, he recovers quickly in the care of nurses newly trained by Florence Nightingale and led by the Lady Superintendent of Sydney Hospital, Lucy Osborn. Within eight days he is travelling again.
5: A dreadful aftermath
The NSW Legislative Assembly is sitting the day of the shooting. Once the attempt is confirmed, the house is adjourned and Colonial Secretary Henry Parkes takes it upon himself to interview O’Farrell in person at the gaol.
Parkes is a polymath, a man who supports liberal causes and suffered hardship in childhood and youth. He arrives in Australia in 1839, tries several employments and business ventures unsuccessfully until he finds his calling as a writer, journalist and orator. A political radical in his early colonial days, he falls in with the liberals in opposing the colonial aristocracy, winning the conservative seat of Wentworth in 1854.
He enters and leaves parliament with frequency as he passes in and out of insolvency through his failing newspaper Empire and trips back to England as a colonial representative. By 1868 he’s in parliament once more as the member for Kiama, part of an unstable coalition.
Parkes has many qualities and ideals as a politician, but also possesses an unfortunate penchant for intrigue and a propensity to see conspiracies where there are none. As Colonial Secretary he is head of the police, but mistrusts his Irish employees in the force.
He investigates O’Farrell himself; goes to his former lodgings and collects evidence, he says, that proves a Fenian plot is afoot to create outrages.
His interview with O’Farrell is disturbing. It’s clear the accused is not in his right mind, and Parkes leads his answers, convinces himself the prisoner’s meandering replies are truthful. At one point O’Farrell suggests he trained with the French Artillery, at another says the Pope prefers England to Ireland, at another says he never wants to shoot the Prince.
The Colonial Secretary: But I understand you to say that you had great compunction in shooting him (ie the Prince) at all? That you did not like it?
The Prisoner: Who would?
The Colonial Secretary: But you felt compelled by the instructions from the Fenian Government?
Within a month of his attack on Prince Alfred, O'Farrell is on trial for his life. Sectarian division is wider than ever. Loyalist groups and Orange societies call for the ‘expunging of treasonous actors’. Catholics strive to prove their own fealty to the Crown across the country.
Parkes’s own government alleges a dedicated Fenian plot and carries the savage Treason-Felony Act 1868, suspending civil rights and making it an offense to refuse a loyal toast to the Crown. Justices of the Peace were enabled to issue warrants for entry into the houses of those suspected of sedition, and language ‘disrespectful to her Gracious Majesty’ is punishable by two years’ imprisonment.
The trial is over in just two days. Despite his defence arguing coherently that O’Farrell is insane, his confession to Parkes condemns him. The recovered Duke of Edinburgh pleads for his life, offering Queen Victoria’s intercession. It’s refused.
‘We did not think that His Royal Highness should interfere in the administration of our laws’, says the Colonial Secretary. Parkes will have his hanging.
O’Farrell walks onto the scaffold of Darlinghurst Gaol for the attempted murder of the Prince on April 21, 1868. His unhappy life is ended at the snap of the rope.
Parkes is knighted in 1877 and dies in 1896. He becomes known as the ‘Father of Federation’ for his work in forming the Australian Constitution in the lead-up to nationhood.
Prince Alfred marries unhappily, has one son who suicides, and dies in agony of throat cancer in 1900, aged 66. His Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, granted to him after marriage, is dissolved by the Great War.
Sectarianism remains the virulent and divisive norm in Australia for 100 years, fanned by conscription and arguments over funding for Catholic schools, by the split in the Labor Party and mistrust of ‘Papism’.
Archbishop James Goold continues to work for the Catholic flock, attending the First Vatican Council and overseeing improvements to St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.
While in Brighton in 1882, he is approached by an older man with an Irish accent. It is Henry O’Farrell’s brother, the lawyer Peter. Goold looks at the man through rheumy eyes as he approaches.
O’Farrell draws a pistol and fires at the ageing archbishop. He misses. Goold is rushed away by his aides, but he is never the same man. He dies of a heart attack four years later. It’s hard to imagine anything other than filial grief could lead a man to shoot at his archbishop – a tragedy beyond coping. Had Goold ordained his brother would the end have been different? Would Australia have been different?