AUSTRALIA’S FIRST BANK ROBBERY
Sydney in 1828 was a very different place from today. Half the people living there were convicts. Not all convicts were kept locked up as prisoners are today. Many could walk around where they wanted as long as they went to work and turned up for church on Sunday mornings. Church was important. Any convict who didn’t come to pray could be locked up.
While many people were sent to Australia for crimes that would get them only a fine today, there were others who just kept on doing things they shouldn’t. The problem with keeping all those criminals in one place was that if anyone wanted to pull off a big heist it was easy enough to find experts.
James Dingle, who had been freed in 1827, had a wonderful idea. He knew about a drain under George Street, which led to the foundations of the new Bank of Australia, where rich people kept their money. Why not dig through to the bank? He discussed the matter with a convict, George Farrell, and a man called Thomas Turner, who had been involved in building the bank. Turner gave some advice, but dropped out of the plan in case the police suspected him. The thieves replaced him with a man called Clayton. They invited a safecracker by the name of William Blackstone into their plot. If anyone could make this work, he could.
The robbers decided to dig over three Saturday nights. They couldn’t do it on Sundays, because Farrell and Blackstone had to go to church, so they shovelled through the night. On the last Saturday, they were nearly through into the bank’s vault, where the money was kept. They really didn’t want to wait. So Dingle went to the convict supervision office and asked permission for Farrell and Blackstone to miss church that day. Whatever excuse he gave the clerk, it couldn’t have been, ‘They’re busy digging into the bank vault’. Anyway, it worked and they kept digging until Sunday evening.
After a break for sleep, they went back and took absolutely everything kept in the bank. At about 2.30 a.m., they were coming up from the drain with their loot when two policemen came past. They spoke to Dingle, who wasn’t carrying anything and told the officers that he had fallen asleep outside. One of the policemen was a little suspicious because it was a wet night and Dingle was too dry to have been sleeping out in the rain, but he let Dingle go.
On Monday, the robbery was discovered. A reward was offered for any information leading to the arrest of the robbers, but nobody came forward.
Now there was the problem of what to do with the loot. The bank notes were hard to spend, because the bank had records. The thieves decided to use a fence, someone who buys stolen goods and sells them to others. A fence called Woodward offered them a good price for the loot, then simply ran off with it. They did have some money left and they spent it gambling and drinking.
Blackstone was arrested for another crime and sent to Norfolk Island, a very nasty prison. He offered information about the robbery and Woodward, in return for freedom and a ticket back to England. The police agreed and in 1831 rounded up the other thieves. Dingle and Farrell were sentenced to ten years of hard labour. Woodward got fourteen years. We don’t know what happened to Clayton, who wasn’t arrested. Blackstone got his ticket home, but just couldn’t resist stealing from a shop before he went. So much for going home. Blackstone was sentenced to life on Norfolk Island, but somehow managed to get back to Sydney.
However, somebody wasn’t happy with him. In 1844, his body was found in a swamp in what is now the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo.
The Bank of Australia struggled on for several years after the robbery, but closed in 1843. The thieves had wiped it out.
DID YOU KNOW…?
Ikey Solomon was one convict who first came to Australia voluntarily. In 1827, Solomon was on trial for receiving stolen goods, but escaped while on his way back to prison: the coachman driving him there was his father-in-law! Solomon got as far as America, but when his wife, Ann, was sent to Tasmania for receiving stolen goods, Solomon went to join her. Everyone knew who he was, but he couldn’t be arrested without the paperwork, which had to come from England. The arrest warrant finally arrived and he was sent back to England for the trial he’d escaped. Then he was transported – to Tasmania! The writer Charles Dickens, who saw his trial, wrote Solomon into his novel Oliver Twist as a villain called Fagin.