‘MAD’ DAN MORGAN
The bushranger Dan Morgan was called Mad Dan because of his frightening mood swings. One minute he would be charming, the next he would lose his temper and shoot someone. The man was scary!
It’s possible that he had a mental illness. We will never know.
Mad Dan was born John Fuller in New South Wales, 1830, the son of George Fuller and Mary Owen. When he was two, he was adopted by a man called John Roberts, who looked after him till he was seventeen. ‘Dan Morgan’ was just one of many aliases he took on during his life.
Dan worked as a stockman until 1854, when he left for the Castlemaine goldfields in Victoria. Perhaps he decided that robbing other people of their hard-earned money was easier than earning it himself, because he was soon breaking the law. He went to jail for armed robbery. He served only six years of his twelve-year sentence, released early for good behaviour, but Dan Morgan hadn’t learned his lesson.
He returned to New South Wales. There, after a short time as a horse-breaker, Dan helped himself to a valuable horse. The horse’s owner chased and shot him, wounding him. Morgan escaped to an area near the Victorian border, from which he could rob people in northern Victoria.
By mid-1863, Dan Morgan was a full-time bushranger. He committed many armed robberies. In August, he attacked a shepherd called Haley, whom he thought had informed on him. Haley survived the attack, but because of this, the New South Wales government put a 200 pounds reward on Morgan’s head. It would be much bigger by the time he was killed.
The first murder we know for sure that he committed was of an innocent station overseer, John McLean. John worked on a station called Round Hill. In June 1864, Morgan came visiting. The terrified workers were rounded up. Morgan demanded rum. Now drunk, he accidentally shot at himself when he was about to ride off. Thinking someone else was attacking him, he threatened to kill the station manager, Sam Weston. However, he only shot Weston’s hand, then ordered John McLean to ride for a doctor.
Suddenly it occurred to him that McLean might bring the police, so Morgan rode after him and shot him from behind.
Next, he killed a trooper called Maginnity, whose partner, Churchley, rode off and left him. Churchley was sacked for cowardice, but what he did is understandable. Anyone who had Mad Dan Morgan waving a gun at them wouldn’t want to hang around. Other bushrangers had reasons for killing, but Dan Morgan might shoot someone just because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The price on his head, which had already gone up to 500 pounds, doubled to 1000 pounds.
Morgan’s next victim was a senior police sergeant called Thomas Smyth. He was killed in September 1864. By now Mad Dan’s time was nearly up. He managed to commit plenty of robberies both in New South Wales and Victoria over the next few months, but his last hold-up happened on 8 April 1865.
Morgan raided Peechalba Station in Victoria. He held the family prisoner for the night. A nursemaid managed to escape. She warned the station’s part-owner, Rutherford, who sent for the police from the nearby town of Wangaratta.
The next day, Morgan headed for the stockyards to choose a horse, taking three hostages with him. The hostages weren’t much use to him, as a station employee called John Wendlan shot him from behind.
That was the end of Mad Dan Morgan – but not of his body.
First a photo was taken of his corpse, posed with his gun. Souvenir-hunters cut off his beard and long, curly hair. His face was skinned. His head was sent to the professor of anatomy at Melbourne University to be cut up and examined. What was left of him was buried at Wangaratta Cemetery.
Today, people are still arguing whether Ned Kelly was a hero or a villain, but nobody thinks there was anything heroic about Dan Morgan.
DID YOU KNOW…?
In 2008, following the TV series ‘Underbelly’, which was about the Melbourne gang wars, eBay offered for sale two T-shirts supporting each side of the war – one for the Moran family, the other for Carl Williams’ gang.