*Transcription at the end of this article
On the morning of Wednesday 16 April 1834, a young man named Joseph Greenwood was hanged in Hobart Town. He went to the scaffold with his back not yet healed from the 100 lashes he had received less than a month before. The wounds, one newspaper reported, were still uncicatrised — still open — when he died.
The case caused an extraordinary sensation, and not only because of its brutality. What disturbed contemporaries, and what makes it significant now, was the question that hung over the entire proceedings: was any of it legal?
The Race Course
The story begins on 17 March 1834, at the New Town racecourse. Joseph Greenwood was there — a young man, aged 23, described as old in iniquity despite his youth, who had absconded from a chain gang to which he had been assigned for some earlier offence. Constable Thomas Terry spotted him in the crowd and told him he was under arrest.
Greenwood’s response was unambiguous. He would not, he said, be taken by any constable in Hobart Town. When Terry pursued him and threatened to knock him down if he didn’t stop, Greenwood turned and told him: “If you come near me, I will rip your guts out.”
Constable Terry rushed him anyway. Greenwood had an open knife in his hand. By the time the pursuit ended — Greenwood was eventually seized by a Mr Cleburne and other constables — Terry had four wounds: a four-inch incised wound to the upper lip, a very dangerous wound at the angle of the jaw, a wound to the head, and another to the left side over the ribs. He had lost so much blood he could no longer continue the chase.
Flogged First, Then Tried
What happened next is where the case moves from violent incident to something more troubling. Greenwood was brought before a magistrate, who divided his offending into two parts: the absconding, which the magistrate dealt with summarily, and the assault on Terry, which would go to the Supreme Court. For the absconding, Greenwood was sentenced to one hundred lashes. He received them on 20 March.
Ten days later, on 1 April, he stood trial before Mr Justice Montagu, still bearing the wounds of his flogging. He was found guilty on three of four counts — intent to maim, intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and assault for the purpose of escaping arrest — and sentenced to death.
He was hanged in Hobart on 16th April – less than 4 weeks later.
A correspondent – notably the Editor of the newspaper – writing to Lord Brougham, the Lord Chancellor in London, put the central objection plainly: Greenwood had been flogged for the absconding, and then sent to his death for the assault — but the two offences were inseparable, arising from the same event.
The magistrate who ordered the flogging knew perfectly well that the assault trial would follow, and knew perfectly well what the outcome of that trial would be. As the Tasmanian newspaper reported it, the magistrate had said to Greenwood in terms: “You are to receive one hundred lashes for absconding, and then you will be tried for this capital offence, and you will be hanged.”
The Colonist newspaper was among those who found this intolerable. The editors wrote that they did not consider Greenwood innocent, nor an object deserving of mercy — but that he ought not to have been punished twice for what was, in substance, a single course of conduct. “This man’s fate is an awful consideration,” they wrote. “It was either just or unjust; and as there then were considerable doubts as to which was the case, we could have wished that the last awful extremity of the law had been dispensed with. We do not feel comfortable upon this head.”
A Legal Tangle
The assault trial itself produced a separate legal controversy. Constable Terry had known Greenwood was an absentee not from his own observation, but because he had been told by a servant girl that Greenwood’s name appeared in the Government Gazette as a runaway. Constable Thomas Terry could not read. The question of whether this constituted sufficient legal grounds for an arrest produced a sharp exchange between Justice Montagu and the Attorney General.
The Attorney General argued that constables had very extensive powers of arrest — that a constable could apprehend any man he merely suspected of felony, without needing to confirm that suspicion. Justice Montagu pushed back hard, observing that such a doctrine would give constables almost unlimited powers and reduce the liberty of the subject to a nullity. The two men, Montagu noted pointedly, differed widely on the matter. He said he would seek the Chief Justice’s opinion on the point.
That the jury convicted anyway, and that Greenwood hanged, suggests the legal question was not resolved in any way that helped him.
A Stain Upon the Annals of the Island
Justice Montagu, to his credit, had remonstrated with the magistrate as soon as he learned of the flogging — but by then, as the Tasmanian observed, it was too late. The lash had done its work. The execution followed.
The Tasmanian reached for a phrase that has not lost its force: “the last awful power of man over man.” The same paper described Greenwood going to his death with his lacerated back not yet healed, and raised the disturbing suggestion that his brief respite — a short delay between sentencing and execution — had been granted specifically so that his wounds might heal enough that he could mount the scaffold without visible agony.
This, the paper immediately insisted, could not have been true. The alternative — that it was true — was apparently too much to contemplate in print.
Greenwood himself remained hardened almost to the end. The Reverend Mr Bedford attended him, as he attended so many of the condemned in these years, and it was reportedly the influence of another prisoner named Buchan, recently arrived and himself repentant, that finally brought Greenwood to some state of resignation before he died.
He was, the newspapers agreed, very young.
A note about the conduct record for Joseph Greenwood in the image above. In just five years, he received a total of 387 lashes. The last 100 lashes, in March 1834 for the final absconding, were administered while he was awaiting trial for an offence that everyone in the room knew would result in his death.
The VDL penal system did not correct Joseph Greenwood. It destroyed him, incrementally and methodically, and then hanged what was left.
Sources: Tasmanian (Hobart), 4 April 1834, p. 4; Colonial Times (Hobart), 8 April 1834, p. 6; Colonist and Van Diemen’s Land Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser, 8 April 1834, p. 2; Hobart Town Courier, 18 April 1834, p. 2; Colonist and Van Diemen’s Land Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser, 22 April 1834, p. 2. Via Trove, National Library of Australia.
Transcription of the conduct record
Transcription of the conduct record for Joseph Greenwood is as follows. Colonial administrative handwriting of this period is notoriously difficult to read, and this transcription, though carefully prepared, may contain errors of reading.
Arrived VDL Oct 1828
July 3 1829 Desertion of Duty, also making use of improper language to his Master — Reprimanded.
July 24 1829 Neglect of duty & disobedience of orders yesterday evening; — 12 Lashes on the breech.
Nov 9 1829 Absconded from his Master’s service on Wed 4th Nov, and absent for 3 days. 3 days on the treadmill, and returned to his master’s service.
Nov 20 1829 Insolence and being out after hours — Admonished.
March 6 1830 Assaulting William Lumsden 3rd Mate of the Ship Greenock at the wharf on Sunday last — Chain gang 6 months and recommended to be removed to the Deep Gulley.
January 25 1831 Giving rum to Mr Thomson’s servant Stark, and receiving from Stark potatoes out of Mr Thomson’s garden. 50 Lashes
Same date – Insolence and disobedience of orders 3 months Hard Labour in the Chain Gang at Bridgewater.
June 24 1831 Being found at the Turks Head Public House last night after hours & representing himself to be a free man — 25 Lashes
Sept 2 1831 Going on board the Druminore in the Harbour with intent to escape from the Colony. Imprisonment and Hard Labor for 3 years & recommended to be worked in the Hulk Chain Gang
July 25 1831 Working on the water without a pass while on the Sick List of the Prisoner Barracks on Saturday last — 25 Lashes
Dec 27 1831 Absconded from the Hulk Chain Gang on the 11th & remaining illegally at large until apprehended at Sandy Bay — to be removed to Macquarie Harbour 3 yrs at which Settlement his former sentence to imprisonment with Hard Labor is to be enforced
Feb 21 1832 Absconding from the Hulk Chain Gang & remaining illegally at large until apprehended in a lone hut in the Bush — 100 Lashes in front of the Hulk Gang & recommended to be removed to Macquarie Harbour pursuant to sentence of Dec 27 1831.
Nov 22 1831 fighting in the presence of the Gang — 25 Lashes
Sept 19th 1832 Insolence to the Sergeant Superintendent — 50 Lashes
March 18 1834 Absconding — 100 Lashes
Mar 18 1834 Absconding from chain gang, cutting and maiming Thomas Terry with intent to kill him. Committed for trial. Guilty
Apr 16 1834 Executed at Hobart
