Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/93

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a previous chapter I gave an account of a funeral at Williamstown, where a father had to dig his own child’s grave. A similar case occurred about this time. One morning R, a friend of mine, was strolling through the first burial ground on Lambing Flat, at the back of the Great Eastern, when he saw an old man digging a grave. He accosted him with “Good morning; for whom are you digging the grave?” The old man replied, “As my son, a young man about twenty-two years of age, the stay and prop of me and my wife in our declining years, was coming to the Flat with a load of produce he fell sick and died; we have brought the corpse here for burial, and it is lying under the dray yonder; I could not find anyone to dig the grave, so had to dig it myself.” R told him to leave off and he would find someone to finish it, at the same time recommending him to notify the circumstance to the Commissioner. On his way home R called at the Great Eastern, where he related the sad tale. The few persons in the bar at once subscribed a sum sufficient to defray the necessary expenses of the burial.

The following incident was related to me by an eye-witness, who at the time held a responsible position at Lambing Flat, and is described in order to give some idea of the extraordinary powers exercised by the police in trying to suppress crime. I give it in his own words:—“One morning Detective Carnes called at my hotel and gave me a pressing invitation to accompany him to Blackguard Gully, ‘to see a bit of fun.’ I readily assented, took my walking-stick as a protector, while the police officer (of course in private clothes) was armed with a small single-barrel pocket pistol. After walking for about an hour and a-half we came upon the dreaded locality, Blackguard Gully, and entered a large shanty, where it was supposed some unfortunates had been stuck up the night before. The shanty was somewhat better than the usual style of sly-grog shop, being very comfortably furnished, and containing three large rooms. As soon as we entered the landlady uttered an exclamation of horror and surprise at seeing