This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers, and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from public to private executions and the push to abolish the death penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument that shows how the ‘lesson’ of the gallows was to be safeguarded, refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared punishment. Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia. His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in the Australian colonies by situating developments in these jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates.

This captivating work charts the history of Tasmania from the arrival of European maritime expeditions in the late eighteenth century, through to the modern day. By presenting the perspectives of both Indigenous Tasmanians and British settlers, author Henry Reynolds provides an original and engaging exploration of these first fraught encounters. Utilising key themes to bind his narrative, Reynolds explores how geography created a unique economic and migratory history for Tasmania, quite separate from the mainland experience. He offers an astute analysis of the island's economic and demographic reality, by noting that this facilitated the survival of a rich heritage of colonial architecture unique in Australia, and allowed the resident population to foster a powerful web of kinship. Reynolds' remarkable capacity to empathise with the characters of his chronicle makes this a powerful, engaging and moving account of Tasmania's unique position within Australian history.

The latest work from acclaimed historical author Robert Cox, A Compulsion to Kill is a dramatic chronological account of 19th-century Tasmanian serial murderers. Never before revealed in such depth, the story is the culmination of extensive research and adept craftsmanship as it probes the essence of both the crimes and the killers themselves. Beginning in 1806 with Australia’s first serial killers, John Brown and Richard Lemon, A Compulsion to Kill recounts the stories of Alexander Pearce, ‘the cannibal convict’; Thomas Jeffrey, a sadist, sexual predator, cannibal, and baby-killer known as ‘the monster’; Charles Routley, who burnt one of his victims alive; cannibal convicts Broughton and McAvoy; Rocky Whelan, who in twenty-four days slew five men in cold blood; and John Haley, who killed three people in fits of rage. The final chapter investigates the still-unsolved Parkmount murders, three killings for which the two probable culprits twice faced court, only to be discharged due to faulty police investigation and neglected evidence. Most of these stories have never been told before, and none has previously been related with such detail and verifiable accuracy. A determined storyteller, Cox delivers a supremely dramatic page-turner in the true crime genre. The book includes extensive references and an index.

His Natural Life has retained Australian classic status for over one hundred years. Scarcely ever out of print since first written during the early 1870s, it has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against the destructiveness of his wrongful imprisonment. While much of the story is necessarily grim, Marcus Clarke has used elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description to both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.

As engrossing as a novel, this story of the death of childhood in the cradle of the world's mightiest empire, and the atmospheric tale of crime and punishment leading to a sensational murder trial is from another time but implicitly raises questions which remain with us today.Steve Harris' book humanises a most bizarre social experiment and brings out its grotesqueness in dramatic form. The tale is so comprehensively and authentically written that it is a service to Australian and British readers.- Tom Keneally, winner of the Booker Prize and Miles Franklin Award

Fortune's Son – The Tasmanian Tales - Book 1 (historical, 1880-1920) Heads you win, tails you die ... Can one man's revenge become his redemption? Young Luke Tyler has everything going for him: brains, looks and a larrikin charm that turns heads. The future appears bright, until he defends his sister from the powerful Sir Henry Abbott. His reward is fifteen years hard labour on a prison farm in Tasmania's remote highlands. Luke escapes, finding sanctuary with local philanthropist, Daniel Campbell, and starting a forbidden love affair with Daniel's daughter, Belle. But when Luke is betrayed, he must flee or be hanged. With all seeming lost, Luke sails to South Africa to start afresh. Yet he remains haunted by the past, and by Belle, the woman he can't forget. When he returns to seek revenge and reclaim his life, his actions will have shattering consequences – for the innocent as well as the guilty. Set against a backdrop of wild Tasmania, Australian Gold and African diamonds, Fortune's Son is an epic story of betrayal, undying love and one man's struggle to triumph over adversity and find his way home. The Lost Valley – The Tasmanian Tales - Book 2 (Historical, 1930-1950) A Tasmanian East Of Eden A sweeping saga of ambition, betrayal and dangerous love. Tasmania, 1929: Ten-year-old-twins, Tom and Harry Abbott, are orphaned by a tragedy that shocks Hobart society. They find sanctuary with their reclusive grandmother, growing up in the remote and rugged Binburra ranges – a place where kind-hearted Tom discovers a love of the wild, Harry nurses a growing resentment towards his brother and where the mountains hold secrets that will transform both their lives. The chaos of World War II divides the brothers, and their passion for two very different women fuels a deadly rivalry. Can Tom and Harry survive to heal their rift? And what will happen when Binburra finally reveals its astonishing secrets? From Tasmania's highlands to the Battle of Britain, and all the way to the golden age of Hollywood, The Lost Valley is a lush family saga about two brothers whose fates are entwined with the land and the women they love. The Memory Tree – The Tasmanian Tales – Book 3 (contemporary) Playing God is a dangerous game When forest protests engulf a tiny Tasmanian timber town, one family's century of secrets threatens to destroy a marriage ‒ and bring down a government. Matt Abbott, head ranger at beautiful Binburra National Park, is a man with something to hide. He confides his secret to nobody, not even his wife Penny. The deception gnaws away at their marriage. Matt's father, timber and mining magnate Fraser Abbott, stands for everything Matt hates. Son disappoints father, father disappoints son – this is their well-worn template. But Fraser seems suddenly determined to repair the rift between them at any cost, and Matt will discover that secrets run in the family. When Sarah, a visiting Californian geneticist, tries to steal Matt's heart, the scene is set for a deadly betrayal. The Memory Tree is a haunting story of family relationships, the unbreakable ties we all have to the past and the redemptive power of love.

The year 2022 marks the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour. This convict penal settlement located on the isolated primeval rugged west coast of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) quickly gained a reputation as an ‘Earthy Hell’. Colonial historian John West succinctly recorded in 1852: ‘The name Macquarie Harbour is associated exclusively with remembrance of inexpressible depravity, degradation, and woe. Sacred to the genius of torture, Nature concurred with the objects of its separation from the rest of the world, to exhibit some notion of a perfect misery. There, man lost the aspect and the heart of man …. This region is lashed with tempests: the sky is cloudy, and the rain falls more frequently than elsewhere. In its chill and humid climate, animal life is preserved with difficulty; half the goats died in one season, and sheep perished; vegetation, except in its coarsest and most massive forms is situated and precarious …. The passage to this dreary dwelling place was tedious and often dangerous. The prisoners, confined in a narrow space, were tossed for weeks on an agitated sea. As they approached, they beheld a narrow opening chocked with a bar of sand and crossed with peril. This they called Hell’s Gate – not less appropriate to the place than to the character and torment of the inhabitants: beyond they saw impenetrable forests, skirted with an impervious thicket; and beyond still enormous mountains covered with snow, which rose to the clouds like walls of adamant: every object wore the air of rigour, ferocity, and sadness’. This was just the beginning for those sentenced to Macquarie Harbour the barbaric treatment from officials and fellow convicts alike, resulted in Macquarie Harbour representing a true convict hell hole, not only resulting in murder, but in cannibalism by several men in their attempts to escape.

The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day. Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonisation, warfare and exile. It emphasises the regionalism and separateness, a consistent feature of Aboriginal life since time immemorial that has led to the distinct identities we see in the present, including the unique place of the islanders of Bass Strait. Carefully researched, using the findings of archaeologists and extensive documentary evidence, some only recently uncovered, this important book fills a long-time gap in Tasmanian history.

A morbidly fascinating mixture of bungled executions ,strange last requests, and classic final one-liners from medieval times to the present day. Sometimes it's hard to be an executioner, trying to keep someone from popping up to make a quip when they should have spectacularly sunk without a trace. Or to be told that the condemned to the guillotine won't have a last drink for fear of "completely losing his head." The business of death can be absurd, and nothing illustrates this better than these tales of the gruesome and frankly ridiculous ways in which a number of ill-fated unfortunates met (or failed to meet) their maker. Did you know: When Sir Thomas More was ordered to position his head on the block, he said "though you have warrant to cut off my head, you have none to cut off my beard?" When the guillotine took three strokes to sever the neck of Isabeau Herman, the mob attempted to stone the executioner to death for cruelty? After the English hanged the pirate Captain Kidd they chained his body to a stake on the Thames River as a warning to seafarers? From the strange to the gruesome, from the weird to the completely unbelievable, The Executioner Always Chops Twice is popular history at its best: witty, lively, and wonderfully bizarre.

"Executions, murders, suicides, poisonings, shipwrecks, floods, cemetery desecration, airline crashes, fires, pre-historic discoveries - all this and more has occurred in Tasmania's relatively short 210 year history since colonisation... A plethora of true stories about the gruesome, shocking , amazing and amusing events from Tasmania's history..."--Back cover.