Queensland
Police –
Sharp Fight in the
Street –
A Record
of Commissioners –
The
Police and Socialism –
An Echo
of 1912
It is not a good thing to be “up against” the police,
and it is still less pleasant to have a reversed circumstance;
but it is not because of any dread on either side that the
police and I have always been on good terms.
If it is conceivable that at any time I should be a
candidate for Parliament I should put it forward, with a true
politician’s puff on the chest, that I have always been a good
friend of the police.
On the other hand, I have had some warm friends in the
force, and have some of them still. In making the claim to
having been friendly, it is meant that privately and as a
Press writer I have wrought sincerely to make the public
appreciate what the force means to the country, and how very
trying are their duties. That is all very well; but it wasn’t
quite that effort that won me friendship. Years ago, “in the
days when our beards were black,” the police sometimes had
rough characters to deal with, and the rush of a mob on to a
single constable or a couple of them was serious.
One night at the corner of Queen and Edward Streets,
where the A.M.P. Building stands, a senior constable and a
constable were having a hot time with a prisoner, who was
backed by a howling, half drunk mob. “Bill” Livesey and I had
been round to the Elizabeth Street police quarters to have a
word or two with that real white man, Sergeant Doyle – the
father of Melba’s daughter in law – and, returning to Queen
Street, we were soon in the thick of it. We were both very
fit, and a few of the crowd joined us. Half a dozen willing
peacemakers broke the crowd, and some of the crowd took with
them rather disfiguring reminders. Livesey told me that in the
Police Court next day, Pinnock, P.M., instead of his usual
frown of indignation, gave the Press table quite a charming
smile. He asked Livesey the names of his companions, and
“Bill,” with his usual rejection of a friendly overture, said:
“Brown, James, Robinson and Smith. “Papa” Pinnock merely said:
“Well, perhaps you are right with one of them!”
The outcome of that little rough and tumble was that
Livesey and I might have jostled half the “force,” and only
got a smile. However, I have not changed my opinion of the
police, and I have seen some rough days with them on
occasions. My attitude is that they are intensely arduous,
full of danger, calling for the highest qualities of manhood,
and that the country should see to it that their service have
the best pay and the best conditions in the land. On the other
side, the police should jealously guard their honour as well
as the safety of the people, and that should a black sheep be
discovered his comrades should run him out.
David T. Seymour, formerly a Lieutenant in Her
Majesty’s Foot, was the first Police Commissioner in
Queensland. He was a disciplinarian, but knew no littlenesses.
In Victoria, not long ago, there were men in plain clothes
spying on the police. I know that because it was told me by an
old comrade and a greatly distinguished soldier. Fancy asking
Seymour to send out men to spy on his police!
There was, however, no slackness in the force, and if
an officer or man proved unworthy he got a very short shrift.
But with Seymour his police were honourable until
proved otherwise. And he would have been a mighty daring
politician who would have interfered. But who can imagine men
of the class we had in Parliament, in those days, trying to
“push a barrow.” Between the Commissioner and the force, there
was implicit confidence. I have never heard a word spoken of
him save with deep respect. He is long since dead, and some
good features of the force have been whittled away – little
things and big things, and in the big things may be mentioned
the relaxation which has led to the appearance of the trail of
the politician. Seymour would have no political monkeying with
his men.
The old
Commissioner did a good deal of racing when he was not a very
old Commissioner, and he was a fine judge of horseflesh,
which, to be sure, was natural, for it was born in him, away
on the Galway side of Ireland.
He married
first a daughter of the Sheriff Anthony Brown, and had a big
family of daughters, including the wife of the late General
Sir Charles Hamilton Des Voeux, who, as Major Des Voeux,
served on the staff of the Queensland forces. The second Mrs.
Seymour was a Miss Stephenson, of Melbourne. From this
marriage there were two boys, one died as a youngster, and the
other is rather a well known engineer away up in the Federated
Malay States – Kuala Lumpur, or some other benighted place.
W. E.
Parry-Okeden, the second Commissioner, was a very tall
Australian, who could ride a rough horse or pilot a winner in
a steeplechase, could box almost too well for an amateur,
could play excellent cricket, write a song and sing it to his
own accompaniment, and was one of the best magistrates or
bushman or public servants.
He won the
first Derby at Gayndah, was master of a pack of hounds, and
there are old folk up in the Burnett who still remember Willie
Parry-Okeden, when he was, as the late John Connolly once said
to me, “a wild young devil.”
When I knew
him first he had come to Brisbane to succeed the late Sir
Ralph Gore as Immigration Agent, and, with “Jack” O’Neill
Brenan as his right hand man, managed the disposal of
thousands of immigrants who were coming to Queensland.
Then he
became Under Secretary to the Home administrator, and under
his control the police were happy and safe, and as in
Seymour’s days, never felt the hard hand unless there was some
discreditable business. Being an outback man, he had great
sympathy for the police in the Far North, and in the
wilderness of the West. Also he was a great judge of men. We
were together when he was practically the whole law out in the
Winton district during the bush workers’ strike of 1894, and I
was special correspondent of the “Courier,” and we were
together in
1989-99 at Gatton, when we were all busy trying to solve the
mystery of a great tragedy near that town.
He was a
man to win not only respect, but affection and confidence, and
those were the sentiments of the force towards him.
I had
nearly forgotten to say that, prior to his appointment as
Immigration Agent, Parry-Okeden was police magistrate at
Charleville and other Western towns, where he was the idol of
the younger generation.
And he was
also a special Commissioner to New Guinea with my old friend,
General Kenneth McKay, of New South Wales, and with Kinnaird
Rose (afterwards editor of the “Courier”) on a commission in
connection, I think, with the prisons, and aboriginals, and a
lot of other things, in the North of Queensland.
Of course,
Parry-Okeden is now getting on in years, over 83, I think, but
he comes of a tough stock, good, sound Dorset folk –
Parry-Okedens and Uvedales – and in 1871 I met some of them at
Weymouth. The family had only been in Dorset a little matter
of, so it was told me by a historian – 600 years. But, after
all, what is that to the ancestry which runs back to
Tutankhamen and other gentlemen who predeceased him, and of
whom one may, without disrespect, speak of as old? (Note: Mr
Parry-Okeden since this was written, died, and was laid to his
rest in the Bulimba Cemetery.)
When Mr.
Parry-Okeden retired from the Commissioner –ship, the vacancy
was filled by the appointment of Major William Geoffrey
Cahill, C.M.G., V.D., who came to Queensland in 1878, after a
short training in the Royal Irish Constabulary. He was Under
Secretary of the Department of Justice here, and joined
“Thynne’s” Corporations, the Queensland Volunteer Rifles,
rising to the rank of Major. He gave up his command in 1905,
when he was appointed Commissioner of Police, which office he
held until 1917 when he went out, as his predecessors had
done, on a pension.
Now, Major Cahill is a very remarkable man. He comes
from Roscommon, and, like most Irishmen, and especially Roman
Catholic Irishmen, he is extremely punctilious and
conservative. May I mention, in passing, that, with one
exception, the Irish Roman Catholic is the most conservative
man I know, and the exception is the English Catholic. They
are absolute Tories, born to and bred to conservatism, and I
know it from relations of my own. People say that so many of
the Irish Catholics in Queensland are Labour men. That is
because so many of them are manual workers. They go Labour
because of its industrial bearing; not because they believe in
its general politics. Who has ever heard of a Socialist
Archbishop, or bishop or priest? Socialism has been condemned
from His Holiness the Pope downwards. I am not a politician,
but do not say these things for political reasons, but simply
because they are true, and there was a temptation to say them,
because I desired it to be understood that Major Cahill is by
training, as well as temperament, a Conservative. He may vote
Labour for all I know. That would not affect my summing up of
his general view of life. It certainly would not affect my
regard for him, my deep respect and affection. Cahill is
outwardly stern, reserved, and, and somewhat inclined to be a
martinet; but many gallons of water have ebbed and flowed
under Victoria Bridge since he and I first foregathered, and
every time and all the time he has proved a heart of gold. A
heart of gold! Surely that is a Roscommon phrase. And he is
very sensitive – too sensitive for a Commissioner of Police
under present circumstances, with politicians and others doing
all in their power to break down discipline. And some of the
police are helping and glorying in it more’s the pity.
The Department of Justice has turned out some very
brilliant men – the deeply lamented Mr. Justice McCawley, the
Chief Justice of Queensland, among them; but very few, if any,
have shone more in administration than Major W. G. Cahill. He
made the Department of Justice a model. Into his military work
he took the same thoroughness. A smarter officer and a smarter
looking officer could not be found in the Australian forces.
Tall, lithe, well setup, and strikingly handsome. Major Cahill
was quite the conventional soldier. He was a student of
military history and modern tactics, and trained many
Queenslanders to take seriously the defence of their country.
often we met on manoeuvres and after long and tiring
days, and there was ever that conspicuous mark of the good
soldier- care for the comfort and safety of his men. As
Commissioner of Police he was the same, He would not tolerate
the “go –as – you- please” style of things. The police force
of Queensland was never more efficient than under Major
Cahill, and he instituted a well appreciated system of
recognizing especially brave, or otherwise commendable
service. The scheme of breeding police horses was extended,
and the necessary country in the Springsure district secured
during his regime.
Major Cahill did great service to this State in the
general strike of 1912. Certainly pretty drastic action was
taken, but it was either that or handing over the city to the
rabble, including some dangerous men, who were inconspicuously
prompting violence, and with whom the strike leaders had no
sympathy whatever. However, the strike demonstrations were
assuming ugly shape, when the Commissioner took action and
cleared the streets. We had a lively hour or so, no one was
killed, a few received bumps and the Commissioner’s horse went
down with him, and he sustained a nasty injury to the leg. He
and his police were much abused by the extremists; but we have
since seen the police out with drawn sabres dashing at a few
score of tumultuous returned soldiers, who were exasperated at
Bolshevist displays and violence by aliens under a Labour
Government. And there were also foot police out with ball
cartridge and fixed bayonets – and the only men wounded by
them were the Chief Police Magistrate and Major Cahill’s
successor in the Commissionership.
After the 1912 strike there were threats that when
Labour got into power the first job would be to “sack Cahill.”
Well, Labour came into power in 1915, and it was in
1917 that Major Cahill retired at the age of 63, and mainly on
account of the injury he received. Meanwhile he had received
the thanks of the Government of the day, of the Press, and of
the people, and the late Sir William Macgregor, who was
Governor of the State at the time, sent a very warm letter of
praise. Then came recognition from the King, and the bestowal
of the Companionship of St. Michael and St. George.
When Major Cahill retired in 1917, I was on the other
side of the world “doing my bit,” and it was with sincere
regret that I learned that the State was losing his services.
However, he is still bright, and alert, and comes often into
town from his beautiful home right on the hill top at Wilston,
a wonderful outlook to the ranges of the hinterland, and away
to the east over fold upon fold of forest land to the blue
breast of the gleaming seas.
Another of my friends was F. C. Urquhart, of the
police, who was the fourth Commissioner, and later
Administrator of the Northern Territory. Urquhart is a
bushman, and a poet, and a very brainy man, and determined. He
is an old Northerner, having gone over to the Native Police
from the telegraph Service in 1882. From the Native Police he
was transferred or “evolved” into the ordinary “force,” and he
had there a long and successful career. When he went out on
pension, he was snapped up by the Commonwealth Government to
Administrator of the Northern Territory.
I saw Urquhart at his best in failure. Under
Parry-Okeden, and as head of the Criminal Investigation
Department, as he then was, he had the main job in seeking to
unravel the mystery of the Gatton tragedy of Christmas time in
1898. It is said that the police, in the event of a crime, can
only act upon the evidence available to trace the guilty
person or persons. That is not correct. At Gatton, Urquhart
followed out suggestion after suggestion, and clue after clue,
without success; but then he would think, strive to
reconstruct the whole affair from incentive to the covering up
of the line of escape, build up and diligently search theories
– but it was all to no purpose, unless it was that a certain
man had “done the job.” Perhaps it may now be said that
Urquhart and I shared the belief that the certain man was
guilty; but evidence was against us. Evidence. however, gets a
twist at times. Them while we were at Gatton, there came a
Woolloongabba tragedy, and the murder of the boy Hill near
Oxley, and, on the whole of the three crimes, the police were
beaten. Urquhart, as head of the Criminal Investigation
Department, came in for the bulk of the blame. He was to be
the scapegoat; but we had a Home Secretary who did not clamour
for the despatch of Urquhart into the wilderness with the
police sins of omission on his shoulders. That was Colonel
Foxton, C.M.G., V.D. He asked me to see him as I had been at
Gatton for about a month, and he questioned me closely about
Urquhart. I could confidently say that a keener and more
earnest man had never been o a job of the kind, and I put it
to Foxton: “Can you suggest that there is a weakness in the
department? Do you think thatu1 has not the ability to work
out the mystery of these crimes, or do you think that a chain
of adverse circumstance – peculiar coincidences – has not
blotted out direct evidence?”
As a fact, we knew who murdered the boy Hill, and the
brute was goaled for other crimes; and we had a pretty good
idea as to the bloody hand behind the Gatton tragedy, and
Foxton knew these things also.
A searching enquiry did not “whitewash” the police, but
reestablished the force in public confidence, and Urquhart
became Chief Inspector, and then, in turn, took the blue
ribbon of the service.
At Gatton, we saw Douglas-Douglas, too, at times, but
Galbraith was right hand man to Urquhart, and he knew so much
of the tragedy there as any one, save the perpetrator of it.
Douglas was also at Mitchell when i went out in 1902 to
the Keniff Country with the police under Inspector Dillon – my
old Cooktown friend, who used to regale us with chicken when
the Chinese witnesses at the courts insisted that their form
of oath was in chopping off the head of a cock.
That Gatton story is, perhaps, as vivid in Urquhart’s
mind as in mine. It was the biggest outside thing while he was
chief of the C.I. Department, and it was rough that he could
not clear it up. The country rang with it. From every part of
Australia came suggestions – some valuable, some weirdly
tinctured with occultism, and some just silly. Urquhart had
some sense of humour. He showed me one day a letter, which
said, “Take a divining rod, and follow it, prayerfully,
silently, and it will lead you to the very spot where the
criminals are hidden, and it will point to the ringleader.”
We secured a divining twig, and followed it. It was a
very hot, dry day, and it led us to Fred. English’s bar!