Pearson Frank - Captain Starlight: the strange but true story of a bushranger, imposter and murderer

Copyright Jane Smith

First published 2015

Copyright remains the property of the authors and apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

All inquiries should be made to the publishers.

Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd

PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia

Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions

Printed in China by Asia Pacific Offset Ltd

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Dewey Number: 364.1552092

To my husband, Steve

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Captain Starlight travelled far and wide. In researching his life I have been assisted by many librarians, archivists, family historians and volunteers all over Australia and overseas. Communicating with these people has been one of the joys of this project and I am grateful to them all for their generous assistance and support.

I would particularly like to acknowledge the work of the late author Patrick McCarthy, who I never had the chance to meet, but whose excellent research into Captain Starlight formed the foundation upon which all further research could be based.

I am deeply grateful to Michael McInerney for bringing the possibility of the Arnold connection to my attention, and for the many enjoyable phone conversations during which we compared notes and shared findings. It has been a real pleasure to find another person with a Starlight obsession that is equal to my own especially one who has been so gracious about sharing his research.

I would also like to thank Bev Russell and her team of researchers at the Western Australian Genealogical Society for providing such an excellent research service, and Graeme Sisson of the Western Australia Police Historical Society for his prompt and cheerful assistance even on long weekends! Thanks also to Deborah Beck, archivist at the National Art School in Darlinghurst, for her information about Pearsons gaol life and for her encouragement; Daniel McDonald from the Toowoomba Health Services Library for his help researching Galvanism and cyanide; Paul ODonnell of the CSU Regional Archives; Eric Daly for information about the Somerville family connections; the Bathurst District Historical Society; Elinor Charles for searching the archives at St Georges hospital, London; Chris Dawson for his assistance with my Boggo Road questions, and the staff of Cat o nine tails cruises for their entertaining insight into life at St Helena.

For their research assistance and access to their collections I would also like to thank the staff at: State Records Authority of New South Wales and the Queensland State Archives for their expert service, the Sisters of Charity of Australia, Potts Point NSW, QLD State Library, the State Records Office of Western Australia (especially Tom Reynolds), the State Library of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum Library (Wendy Crawford) for assistance regarding the Geological Survey Department, the Public Records Office Victoria, the State Library of Victoria, the Springsure Library, the library at the Propaganda, Rome, and the British Library: Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections. The staff of the Toowoomba City Library especially Sue Kennedy have been very gracious about handling my many inter-library loan requests, and Toowoomba Local History Library has been a great help with providing equipment, resources, research advice and encouragement. My special thanks go to Jayne Royal and Susan Kotzur.

I would also like to thank the staff of Hudsons Historic Houses & Gardens who identified the fake Pelly mansion as Chatsworth House.

Through the course of my research I have been delighted to have made the acquaintance (via email) of members of the Pelly family: James Salt, Caroline Pierce, Patricia Pelly and Niall Pelly; I thank them for their advice and encouragement. I am also grateful for the kind provision of information about Charles Holloway from Steve Osborne, and the background on the people of Ucolta and McCoys Wells from Pauline Sampson.

Thanks also to my friend Jennifer Mengel for accompanying me to the NSW Archives and helping me sift through a mountain of old documents. Special thanks to my daughter Lucy for transcribing Court Depositions for me, and to my son Eddie for coming to the QLD Archives and with his sharp teenage eyes finding Frank Gordons name on a microfilm where no-one had discovered it before;

And finally thanks to my husband Steve, for accompanying me to the archives, for providing encouragement, for enduring my obsession for three years, and for listening and providing suggestions and ideas during our numerous discussions and speculations about Starlights life.

CONTENTS

In the Roman Catholic section of Perths Karrakatta Cemetery, on the lawn within sight of a pretty rose garden, a sign on the Heritage Trail marks the grave of Patrick Pelly reformed criminal. No headstone commemorates the bones that lie beneath, for the burial site is on former Government free ground; the sign marks a paupers grave.

There are, in fact, several sets of bones stacked up in this site, but regardless of the signs declaration, none of them belong to any man who could legitimately claim the name of Pelly. The one who was buried under that name ended his life as a nobody: a civil servant, a government accountant a harmless eccentric. His life might have gone unnoticed, his identity unquestioned, were it not for the sudden and shocking nature of his death. Poison! The inquest that followed caused a ripple of interest in Perth a ripple that spread across the globe and back again until it reached the attention of a petty crook in Melbournes Pentridge Gaol. A crook with the same name as the deceased.

The inmate of Pentridge raised the alarm. Was this deceased public servant known as Pelly an impostor? Was he truly an Irish nobleman fallen on hard times or was he a forger, a bushranger and a killer?

The authorities were sceptical. But as the investigation gained momentum, layers of deception were peeled back only to reveal lies and more lies beneath. When, a year after his death, the news of Pellys duplicity broke, citizens all around the country offered up stories of the well-travelled man they knew: the conman, the artist, the thief; the stockman, the lunatic, the murderer. Some said he once went by the name of Captain Starlight. Some said he was the inspiration for the hero of the classic novel Robbery Under Arms.

The audacity of the mans crimes was breathtaking; the complexity of his past confounding.

The story of the deceased public servant who claimed the name of Patrick Pelly ended in the last days of the nineteenth century. But upon his death another story emerged: the true story; a story of secrets and lies. History has continued to reveal, bit by bit, the many lives of this extraordinary and complex man.