Jeanette Thompson graduated as Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney. Jeanette’s upcoming 2020 book, Bone and Beauty, grew out of her research into Australian colonial history, bushranger history, and creative nonfiction writing. She has been a lecturer in Children’s Literature, Charles Sturt University, and a tutor for the Family History Unit, University of Tasmania. Her research and community writing have explored ways of making history accessible and engaging for a wide variety of audiences.
Today, Jeanette’s on the blog to talk about the history of a man named Ralph Entwistle, his involvement with the Bathurst Rebellion of 1830, and why he doesn’t quite fit the ‘bushranger’ label. Read on!
Jeanette M. Thompson
My book, Bone and Beauty: The Ribbon Boys’ Rebellion, is named from a passage of Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter. It is quoted in an ironic sense, as the narrative shows the Irish did not die in servile chains and ‘a credit to paddyland’. Many settled and raised families, others bolted for the bush and took their chances. When we accept the ‘bushranger myth’ promulgated by Kelly, we are asked to excuse violence as a tragic assertion of retributive justice. The rhetoric of rebellion perpetuates the cycle of domination and revenge without hope of reform.
When I first heard of these events on Bathurst Tourism Radio, Ralph Entwistle was said to be a gang leader who, incensed by a public flogging, shot an overseer and was brought to justice. But that version left open many questions: Why was a trusted servant thrust to the head of a rebellion? Why would a routine punishment incite a general uprising? Tarring Ralph Entwistle with the ‘bushranger’ stereotype, obscured evidence of police corruption, famine, physical abuse, drought, isolation and exile. If we typify male violence as a character flaw of one individual, there is no need to take responsibility for the injustice they have suffered.
For almost two centuries, colonial historians overlooked the significant number of men involved in the Bathurst insurrection and the symbolic clue to their ideological beliefs in their apparel. The Ribbonmen of Ireland enforced their rules by posting threatening letters, arson and revenge killings. The leader of each cell of ten men wore white streamers in his hat, the followers practised cross-dressing rituals and swore oaths of fidelity. The convicts familiar with these societies, named the Bathurst insurgents ‘Ribbon Boys’. They were representative of over eighty government servants who had been starved by their overseers and cruelly treated. Their folk hero, Jack Donohoe, explained to his victims that he would ‘give masters who starved their government servants ten minutes for prayer, but others treat civilly’. A letter from the Governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies reveals the Bathurst insurrection was inspired by the death of Jack Donohoe at the hands of the Mounted Police.
The explorer Thomas Mitchell sketched Donohoe in the mortuary and inscribed the portrait, ‘No matter; I have bared my brow. Fair in Death’s face – before – and now’. Byronic heroes are flawed and their tragic deaths give mainstream society cathartic relief. Charles Harpur attempted to capture these events in 1834 when he wrote the play, The Tragedy of Donohoe, but it went unproduced. In 1867, he rewrote the script as a romantic melodrama, Stalwart The Bushranger, to ‘excoriate the evil’ from the historical facts (Perkins, Currency Press, 1987). If the errant individual is punished, there is no need to unpick the framework of our own society. Narrative structures embed ideological beliefs.
In preparation for constructing the narrative, I began to research the relationship between gender and genre. The author and psychologist Steve Biddulph suggests, ‘Your father is the person who first and most powerfully taught you what manhood means. He did this just by being your father. Like it or not he is in your head and in your sinews and in your nerves forever’. What does this say to boys with dysfunctional fathers and brutal histories? There was evidence that Ralph Entwistle’s father may have been transported to Van Diemen’s Land, leaving behind seven children. I wondered about the effect of poverty and abandonment on children. What happens when ‘the father’ is not the moral sage? Is there a hidden danger in subscribing to a single view of masculinity? What if your own upbringing does not fit the mold? What if your loyalty and attraction is to people of the same gender, does that make you less masculine?
These are the human questions I explore through the narrative of Bone and Beauty: The Ribbon Boys’ Rebellion. My characterisation of Ralph Entwistle allows us to strip back the bushranger myth of the revengeful, dynamic individual who chooses violence over servitude. I wanted to override the cultural myth of a single masculinity and explore the notion that gender identity can give way to moral identity. Ralph is faced with a choice. He can take up arms with the rebellious Irish who have befriended him or risk abandonment and punishment.
The outcome of the insurrection is left to your own discovery. I have remained true to the archival evidence, court reports and newspaper accounts in drawing inferences about the behaviour of the men involved. No names have been changed. I invite you to step into the recreated world of Ralph Entwistle to better understand his times and the choices he made. Perhaps, by looking back at these events, we can see that the stories we choose to believe become the narrative of our national identity.
—Bone and Beauty: The Ribbon Boys’ Rebellion by Jeanette M. Thompson (University of Queensland Press) is out now.
Bone and Beauty
The Ribbon Boys' Rebellion of 1830
October 1830: Rebelling from years of maltreatment and starvation, a band of Ribbon Boys liberate eighty convicts from Bathurst farms and lead them inland towards freedom. Governor Darling, fearing that others would also rise up, sends the 39th Regiment in pursuit. Three bloody battles follow, but to whom will justice be served?
Rich with detail, Bone and Beauty fuses archival evidence and narrative technique to tell the gripping story of the Ribbon Boys and their reputed leader Ralph Entwistle...
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