Until recently, there were only two known female bushrangers from 19th-century Australia. Mrs Thunderbolt and Black Mary were both Aboriginal women who were not taken seriously in their own right and stood in the shadows of famous partners.
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But a recent chance discovery has unearthed a third: the otherwise unknown Mrs Winter. Few confirmed facts about her life have survived, but enough can be cobbled together to sketch out a rudimentary biography.
Born Mary Herd in 1786, she was one of 26 counterfeiters tried at London's Old Bailey in February 1820. All pleaded guilty and were transported to Australia. Herd's sentence was 14 years. She arrived in Sydney after a three-month voyage.
On arrival, Herd was allocated to Robert Winter, a recently pardoned convict working a small holding on the Nepean River. Within a year, Winter had married his new convict domestic. At this point, prospects were promising, but matters soon deteriorated.
In November 1826, the Winters and two accomplices were arrested for a burglary committed at Mount Pleasant, the Cranebrook homestead of colourful entrepreneur Samuel Terry. They were only stealing bags of flour, but Robert Winter was sentenced to hang. Mary was discharged on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
The 41-year-old widow then absconded and sought refuge in the extremities of the colony. It seems that she was already familiar with the bushranger John Tennant, who had earlier been working in an iron gang on the opposite bank of the Nepean River at Emu Plains. Tennant was Canberra's first bushranger.
Along with John Casey and others, Tennant had been a convict at Canberry Station, on the Acton Peninsula, shortly after it was established. He brutalised the scattered occupants of the district from October 1826 until his capture in January 1828. But up until now, his association with Mrs Winter had been unknown. An article discovered in Sydney's Monitor newspaper of October 15, 1827, contains the only surviving account of Canberra's bushranging couple.
"The man's name is Tenant [sic]. The woman's Winter. Tenant it is said shot a black in the groin, by which incident the Justices in Argyle became acquainted with his haunts, and a Constable with black natives went in pursuit," the report said.
"The Constable being in advance of his party on the banks of a river 200 miles from Sydney - we believe Yass river; he there saw Tenant fishing. Tenant quickly armed himself with a loaded musket."
The account said after the incident, in which the constable laid down his musket in surrender, the two bushrangers were "not again to be found".
In a later episode at a hut, Mary Winter told the seven occupants Tennant would honour them by using the mill, and if they kept quiet, she would not shoot them.
"The fellows, partly amused and partly frightened, made no attempt to bolt, and so Tenant ground his wheat and afterwards both made a sudden retreat!" the report said.
The main concern in accepting The Monitor story is the newspaper is known for eulogising the worst aspects of the frontier. But despite The Monitor's dubious merit as a journal, the details of its Winter-Tennant story can be verified.
The incident matches a time in Tennant's history when his gang undertook a robbery without him in October 1827. Tennant's absence makes sense if he was sojourning on the Yass River with Mary Winter. It is also the period just after Tennant had been shot by James Farrell. Twelve pieces of buckshot had to be dug out of his back and he may have still been recuperating from his wounds with Mary acting as doctor on the Yass River.
Even the story's one-eyed constable can be identified. Like most constables, John Jones was an ex-convict, whose transportation papers list his distinguishing physical feature, other than his tattoos, as a "nearly blind left eye". The Monitor's account in which Tennant threatens to take out Jones' remaining eye also rings true. His use of melodramatic threats matches the bluster reported during his three trials in Sydney.
The Monitor's claim that Tennant had shot an Aboriginal man which triggered the pursuit also sounds valid. Tennant was no friend of the five known local trackers eventually deployed against him. In 1827 the government was cracking down on frontier violence and investigating crimes committed against Aboriginal bands.
Hence, an investigation into an Aboriginal man being shot should raise no eyebrows. If so, it is also the first substantiated shooting recorded of an Aboriginal man in the Canberra district after Europeans arrived on our shores.
The geography also stands up. Tennant had strong connections to the district. Joshua Moore wrote to the colonial secretary saying that Tennant knew "this part of the Country for 100 Miles distance and will be a dangerous Man to be at large". Moore was correct. The Yass River fishing echoes a later incident where Tennant attacked James Farrell near that river between Murrumbateman and Gunning, a month or so later.
The Monitor was informed by a network of locals. Most likely, Tennant or Winter herself told the story to a publican or a bullocky, who in turn passed it on to the paper. It does not have the mark of a police report but the protagonists and the basic circumstances of the plot are solid enough.
Unfortunately, Mary Winter's trail goes cold in 1828. She is not mentioned in the later events associated with Tennant. Their relationship may have ended, she may have died, or assumed a new identity.
But a neglected character from Canberra's convict past has been unearthed. The mysterious Mrs Winter steps out of the shadows, pistols drawn, as one of just three female Australian bushrangers.
- A full report on this discovery is published in the March 2020 issue of the Canberra Historical Journal.
- To contribute to this column, email history@canberratimes.com.au.
