[Hunt, Su Jane, "The Gribble Affair: a study in colonial politics", Studies in Western Australian History, Dec. 1984, VIII, pages 42-51]
[http://henrietta.slwa.wa.gov.au/record=b1964499~S2]
Author Hunt, Su Jane.
Title The Gribble Affair: a study in colonial politics.
Imprint 1984.
Subject Gribble, J. B, (John Brown), 1847-1893
Found In Studies in Western Australian History, Vol. VIII (Dec. 1984), p. 42-51, 994.1 STU, .b11461676
The Gribble Affair: A Study in Colonial Politics
SU-JANE HUNT
In 1885 an Anglician churchman arrived in the colony of Western Australia to perform missionary work amongst the Aborigines of the settlement’s northern districts. Within six months this missionary, the Reverend John Brown Gribble, had caused a furore in the colony. In a booklet, Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land, published in 1886, he alleged that a system of slavery existed in the north:
... that Australia itself, professedly the new home of liberty and light, should have become the theatre of dark deeds of oppression and cruelty; that a land not only blessed by the Great God, with cloudless skies and widespread prosperity and happiness to those who have been privileged to make it their home, and moreover a land which professes to reflect the noble institution of Great Britain, whose godly and philanthropic fabrics, which are not only England’s glory and boast, but the envy of the world beside; that a land so circumstanced and blessed by Divine Providence should have become the nursing mother of oppression and injustice, and that deeds of infamy should find toleration therein, is not only a cause for the greatest astonishment, but in itself constitutes the foulest blot that could possibly rest upon the escutcheon of Australia’s fame.[1]
The context and ramifications of Gribble’s allegations comprise a complicated story of nineteenth-century missionary righteousness and fervour, the strong-arm tactics of a frontier squattocracy, and the intrigue and politiking of a conservative colonial elite.
Gribble’s passionate expose of the ill-treatment of Aborginal people filled the press, not only of Western Australia but of the east as well; and it caught the attention of the British government. For a short time, Australia’s ‘Cinderella colony’[2] was the focus of conflict and dissent.
In the 1860s a number of settlers leased land in the newly-opened northern districts, attracted by Government lease compensations for land settlements.[3] Within a few years the newly-arrived settlers also became aware of the enormous wealth to be acquired in pearlshell fishing, and “settlers founded joint ventures as pastoral lease-holders and owners of pearling luggers. Yet the settlers of the north, many of them from southern families, were again faced with the question of who was to work their properties and dive for shell on their luggers? The use of convict labour was prohibited by the British government in any region north of the 26th latitude. The tropical heat was considered unsuitable even for criminals of the working classes of England and Ireland. Nor was it possible to attract European immigrants to work vast properties. Settlers immediately looked to the region’s indigenous people as a potential source of labour.
The Church of England Diocesan Missions Committee which employed John Gribble in 1885, should perhaps have been aware that the arrival of a missionary in the north would cause some friction within the conservativedominated community.[4] A northern Legislative Council member, Charles Crowther, opposed the establishment of a mission in Western Australia as early as September 1885, believing that ‘no good result would be attained by any endeavour to civilise and christianise these northern natives by missionaries.s The West Australian, in announcing Gribble’s arrival in the north, also clearly set the scene for potential conflict:
in the Gascoyne district the livelihood of the settlers depends on their employment of native service. Of this the squatters spare little. Even now the supply of the more intelligent and trustworthy class of natives is hardly equal to the demand ... Tact ... will be required and a practical and unprejudiced and sympathetic understanding of the relative positions of the whites and the blacks in the district which he proposes to minister. [6]
In appointing Gribble to this delicate task, the Missions’ Committee was impressed by his extensive missionary experience and his fame as a spokesman for Aboriginal people. They were also impressed by his apparent enthusiasm at the prospect of working in a remote and isolated region.[7] When Gribble returned from a lecture tour of Britain in 1885 where he raised money for the missonary cause, he wrote to the Bishop of Perth:
I feel more than ever convinced that it is God’s will that I should go to Western Australia in order that I may in an enlarged sphere carry on the work upon which my heart is set.
Gribble’s other missionary experience had been in New South Wales, where he worked as a lay preacher and an Anglican missionary at Rutherglen, Wahgunyah, Jerilderie and Darling Point.[9] Gribble had also written two books, a pamphlet entitled A Plea for the Aborigines o f New South Wales and a larger book, Black But Comely. Gribble’s approach to Aboriginal people can be placed firmly within the post abolitionist movement of Britain. He believed that it was the white man’s task to missionise Aborigines in order to redeem himself as well as the unfortunate heathens. This is evident in the report of a sermon he later delivered to a Perth congregation:
[He] admitted that the Aborigines of Australia were about at the bottom of the human scale ... The evil influences of contact with white civilization upon their nature, which was almost entirely animalism, had resulted in their being sent wholesale into eternity. [10]
Gribble was better known for his bravado in his encounter with the bushranger, Ned Kelly. When Kelly and his gang held up the entire township of Jerilderie, Gribble approached Ned Kelly and demanded that his stolen watch be returned. Manning Clark writes of this meeting:
For a brief moment two brave men confronted each other in a dustbowl town on the Riverina before they went on their separate paths to the great ordeals of their lives.[11]
It can perhaps be said, then, that Gribble’s personal temperament was closely tied to his commitment as a missionary. He was a colourful and dogmatic man, filled with religious zeal. His missionary experience in New South Wales, however, did not prepare him for a situation where Aboriginal labour was central to the settlers’ economy. In New South Wales, Gribble was accustomed to working with Aborigines he viewed as a ‘broken-down remnant’, people stricken by alcohol, disease and prostitution., In the northern settlement of Carnarvon where Gribble went to establish a mission in September 1885, however Aborigines were closely guarded and valued as workers.[12]
Gribble’s very presence in the Gascoyne region would be considered by the settlers to be ‘tampering with their servants’,[13] and his keen sense of justice was shaken when confronted with the harsh forced labour system. When an Aboriginal run-away servant sought refuge at his mission, Gribble lectured the stunned pastoralists who came in pursuit that ‘blacks were free subjects of the Queen and that they were not slaves’.[14] The pastoralists quickly realised that Gribble would not be content to conduct weekly services and tend the sick and elderly discarded Aboriginal servants. By November 1885, they were locked in battle with him.
The conflict between the missionary and the settlers initially took the form of impassioned public meetings, attacking Gribble and drawing up petitions to the Church Missions Committee calling for his withdrawal from the region. In November and December 1885 the settlers of Carnarvon held three public meetings and in reply Gribble gave a public address to a Perth congregation complaining of the Gascoyne settlers’ treatment of Aboriginal people. When he returned to Carnarvon, Gribble found that supplies to build his mission had been boycotted by the settlers while notices had been posted all over the town:
Down with Gribble and all his supporters and confusion to all Sneaks.[15]
Another, which was posted on the church door, proclaimed:
Old Parry sent a Parson Here
His Name is J. B. Gribble.
Poor Silly Wretch he damned himself
To Save the Lord the Trouble.[16]
Despite pleas by the Perth press to bury ‘misunderstandings and grievances in the fathomless depths of charitable oblivion’, the tensions continued.[17] At a public meeting in Carnarvon on December 28, Gribble was again called upon to resign. He took the floor, stating that he would ‘never cease the fight for the downtrodden natives’. Someone in the crowd heckled Gribble, “He is no Britisher-he must be of some foreign extraction!”[18]
Gribble made his way out of the meeting unscathed but incensed. Apparently to answer the criticism he was receiving in Carnarvon, and no doubt retaliation for the treatment he received, he wrote to all the Perth newspapers. With his letters he enclosed a diary account of his three months in Carnarvon and the Gascoyne, naming and criticising individual settlers for their ill-treatment of their Aboriginal workers. The more liberal paper, Inquirer, warned Gribble to ‘mind his business’ and ‘to devote his time to wild blacks instead of settlers’.[19] The conservative West Australian, owned by Anglicans, proclaimed:
We have fairly done with Mr Gribble and his so-called Gascoyne mission, and warn the authorities of the Anglican Church that they can expect no support of any kind from us in keeping that person in the district ... [ Gribble ] has revealed a state of things in a far away pioneer district, only just beginning to be claimed from absolute savagedom, which would compare more than favourably-we say it without fear of contradiction-with any district in the same stage of development on the continent of Australia.[20]
Despite their condemnation of Gribble, both newspapers published the diary in full, in exciting serialised form. Its publication caused a furore in Perth and marked the movement of the dispute from the Gascoyne into the Perth community. Travelling from Carnarvon to Perth via steamer in January 1886, Gribble was sleeping on the open deck of the S.S. Natal when he was awoken by a group of men, one of whom he recognised as a prominent land-holder in the Gascoyne. He claimed that he was pushed and jostled by the men until he escaped to a cabin below deck:
I barricaded the door of the cabin with every movable thing I could find, and then I sat upon the barricade with my back to the door and my feet to the washstand. No sooner was this precaution taken, than I heard the sounds as of a crowd outside, and the cabin was besieged for about an hour and a half. The besiegers tried hard to force the door... during the period of the siege I received the most violent threats; they said if they could get me for ten minutes they would ‘do for me’; and one man said he would shoot Gribble ‘the devil’. . .[21]
In Perth Gribble attempted to lay charges against these men but was faced with many difficulties in filing complaints against them. Initially, he could not find a solicitor to accept his case, so he publicised the incident in the Inquirer and the Daily News. Finally a newly-arrived solicitor, Richard Haynes, agreed somewhat half-heartedly to take on the case. In late February the warrants were apparently issued. By May no action had been taken, although the papers had unprecedently passed over the desks of the colony’s Attorney General, the Acting Colonial Secretary and the Governor himself.[22] The colonial officials were reluctant to see the case taken to court. In late May, Gribble claimed that he had been forced to drop the case because the period of time which had elapsed had exceeded the legal limit.[23] He wrote an angry letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, the first of many such communications:
I am obliged to abandon this case through the force of circumstances, [and] I shall most certainly lay the blame at the door of the Government of this colony and I shall be prepared to act accordingly. I shall not keep anything back from the sister colonies, nor from the authorities, Civil and Ecclesiastical in England. I shall make it my mission to reveal to the Christian world the wrongs and injustices, and the cruetly obtaining under the British flg in the colony of Western Australia. [24]
Gribble sent copies of his letter to the Governor in Perth, the Colonial Secretary, the Dean of Perth and the Missions Committee.
The Missions Committee and the Church of England more generally were balking at the growing conflict surrounding Gribble. His most influential supporter in the Church, Bishop Parry, was out of the colony. Parry’s position on the Missions Committee was filled by two men who strongly opposed Gribble’s stand. Both of these men owned pastoral properties in the north and one was a co-editor of the West Australian.[25] In mid-February, the Committee forbade Gribble from preaching in the Carnarvon township and restricted him to the Dalgetty reserve, which was desert land some 200 miles from the coast.[26] Other officials in the Church sought for Gribble’s resignation. Joseph Gegg, in the Bishop’s Commissary, wrote to Governor Broome:
I conceive that his remaining in the colony will only frustrate the efforts being made to further the Mission cause in Western Australia.[27]
In June, Gribble was refused permission to preach at the Cathedral in Perth and the Dean also banned him from preaching elsewhere in the Perth parish.[28] Instead, Gribble addressed a crowd at the ‘Working Men’s Hall’ in a special ‘missionary service’. The hall was overflowing and Gribble was inundated with supporters for his cause against the Perth establishment. Special Gribble support committees were formed.[29] The colonial liberals, backed by the Inquirer, took up the cause. The Inquirer wrote of the Missions Committee’s treatment of Gribble:
of whom is this committee composed? Mainly of men who, however, honest they may wish to be, have their interests bound up with the settlers-men some of whom would feel keenly in a pecuniary sense the defection of influential members of their church.[30]
Encouraged by the support he was receiving and keen to vindicate himself, Gribble persuaded the Inquirer. In late June, the newspaper published Gribble’s booklet, Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land or Blacks and Whites in North-West Australia. Soon afterwards the missionary departed for the eastern colonies to rally further support for his cause and to plead his case with Church officials there. Four days later, on 1 July 1886, the Bishop’s Commissary withdrew Gribble’s missionary license and closed the Gascoyne mission.
Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land was received with a tone bordering on hysteria by the Perth community. In the Legislative Council, Charles Crowther, who had become Gribble’s most bitter opponent, told the House that Gribble was simply seeking notoriety and that he was only keen ‘to catch the ear and to tickle the fancy of Exeter Hall’, [31] the centre of humanitarian societies in London. In Sydney, however, the Church of England Primate issued Gribble with a general preaching license and employed him to lecture for three months all throughout the colony. The Melbourne Daily Telegraph published some particularly condemnatory articles about Western Australian society and published extracts from Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land. This further enraged West Australian gentry opinion. In a leading article in August 1886, the editors of the West Australian wrote:
We must apologise to our readers for giving them so much Gribbliana of late, but the papers of the eastern colonies have been full of articles upon the assertions of one whom without exaggeration, we might designate as a lying, canting humbug.[32]
It was these three words, ‘lying, canting humbug’, which prompted Gribble to take action. Confident in and encouraged by the support he felt he had in Melbourne and Sydney, Gribble had his solicitor serve the West Australian with a libel writ claiming damages of £10,000.
The libel suit of J. B. Gribble versus Harper and Hackett, the editors of the West Australian, lasted for twenty full days and Gribble was in the witness stand for the first eight days. Almost every day the court gallery was packed with spectators and full transcripts of the case appeared in both local daily newspapers. It was clearly adopted by the liberals of the colony as their opportunity to test the powers of the conservatives. From the trial’s first day, the colonial civil establishment was split into camps. Harper and Hackett alleged that the Chief Justice, who was trying the case with Justice Stone, was one of Gribble’s ‘warmest sympathisers’ and should step down from the bench. Chief Justice Onslow refused, and the defendants subpoenaed a number of letters which had passed between him and Gribble. These letters did in fact reflect some sympathy for Gribble’s cause. In one, Onslow wrote, ‘you have right and justice on your side’.[33] Yet the letters are more telling in what they reflect about Onslow’s perpective on the way the colony was ruled. Of the incident on board the Natal, Onslow differed from the other colonial officials. He did not believe that a special case should be made because one of Gribble’s alleged assailants was an influential citizen. He told Gribble:
I cannot see why any difference should be made between such a case and one in which the parties happened to belong to a class amongst whom such an assault would be more likely to occur. [34]
In another letter which urged Gribble to accept a post in New South Wales, Onslow clearly identified the conservative colonial element and their effort to deter Gribble. He wrote that if Gribble would take the alternative position he should not be harassed and thwarted at every turn-as in all probability you would be here—even by your own clergymen. It is painful and humiliating to see how persistently they attack you in the columns of their paper.[35]
The transcript of the trial, too, although concerned with depositions relating to the treatment of Aboriginal workers, contains a strong underlying tension. The statements by Gascoyne pastoralists and pearlers reveal a powerful belief that their class and status necessarily assured them of special privileges. Many of their depositions were highly incriminating, yet they appeared to view the situation which they described as simply ‘the natural order of things’. For example, George Bush, an important Gascoyne pastoralist and member of the Anglican Church, told the court:
There are about 100 natives on my run; about 40 of whom are in my service. The others are uncivilised natives. I have tamed my 40 natives more or less... I have heard of natives out of my own (property) being run down and unlawfully taken and I believed they were chained up... I have heard that nigger hunting in the northern parts of the colony has been a profitable employment.[36]
Bush also admitted that he sent Aboriginal women out to sleep with his white stockmen:
I have sent the women off to the white men myself. The probable consequences of such is that the women will be used as the white man wishes.[37]
The trial revealed of cases where workers were literally bought and sold with cargo on pearling luggers. In this light, it is probable that in the eight days that it took justices Onslow and Stone to come to their decision after the completion of the trial, there was some pressure on them to vindicate the colony’s name. It was also vital that for the settlers to keep face within their own society, a decision should be found for the defendants. If the West Australian was found guilty of libelling Gribble, then the conservative elite position which the newspaper represented, and the Govenor who had aligned himself closely with the settlers, were seriously threatened. In June 1887, Justices Stone and Onslow decided in favour of the West Australian. The newspaper was deemed just and correct in calling Gribble a ‘lying, canting humbug’. The Inquirer described the scene at the court:
the galleries as well as the ground floor of the Supreme Court were densely thronged by the leading citizens of Perth and prominant townsmen of Fremantle all anxious to hear the result.[38]
The West Australian proclaimed exultantly at the result:
every genuine son of Western Australia will rejoice that his foul career of slander has at least been effectively barred by the unanswerable command of the Supreme Court.[39]
The Inquirer maintained its sympathies with Gribble. In its first edition after the trial’s completion, a series of articles proclaimed that the missionary had been a victim of ‘Might versus Right’. The editors wrote that despite the adverse judgment:
we believe the public at large will regard the Rev. J. B. Gribble as neither a liar or a canting humbug. This trial will not be the first instance in which the decision of the Court of law is not endorsed by public opinion, nor will it be the last ... Let the Squattocracy say the colony is cleared! But of what? Not of anything Mr Gribble has said respecting their cruelties towards ‘niggers’, but cleared of a Missionary effort that would have made the colony what a vigorous Church and good Government should strive to make it ... [40]
Gribble, penniless and unable to pay the legal costs, quickly left Western Australia for the east. He was there treated as somewhat a martyr for the Aboriginal cause and employed for some time by the Aboriginal Protection Society of New South Wales. In 1888 he was sent to work in the parish at Temora, where he built the first church in the district.[41] In 1889 Gribble and his family moved to the district of Burke and established a mission station on the Darling River near Brewarrina.[42] He and his wife and eight children next moved to Northern Queensland where they established the Yarrabah Mission at Cape Graf ton.[43] It was a remote and isolated place, far from the tension of colonial politics and the squattocracy. According to Gribble’s eldest son, Ernest, Gribble was broken and desolate after his time in Western Australia. In 1893 John Gribble died at the age of forty-five. On his gravestone were engraved the words ‘Black Fellow’s Friend’.[44]
In Western Australia, Gribble’s departure by no means eased the tension within the colony. The conservative Governor, Frederick Broome, publicly accused Chief Justice Onslow of sympathising with Gribble’s cause. In another court case at which Onslow sat on the bench, Broome claimed that he was taking a strong and deliberate stand against him. The Governor compiled a series of statements criticising Onslow and sent a letter of complaint to the Secretary of State.[45] Onslow responded with a public statement to the press:
I protest against the manner in which the Governor persists in harassing me, as being calculated to lower and insult myself and my office and to degrade the administration of justice in this colony.[46]
The Governor indicted Onslow for refusing to retract the statement and soon after the Executive Council suspended the Chief Justice. The colony’s liberals, soured by injustices of Gribble’s trial, saw Onslow as their scapegoat of the conservatives and the ’six Ancient Families’. Public protest meetings were reported in the colony’s major towns. In Perth a torch procession was led through the city’s street by the liberal leaders, among them Hensman, Traylen and Courthope. An effigy of Governor Broome was burnt in the streets.[47]
In May 1888 John Horgan, a liberal critic of the Governor, was elected by a close margin to the Legislative Council. At a major political meeting at the Perth Town Hall, Horgan took a vocal stand against the conservatives, calling the West Australian a ‘reptile sheet’ and an ‘embodiment of lies, distortion, snobbery and low journalism’. Alfred Hensman told the crowd that if the West Australian ever mentioned him favourably, then the would have thought he had been making a fool of himself.[48] In the West’s account of the Perth meeting, Hensman and Horgan were represented as irresponsible people. Hensman presented the editors of the West Australian with a writ for libel, and another lengthy and bitter court case ensued.
Following an appeal to the British Privy Council, Onslow had been reinstated as Chief justice and he was principal judge in the Hensman case. The West Australian was bitter about Onslow’s reinstatement. The editors wrote:
the Chief Justice of the colony was virtually made the head of a political party, which holds itself bound to oppose in all respects, the views and actions of the West Australian. [49]
Onslow and his fellow judge found the West Australian guilty of libel and Hensman was awarded £800 damages by the court.
This lengthy dispute continued with moves and counter-moves by liberals and conservatives. The British Home Office appeared to view it with detached amusement as mere wrangling in the antipodes.[50] In 1890, however, the British government granted self-government to Western Australia. Governor Broome was replaced by Governor Robinson and political power was now vested in an elected Premier. The first West Australian Premier was John Forrest, a member of an important Perth family, but also considered a moderate and an ally of Chief Justice Onslow.[51] With this move, much of the colony’s overt political wrangling subsided. Chief Justice Onslow returned from an extended leave in 1891 to a relatively settled political scene. He remained as Chief Justice with no further major incidents of disputes until his retirement in 1901.
The Gribble Affair had sharpened the political struggle within the colony. It had also highlighted the nature of conflicts which existed within the social and political-structure of Western Australian colonial society. And, in 1889, the British, while granting Western Australia self-government, kept control of Aboriginal affairs.[52] However, the allegations and testimony of the Gribble trial about the treatment of Aboriginal workers ultimately became secondary in the battle between the colonial conservative elite and the newer more liberal immigrants.[53]
Nevertheless Gribble’s activities bit deep into the memory of the conservative pastoralist politicians of Western Australia. For them he remained a symbol of outside interference and criticism. The issue of their treatment of the Aborigines had for a time been centre-stage. It had been contained, but could it be so contained forever?
* This paper first appeared in Colonial Politics in European-Aboriginal Relations in Western Australian History, Bob Reece and Tom Stannage (eds), Perth, U.W.A., December, 1984.
REFERENCES
1. J. B. Gribble, Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land (Perth, 1886), p. 3.
2. This was a popular name to describe the Western Australian colony, particulary after Federation.
3. The Western Australian Government offered land provisions which divided the land into two classes. Land up to two miles from the coast and islands were to be held on annual lease and the remainder of the land was to be held on an eight-year lease. On arrival in the north settlers were offered the land free of payment for twelve months, in which time a selection of up to 10,000 acres could be occupied free of rent for a further three years. This did not mean that settlers with little capital were attracted to northern settlement. On the contrary, there was an enormous outlay necessary to establish a property. One family chartered a ship to transport their stores, sheep, horses, cows and servants, while another purchased a vessel. W. L. Owen, Cossack Gold (Sydney, 1933), p. 11; K. de La Rue, Pearl Shell and Pastures (Cossack, 1979), p. 12; R. D. Sturkey, The Growth of the Pastoral Industry in the North-West, 1862-1901, B.A. hons, University of W.A., 1957, p. 2.
4. See, for example, reports of the Aborigines Protection Board, 1892-1896, Battye Library Acc. 388. See also W. Kloesterboer, Involuntary Labour Since the End o f Slavery (Netherlands, 1960).
5. W.A.P.D., 18 Sept. 1885.
6. West Australian, 30 Oct. 1885.
7. Board of Missions Minute Book, 20 May 1885-30 June 1885.
8. Western Mail, 3 July 1886, report of the contact between Gribble and the Missions Committee.
9. Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966- ), entry for J. B. Gribble. 10. Inquirer, 11 Dec. 1885.
11. C. M. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol. IV, p. 330.
12. In this context, ‘valued’ is used guardedly. Aborigines were both severely abused as workers yet highly desired and necessary to maintain settlers’ properties.
13. This phrase was used repeatedly by settlers who complained of Gribble’s presence in the Gascoyne. For example, eleven prominent Gascoyne pastoralists wrote to Bishop Parry in November 1885: ‘It must be clearly understood that we positively refuse to acknow ledge the Reverend Mr Gribble, or any other person that will interfere or tamper with our servants; and we respectively request the immediate removal of the Rev. Mr Gribble from the district.’ West Australian, 18 Dec. 1885:
14. Dark Deeds, p. 12.
15. Inquirer, 17 Feb. 1886.
16. Dark Deeds, p. 13.
17. Inquirer, 23 Dec. 1885.
18. West Australian, 5 Jan. 1886.
19. Inquirer, 13 Jan. 1886.
20. West Australian, 14 Jan. 1886.
21. Inquirer, 16 Feb. 1886.
22. C.S.O. 1170/86, Papers Respecting the Treatment of Aboriginal Natives in Western Australia (Perth, Government Printer, 1887).
23. Dark Deeds, p. 20. 24. C.S.0.1170/86.
25. Board of Missons Minutebook, 17 March 1886. 26. Ibid., 18 May, 1886.
2?. Published in the Inquirer, 18 May 1887, with transcript of libel trial.
28. Western Mail, 7 Aug. 1886, account of contact with Missions Committee. 29. Inquirer, 23 June 1886.
30. Ibid.
31. W.A.P.D., 31 Aug. 1886.
32. West Australian, 24 Aug. 1886.
33. Published in ‘The Administration of Justice in the Supreme Court’. 34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Inquirer, 1 June 1887. 37. Ibid.
38. Inquirer, 25 May 1887, transcript from A. Francisco, 23 May 1886; Inquirer, 29 June 1887, leading article.
West Australian, 28 June 1886. Inquirer, 29 June 1887.
Australian Dictionary of Biography, entry for J. B. Gribble.
E. R. B. Gribble, The Problem of the Australian Aboriginal (1930), p. 100. Ibid.
Ibid.
‘Administration of Justice in the Supreme Court’, p. 12.
W. B. Kimberley, A History of Western Australia (1897), p. 275. Ibid.
‘Administration of Justice in the Supreme Court’, p. 7. Ibid.
See, for example, the Confidential Colonial Depatches, 1883-1889, Battye Library, Acc. 391,56.
51. Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966- ), the entry for Onslow. 52. See the article by Goddard and Stannage in this issue of Studies.
53. See Stannage, People of Perth, pp. 196-206.
39. 40. 1. 42. 3. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 9. 50.
