Joseph Luker

81

Gail Robyn Newman on 9th August 2024

Joseph Luker was born in England around 1770. With his accomplice James Roche, he was apprehended on 23 June 1789 with a heavy load of lead guttering taken from the roof of a house worth about ten shillings. On 8 July 1789 he was sentenced in the Old Bailey to transportation for seven years to New South Wales. He left England on the Atlantic with the Third Fleet and arrived in Australia on 20 August 1791. He received his Certificate of Freedom in 1796, he married Ann Chapman in Parramatta the following year. Luker joined the police force that had developed from the original night watch by Governor Arthur Phillip in August 1789 and tragically became the first Police Officer murdered in Australia. On the night of 26 August 1803, between 5 and 8pm, thieves broke into the home of Mary Breeze in Back Row (today’s Phillip Street) and stole a small, portable desk containing documents and money Constable Luker was not on duty until midnight but Breeze reported the crime directly to him at his house nearby, rather than to Chief Constable John Redman in the Watch House. Luker told her he would look for the desk when on duty, and that he thought he knew who the guilty parties were, and that they would be found at the house of his colleague, Isaac Simmonds. Luker went in search of the desk after midnight and eventually found it in the scrub on the site behind Back Row that is now occupied by the Mitchell Library. At some point after the discovery, he was set upon by the thieves, and killed in an area that now forms part of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Multiple weapons were used in the brutal attack on Luker including the stolen desk, the frame of a wheelbarrow, his own cutlass and cutlass guard. His body was discovered just before dawn. The main suspect was Constable Isaac Simmonds he was charged with wilful murder but found not guilty. Simmonds had been in charge of the stolen desk when it was taken to police and was seen attempting to clean it of blood. Witnesses also testified that one shirt and three hankies, stained with blood, had been found in his house. Despite a career of robbery and violence Simmonds convinced the court that he had a history of nosebleeds and the blood on the shirt was from a fish or a duck.Constable John Russell another ex-convict, was suspected. He was indicted for breaking and entering but found not guilty due to insufficient evidence. Joseph Samuels an ex-convict and professional thief, was also indicted for breaking and entering. Samuels confessed to the robbery of the desk but not to the murder of Luker. Richard Jackson another ex-convict and thief, also confessed to robbery and, as a witness for the Crown, implicated Samuels. Jackson was declared innocent of wrongdoing. Joseph Samuels was found guilty of the robbery, but not of Luker’s murder, and was sentenced to death. On 26 September 1803, Joseph Samuels mounted the hangman’s cart and was transported down High Road (today’s George Street) to the gallows that stood in a paddock at Brickfield Hill. Constable Simmonds, ‘a convicted thief with a known propensity for violence’, continued to attract so much suspicion in relation to the case that he was ‘purposely brought from George’s Head to witness the awful end of the unhappy culprit’ on the day of Samuels’ scheduled execution. Astonishingly, three attempts by the executioner to despatch Samuels failed: ‘twice the rope broke, and once it unraveled. The Provost Marshall urged by the public clamour’ charged with humanity sped off to his Excellency’s presence to plead for mercy’.‘An hour later he was back with a reprieve in his pocket’. There was some rejoicing at the site of the gallows as those who had gathered to witness the execution strongly believed that, on this occasion, ‘'the hand of Providence was outstretched' to save the neck of Joseph Samuel This belief was confirmed when the broken ropes were tested: each supported a substantial weight without breaking. Samuels would still be punished and he was transferred first to Risdon Cove in Van Diemen’s Land and then to the notorious settlement at Newcastle to 'work in appalling conditions in the newly-cut coal mines’ Joseph Luker was interred in the Old Sydney Burial Ground, , one of his murderers was possibly also one of his pall bearers: On Sunday last the body of Joseph Luker was very decently interred, a procession following the corpse in which all his Brother Constables assisted, with a number of other inhabitants. The solemnity of the funeral was much heightened by the awful circumstances of his death, and the doubt and anxiety that existed in every mind. The initials of the deceased were on the coffin lid, and his age also, which was 33 years. He was lowered into the grave by four persons belonging to the Watch, one of whom is at present in confinement on suspicion. The deceased was a man of very fair character throughout the Colony, and was a free man a length of time previous to his assassination.

81

Gail Robyn Newman on 9th August 2024

Given his freedom, Luker joined the fledgling police force that had developed from the original night watch established by Governor Arthur Phillip in August 1789.By 1803 it was more formally organised, but it consisted still of only a handful of men, including former convicts, and was responsible for maintaining law and order in a community of approximately 7,000 people.

81

Gail Robyn Newman on 9th August 2024

received his Certificate of Freedom in 1796, he married a woman named Ann Chapman in Parramatta the following year

81

Gail Robyn Newman on 9th August 2024

Luker was born in England around 1770. With his accomplice James Roche, he was apprehended on 23 June 1789 with a heavy load of lead guttering taken from the roof of a house worth about ten shillings