Case File 03: Four Men and a Pound Note
The Clarke brothers and the Jinden murders, Braidwood district, 1867.
Case File 03, Volume 2: the real file
This page is for readers of Outback Case Files, Volume 2: Bushrangers and Gold. It describes real crimes of the bushranging years, factually and without gore. If you have come here from a puzzle, finish your accusation first: this page gives the game away.
Campfire Quests acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands on which these stories took place. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page may contain the names, images and stories of people who have died.
The Clarke brothers and the Jinden murders, New South Wales, 1866 to 1867 (Thomas and John Clarke)
In the book this case appears as “Four Men and a Pound Note”. The names of people and most places were changed to make the puzzle work. Below is what really happened.
Thomas and John Clarke, with their Connell relatives, terrorised the Braidwood and Araluen goldfields through 1866; Constable Miles O'Grady was killed in their raid on Nerrigundah in April 1866 and Thomas was outlawed. Four special constables, John Carroll, Patrick Kennagh, Eneas McDonnell and John Phegan, sent in disguised as surveyors, were found murdered near Jinden on 9 January 1867, the worst killing of police in Australian history. No one was ever convicted of it.
The brothers were captured at Berry's hut on Jinden Creek on 27 April 1867 by a party under Senior Constable William Wright, in which Aboriginal tracker Sir Watkin Wynne lost an arm. Tried in Sydney for wounding Constable Walsh, they were hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 25 June 1867. Sir Watkin received a government pension and died at Forbes in August 1887.
How it was really cracked
The real special constables were John Carroll, Patrick Kennagh, Eneas McDonnell and John Phegan, sent into the Braidwood ranges in late 1866 disguised as surveyors to find the Clarke gang. On 9 January 1867 they were found shot dead near Jinden station, two of them tied to trees, with a £1 note pinned to Carroll's body. Nobody was ever tried for it; the Clarkes were the obvious suspects and the district knew it. Exactly who betrayed the specials was never established, which is why this file asks you to reason it out rather than look it up.
On 27 April 1867 Senior Constable William Wright, Constables Walsh, Egan and Lenehan and tracker Sir Watkin Wynne surrounded Berry's hut on Jinden Creek. In the gunfight John Clarke was hit in the shoulder and Sir Watkin was shot through the arm, which was amputated; he was pensioned and died at Forbes in 1887. Thomas and John Clarke were tried in Sydney on 28 May 1867 for wounding Constable Walsh with intent, and hanged together at Darlinghurst Gaol on 25 June 1867.
Read more
These are public sources we used. They open in a new tab and carry more detail than this page, including the places where the old records disagree with each other.
A word about respect
These were real people, and in most of these districts their descendants are still here: police families, bush families, and the Aboriginal communities whose trackers did so much of the finding. We have kept to the public record and left out the gore on purpose. If you share this page, please share it the way you would want your own family talked about.
Banner photo: The Braidwood district from Clarkes Lookout, by TrimmerinWiki (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.