Case File 05: The Parlour Piano
Dan Morgan and the siege of Peechelba, near Wangaratta, 1865.
Case File 05, 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.
Dan Morgan and the siege of Peechelba, Victoria, 1865
In the book this case appears as “The Parlour Piano”. The names of people and most places were changed to make the puzzle work. Below is what really happened.
Daniel "Mad Dog" Morgan, a Riverina bushranger with a £1,000 reward on his head, wounded Wagga magistrate Henry Baylis in 1863, shot overseer John McLean at Round Hill in June 1864, and murdered Sergeant David Maginnity near Tumbarumba on 24 June 1864 and Senior Sergeant Thomas Smyth near Henty in September 1864. In April 1865 he crossed into Victoria and on 8 April bailed up Peechelba station near Wangaratta.
Nursemaid Alice Keenan slipped out to warn George Rutherford at the second homestead; police and armed station hands surrounded the house overnight, and on the morning of 9 April 1865 station hand John Wendlan shot Morgan as he walked his hostages to the stockyard. He died that afternoon, aged about 34. The inquest returned justifiable homicide; the reward was divided among seventeen people.
How it was really cracked
The real nursemaid was Alice Keenan of Peechelba station near Wangaratta. On the evening of 8 April 1865 Dan Morgan bailed up Ewan Macpherson's household and held them in the parlour while Macpherson's daughter played the piano. Allowed out to tend a sick child, Alice crossed the paddocks to the second homestead and told George Rutherford, Macpherson's partner, that the stranger was Morgan. Rutherford sent a rider to Wangaratta and armed his station hands; police arrived about 2 am and were hidden around the house.
At about 8 am on 9 April, as Morgan walked his prisoners to the stockyard, station hand John Wendlan shot him in the back. He died that afternoon. The inquest found justifiable homicide and the £1,000 reward was split among seventeen people. Morgan had murdered Sergeant David Maginnity and Senior Sergeant Thomas Smyth in 1864; both are on the police honour roll. What was done to his body afterwards, for a Melbourne phrenologist, led to the coroner and a police superintendent being suspended, and is not repeated here.
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 Ovens River at Wangaratta, by Sheba_Also 43,000 photos (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.