Case File 08: The Nailed Cell
Moondyne Joe and the Swan River Colony, 1861 to 1869.
Case File 08, 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.
Moondyne Joe, the escape artist of the Swan River Colony, Western Australia, 1861 to 1869 (Joseph Bolitho Johns)
In the book this case appears as “The Nailed Cell”. The names of people and most places were changed to make the puzzle work. Below is what really happened.
Joseph Bolitho Johns, "Moondyne Joe", a convict transported to Western Australia, was a horse and cattle thief and the colony's most persistent escaper: out of the Toodyay lock-up in 1861, off a work party in 1865 (recaptured by a party including tracker Tommy Windich), over the wall of Fremantle Prison in 1866, and, on 7 March 1867, through the prison wall from behind a screen of rubble in the yard, two months after Governor Hampton built a special cell to hold him.
He was recaptured on 25 February 1869 in the cellar at Houghton's vineyard in the Swan Valley by the owner and a police search party, served a further sentence, and received a ticket of leave in 1871. He died in Fremantle on 13 August 1900. Tommy Windich went on to accompany John Forrest on his exploring expeditions and is commemorated in his own right.
How it was really cracked
The real escape artist was Joseph Bolitho Johns, "Moondyne Joe". He broke out of the Toodyay lock-up in 1861, absconded from a work party in 1865 and was recaptured east of York by a party including the Noongar tracker Tommy Windich, later John Forrest's companion on his exploring expeditions. He escaped Fremantle Prison in 1866 and was taken at Boodalin Soak. Governor Hampton had a jarrah-lined, nail-studded cell built for him and is said to have promised a pardon if he got out of it. Set to break rocks in the yard, Johns built the rubble into a screen and tunnelled through the wall on 7 March 1867.
He was at large until 25 February 1869, when the owner of Houghton's vineyard in the Swan Valley, home from helping a police search, found him in the wine cellar. He was given a ticket of leave in 1871, discovered Moondyne Cave near Karridale in 1881, and died in Fremantle in 1900. His cell is on the Fremantle Prison tour.
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: Fremantle Prison gatehouse, by Calistemon (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.