1858: Owen McQueeney, Green Tent Murderer
October 20th, 2014 Headsman
Murderer Owen McQueen(e)y was hanged on this date in 1858 at Gallows Flat down the road from Old Geelong Gaol.
McQueeney, a wandering Irish robber with one distinctively sightless eye, committed something called the “Green Tent Murder” which consisted of the slaying of the pretty proprietress of a structure that went by that name.
The Green Tent was a grocery and tavern serving Australia’s ample population of itinerant gold-hunters in the environs of Meredith, Victoria — specifically the environs of present-day Green Tent Road.
Fresh off a jail term for horse-rustling, McQueeney turned up at the ‘Tent in July 1858 and began creepily haunting the pleasing mistress with the well-proportioned stock shelves.
Until, for no known provocation save plunder, McQueeney murdered the widow owner Elizabeth Lowe and fled.
The poor woman’s body was chanced upon soon thereafter and travelers’ reports of a dead-eyed and overladen swag-man making tracks for Geelong soon zeroed the search in on the desperado, still carrying Ms. Lowe’s incriminatingly distinctive property.
McQueeney, who was noted for his obnoxious bravado from the moment of his first police examination all the way to condemnation, evidently labored until almost the very last “under the infatuation that he would yet be reprieved … on the ground of the great aversion entertained by a large class of people to capital punishment under any circumstances. This belief of his in the morbid sympathies of his fellow-creatures, there can be no doubt, induced him to the last to disown his crime” even though he admitted to many other ones. Nevertheless, he continued his irascible act all the way to the noose, griping at the executioner for holding him too tight and pulling the hood down too soon.
Notwithstanding (or better owing to) his notoriety, McQueeney was sought out posthumously by a crippled woman, who besought the indulgence of the sheriff to touch McQueeney’s dead hands to her own in hopes of obtaining a curative from the legendary power of the hanged man’s hand.
Modeled on London’s Pentonville Prison, Old Geelong Gaol — officially HMS Prison Geelong — hosted six executions in its initial incarnation from the 1850s to the 1860s. Two occurred within its walls; McQueeney’s and three others took place in a paddock a few hundred meters away.
Old Geelong Gaol was converted in 1865 to an “industrial school” for street urchins, and 12 years after that into a prison-hospital. The dusty old place, famous for is spartan amenities, resumed life as a working gaol after World War II and only closed in 1991 — but never had another hanging after the 1860s. Today it is open for public tours, complete with gallows exhibit.
On this day..
- 1526: Bianca Maria Gaspardone, the Insatiate Countess - 2020
- 2011: Muammar Gaddafi - 2019
- 1790: Joseph Mountain, Atlantic picaro - 2018
- 1575: Archbishop Leonid of Novgorod - 2017
- 1933: Dallas Egan, dancing - 2016
- 1939: Operation Tannenberg public mass executions begin - 2015
- 1571: Hans Haslibacher, Bern Anabaptist - 2013
- 1865: William Grant, evidently a ringleader, a persuader, and adviser - 2012
- Daily Quintuple: The Morant Bay rebellion - 2012
- 2009: Four Tibetans - 2011
- 1401: Klaus Stortebeker, Victual Brother pirate - 2010
- 2005: Luis Ramirez, claiming innocence - 2009
- 1865: Champ Ferguson, Confederate guerrilla - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Australia,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,History,Murder,Public Executions,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Theft
Tags: 1850s, 1858, elizabeth lowe, geelong, green tent murder, october 20, old geelong gaol, owen mcqueeney
Today l meet a man who said he had cleared head stones from a demolition side near gallows flat was this associated with the prision
He was hanged within the walls of the Geelong Gaol not at Gallows Fat
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right?
Great movie.
“Don’t like her? What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s got huge… tracts of land…”
Maybe they meant “the well-proportioned mistress with the pleasing stock shelves”? ?
“the pleasing mistress with the well-proportioned stock shelves”
Is that a euphemism?!