Mundine Joe

Childhood

Joseph Jones was born approximately in 1826 (the exact date of birth has not been established) in Cornwall , was the third of six children in the family of the Catholic blacksmith Thomas Jones and his wife Mary Bolito. Jones grew up a tall man, had black hair and brown eyes ^[3] ; later sources indicate that his face was pockmarked (probably due to smallpox in childhood). His father died between 1832 and 1841, as a result of which Jones and his three brothers were forced to work as miners at a local copper mine. As of 1841, the family lived in Illogan, Cornwall; In 1848, Johns worked in Wales at an iron mine, possibly at a deposit in Kladach ^[4] .

Start of criminal activities

On November 15, 1848, Jones and his accomplice, William Cross (the fictitious name of the gangster John Williams, later also a convict) were arrested near Chepstow for "stealing three loaves of bread, a piece of ham, several heads of cheese and other products" from Richard Price's house ^[5] .

Represented on charges of burglary before the District Court of Brecon, the criminals did not admit their guilt. On March 23, the hearing of their case was led by the famous judge Sir William Earl. The newspaper articles on the process noted the energetic defense of the defendants, while Jones behaved aggressively and in every way interfered with the normal course of the meeting. As a result, the criminals were sentenced to ten years hard labor. In several similar cases, considered by the same judge on the same day, the defendants who pleaded guilty were sent to a regular prison for a period of only three weeks to three months ^[6] .

For seven months after the verdict was passed, Jones and Williams were serving a conclusion at the place of residence, doing forced labor, and then were transferred to Millbank prison. On January 1, 1850, they were transferred to Pentonville Prison , where they were to serve six months of compulsory solitary confinement. October 21, 1851 both criminals were taken to Dartmoor prison. Shortly thereafter, Jones was transferred to the prison ship Justitia in Woolidge - perhaps as a punishment for violating prison discipline. After the death of this ship as a result of a fire, Jones found himself on another similar ship, the Defense . About a year later, he was transferred to the prison ship Pyrenees and sentenced to expulsion in a British convict settlement in Western Australia, where he was to serve the remainder of the term ^[6] . Williams in March 1852 was exiled to a penal colony in Tasmania .

Deportation and Imprisonment in Australia

The ship Pyrenees sailed to Western Australia on February 2, 1853 and arrived in Fremantle on April 30 ^[7] .

Jones for exemplary behavior during the voyage received a "free ticket" (ticket of leave) and on March 10, 1855 he was conditionally pardoned with the establishment of a probationary period for him. He settled in the valley of the Avon River, one of the most undeveloped and hard-to-reach areas of Darling . The natives who lived here called these lands "Mundine", which later became the nickname of Jones. He installed hedges at some local sources of fresh water and in such a way he caught horses and cattle running away from owners who came there to drink water, often receiving a reward for returning these animals ^[6] .

In August 1861, John caught a stallion without the brand of the owner and branded him on his own, which, according to the laws of that time, was considered horse thief. The police, having learned about it, arrested him at the first opportunity. At trial, the horse was presented as material evidence, and as a result, Jones was imprisoned in Tudy prison. One night he was able to run and again stole the same horse, also stealing a new saddle and bridle belonging to the local magistrate. He was caught the next day, but Jones managed to kill his horse and cut off his stigma from his skin, thus destroying the evidence that could prove the fact of theft. For this reason, he was sentenced to only three years of imprisonment for escaping instead of the typical ten-year imprisonment typical of those times, which was rejected as condemned ^[8] .

While Jones was serving a prison sentence, riots and escape attempts often occurred, but he did not take part in them and as a result, in February 1864, having received a “free ticket” and a conditional pardon for exemplary behavior, he was released. He then found a job on the Henry Martin farm in Kelmscott. In January 1865, a bull named Bright, owned by William Wallace, was killed, and Jones was accused of killing him. He was arrested on March 29, was found guilty on July 5 and sentenced to ten years of hard labor ^{[8] [9]} . Subsequently, Jones insisted on his innocence for that crime until the end of his life. He decided not to serve the unreasonable, in his opinion, punishment, so in November, along with another convict, he escaped directly from the convicts field camp. They had been on the run for almost a month and during that time made several small robberies; it was at this time that Jones got the nickname “Mundine Joe”. The criminals were located 37 km east of York, when they were overtaken by a police squad, which also included the famous ranger Tommy Windic , who was famous for his experience of searching for gangsters in the bush. For escaping and illegal possession of firearms, Mundine Joe was punished with a 12-month hard labor in shackles and was taken to the Fremantle prison ^[8] .

Escape

In April 1866, Mundine Joe sent a petition for clemency to the Chief Judge of Western Australia, as a result of which his total sentence was reduced by four years. However, apparently, Jones was not satisfied with the achieved result, because already in July he was sentenced to six more months in shackles for trying to break the lock on the door of his cell. In early August, however, he was able to escape. Having got rid of the iron chains on his feet, he soon met with three other escaped convicts, with whom he went to Bush near Perth . The gang made a series of robberies and several times almost miraculously escaped arrest, but in late August one of the four fugitives still fell into the hands of the police. Realizing that they could not forever escape from capture, Mundin Joe developed a plan to escape from this colony overland to South Australia. For such a long and difficult journey through an extremely arid region, very good equipment was required in order to have any chance of survival. On September 5, Mundine Joe stole the necessary food and stuff at the store of his old enemy, James Everett, at Tudy. Then the gang traveled east along the path explored by traveler Charles Hunt. On September 26, their tracks were discovered by police at a distance of approximately 160 km east of York. The police began pursuing the criminals and overtook them on September 29, 1866 in Budalin-Sok, about 6 km north-west of the modern city of Westonia and about 300 km north-east of Perth ^[8] .

Hard labor, regular escape and pardon

In punishment for escape and robbery committed after him, Mundine Joe was sentenced to another five years in prison. Emergency measures were taken to prevent his new shoots. Jones was kept in the courtyard of the prison in Fremantle tied to the window with an iron rod by his throat, and also equipped for him a special "anti-escape" chamber, the stone walls of which were upholstered with yarar sleepers and more than a thousand nails inside, which was almost completely light and airtight. Mundine Joe was kept in a cell on bread and water and allowed only a two-hour daily walk in the courtyard. At the beginning of 1867, when the criminal's state of health began to deteriorate, he was transferred to work as a stone cutter in the open air. Usually, the prisoners sentenced to it were determined to work outside the prison, but in the case of Jones, the prison director ordered the stones for him to be brought directly to the prison yard and stored in the corner, and Jones himself should crush them under the constant supervision of a security guard. The then British Governor of Western Australia, John Hampton, was so sure of the security measures taken against Jones that he allegedly promised the offender to pardon him if he could escape. Meanwhile, the stones, crushed daily by Jones, were not removed from the prison yard in a timely manner, so soon a whole pile of them grew, reaching the guard who escorted Jones to the belt. Thanks to this, the opportunity to remain partially invisible to the warden during work, Jones periodically crushed a sledge hammer not with a stone, but with a prison wall made of limestone ^[8] .

On March 7, 1867, Mundine Joe escaped from prison through a hole punched by him in her wall. Despite the undertaken large-scale searches, it was not possible to catch him. This time, Jones did not return to any of his former shelters and did not commit any crimes, so the authorities did not have accurate information about his whereabouts. The successful escape of Mundine Joe led in the following months to a whole series of attempts to escape the convicts, due to which the police, who had taken on other fugitives, soon stopped searching for him ^[8] .

A few days before the second anniversary of his escape, Mundine Joe decided to steal a few bottles of wine from the cellar at the Hofton winery. By chance, the owner helped the police to search for another fugitive, and after inspecting the territory of the vineyard, he offered members of the search party to dine with him. When the owner went down to the basement for wine for dinner, Jones, who was hiding there, thought that he had been found, rushed to the door, thereby falling directly into the hands of the police. He was returned to prison and received twelve months for escaping, spending half of this period in solitary confinement. March 22, 1869, he was convicted of burglary for another four years in shackles. In February 1871, Mundine Joe, determined to do forced labor in a locksmith's workshop, tried to make a duplicate of the key for the lock of his cell, but without success. In April 1871, Chief Wakeford heard from Mundine Jo about the promise made by Governor Hampton regarding him. After Wakeford, who decided to further verify his truth, received confirmation through Superintendent Lefroy that such words were indeed spoken, he reported this to the then Governor Frederick Weld, who agreed that Jones would continue to serve the sentence unfair. As a result, in May 1871, Mundine Joe received a “free ticket” and was released. ^[8]

Recent years

The next part of his life Jones lived relatively calmly, although he committed several minor offenses a few more times and was sentenced to short prison terms. In January 1879, he married a widow named Louise Hearn. Together they searched for gold for some time near the town of Southern Cross. In 1881, Jones, wandering in the Carridale area, discovered a karst cave, then named after him. In the last years of his life, he began to behave strangely, and in the end he was recognized as mentally ill. He died on August 13, 1900 in a psychiatric hospital in Fremantle from "senile dementia"; Now in this building is the center of arts Freemanta. He was buried in the city cemetery ^[8] . The word “Rhyddid” is carved on the tombstone of his grave, which means “freedom” in Welsh.

In 1869, when Jones acted in the Australian Bush, Irish political prisoner John Boyle O'Reilly was in Fremantle prison. It is unlikely that he was acquainted with Mundin Joe personally, but he may have heard many stories about him. In September 1869, O'Reilly managed to escape and find salvation on an American ship. Once in the US, he wrote a novel about life in hard labor, entitled "Moondyne: An Australian Tale", whose main character is Mundine Joe. The work is a fiction, and neither the protagonist nor his story has almost nothing to do with the life of the real Joseph Jones.

In 1913, the film "Mundine" was filmed based on the O'Reilly novel ^[10] . In this picture, shot by W. Lincoln, the main roles were played by George Bryant, Godfrey Kass and Roy Redgrave ^[11] .

In 1967, Randolph Stowe wrote a comic book for children “Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy”, which tells about the life of Australian bushrangers, and the biographies of Mundine Joe and the Queensland bushrunger known as “captain Starlight” ^[12] .

In 2002, Cygnet Books published a novel for the young “The Legend of Moondyne Joe” by Mark Greenwood and illustrated by Franhe Lessac ^[13] . In the same year, this book was awarded the Western Australian Premier's Book Award in the children's book nomination ^[14] .

In 2012, Fremantle Press published a postmodern interpretation of the life of Mundine Joe, The Ballad of Moondyne Joe, in verse and prose written by John Kinsella and Niall Lucy ^[15] .

Mundin Joe became the hero of several poems and songs, including a folk ballad ^[16] and a popular folk song ^{[ 18]} since his escape in 1867.

In 1982, Roy Abbott and Roger Montgomery from the creative group Mucky Duck bush band wrote and staged a musical about Mundine Joe, which was then often put on various stages ^[18] .

On the first Sunday of May, the Tudi city authorities hold a “Festival of Mundine” with a street theater and a fair in memory of the life and times of Mundine Joe ^[19] .