THE LAST MAN HANGED
On 7 March, 1966, I reached the impressionable age of 17, half a schoolboy, half a University man. I had no results yet on the school side, and therefore no certainty on the other university side.
One week and one day later, in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Ronald Joseph Ryan appeared for the first time in the matter of The Queen v Ryan and Walker, a capital case.
The clouds that had been gathering over Melbourne began to rain down.
Ryan’s hanging was a government-sponsored execution because of one man, who was not in the courtroom, nor at Pentridge for the scheduled execution of Ryan. Not only did Bolte avoid the courtroom and the prison, he worked to ensure that the execution, if it were to take place as scheduled, would not do so while the State Parliament was sitting.
Premier Henry Bolte used the circumstances for what he considered his political advantage; and Her Majesty’s Governor for Victoria, Sir Rohan Delacombe, declined to intervene to preserve the moral rectitude of which Victoria was so proud.
Bolte had several prisoners on death row at the time, any or all of whom could have been executed. It is intriguing to ask why Bolte chose to kill, while hiding behind the cloak of government, Ronald Joseph Ryan.
In December, 1966, Mike Richards, a footballer of some repute, was also the acting secretary of Melbourne Students’ anti-hanging campaign[1]. The secretary was away when the government’s determination to hang Ryan was announced during the long summer vacation.
Mike Richards, now a PhD in politics from Melbourne University, was involved from that day until 12 February, 1967, with the battle to save, not merely Ronald Ryan, but the decency, the probity, the honour, of Victoria.
Many years later, having been an informal adviser to the Prime Minister, Paul Keating; having been deputy CEO of Syme newspapers, Mike wrote The Hanged Man: the life and death of Ronald Ryan[2]. Richards was recommended to Keating by Melbourne friends as an organizer who could help Keating establish a new team for the Prime Minister’s Office, after he wrested the Prime Ministership from Bob Hawke.
There is evidence in his book of one of the reasons for Bolte to order Ryan’s hanging, rather than that of any other inmates sentenced to death. I remember it well enough, but I have had the opportunity of referring back to The Hanged Man to supplement, or check, my memory.
On 12 December, 1966, after much discussion, debate and judicial and political activity, even an application to the Privy Council in the UK, asking Her Majesty’s mercy, the Victorian Cabinet met to consider the case of Ryan, and two other convicted murderers facing the death penalty: Antonio Rosamilia and Robert David Parslow. There was no doubt of their guilt; what had to be decided was how to proceed.
There was only one penalty for murder: hanging. Since 1788, the only method of legal execution in the six colonies, and Australia as a nation, has been hanging.
Rosamilia had stabbed his estranged lover nine times with a stiletto, killing her before he attempted suicide.
Parslow, much younger, had argued with his parents over his heavy drinking and, while drunk, shot them in the head with a rifle.
To many Australians, this meeting of Cabinet seems a breach of the separation of powers: the legal profession and elected Members of Parliament discussing matters in a formal political structure.
Victorians, however, had long accepted that Government Ministers could discuss judicial matters, and lawyers politics, provided that they were invited or permitted – rather than compelled or obliged – to attend.
The meeting of Cabinet was all but written into the laws of Victoria. It was common for any sentence of death to be commuted by the Cabinet into a long prison sentence, in fact, more common than not.
Not this time.
There could be little doubt about the sectarian element in the process: fifteen ministers attended that Cabinet meeting. Only George Reid, the Minister for Fuel and Power, was, like Ronald Joseph Ryan, a Roman Catholic[3].
Henry Bolte was Premier of Victoria from 7 June 1955 until 23 August, 1972: 6,288 days of grinding Opposition, and he was succeeded by Sir Rupert Hamer, then Lindsay Thompson.
It was not until 1982 that Labor won government again, largely because of internal splits.
John Cain (jr.) was the first Labor Premier since 1947. In his memoir, John Cain's Years,
Cain is unafraid of the word, bigotry. Indeed, he says bigotry knew no bounds when he was young. Boys from Catholic primary and secondary schools were trained for the State public service examinations. In that way, Cain writes, they had the chance of a job; in many private sector businesses, large and small, Catholics were simply told to go elsewhere.
From December 1966, Melbourne had many protests, marches, and vigils to try to stop the legalised murder of Ryan scheduled for 2 February, 1967. They all increased in pitch after the Cabinet effectively fell into line with Bolte and determined that Ryan must die.
Inevitably, protests, marches, vigils, and other demonstrations against Ryan’s execution became intermingled with the marches and protests and vigils over the Vietnam War, and over military conscription.
The debate was in the media almost daily. I cannot recall a day that it was not in at least one of the three daily papers in Melbourne, or on radio and television. Richards says in his book that, on at least 12 occasions, all three dailies front-paged Ryan simultaneously.
A BBC documentary from 1961, The Penalty is Death, had been scheduled by GTV-9 for 25 January. Praised around the world since its production by Patrick Donovan, and heavily promoted by GTV-9, just hours before air-time, the program was pulled. Sir Frank Packer and Bolte had had a conversation, and Sydney-based Packer had ordered Nigel Dick, the general manager of GTV to “Get the thing off!”
Bolte, a weak bastard when you got right down to it, was panicking, practically in public.
He must have felt his weakness when he spoke to Packer. Premiers are not supposed to need favours from plutocrats like Sir Frank Packer. They do not intervene in the running of a smooth operation.
Clearly, something had gone awry in the polity of Victoria.
The hanging arguments and protests were getting out of control. By calling on Sir Frank, Bolte was acknowledging that he had been unable to forge his own political destiny.
But it was not only plutocrats messing with the media. The other side were the people, the individuals who cared, on one side or the other fo the debate, and dared to speak their minds.
The next night, 26 January, students began a silent vigil on the steps of the Parliament – where I had first encountered politics as a kid – vowing to stay 24 hours a day until the execution took place, hoping all along that it would not take place.
They were rostered in two-hour shifts, wore the black academic gowns of undergraduates, and were backed by the national students’ union, which had 100,000 members.
Two students stood, silent, throughout each shift, holding torches five feet high[4].They came from Melbourne and Monash universities which had anti-hanging committees, but also from the Australian Universities Liberal Federation, Melbourne University Democratic Socialist Club and student Christian Scientists and from other educational institutions.
Mike Richards records that the vigil was maintained for ten days, “with people of all walks of life opposed to the hanging coming to the steps of Parliament House to express their support. All through the day and night they came. Signing the petition, talking to the protesters, sharing their concern – it all seemed to provide an outlet for the frustration of many ordinary Melburnians felt at a decision taken in their name[5] by a Premier who was stubbornly refusing to listen.”
There were, Richards points out, no newspaper polls to use as a guide to the numbers on each side. Letters to the Editor, however, had never in living memory approached the number of letters on this issue, and they ran five to one against the execution.
[One has to temper this measure a little: opponents of capital punishment recognise that this is an occasion on which you don’t get a second chance. Abolitionists may not always outnumber their opponents, but they will write far more letters, pleas, and arguments, join protests and demonstrations.]
The ABC provided intensive coverage, on television and radio news, but not in current affairs, where it usually excelled.
ABC’s Victorian current affairs show, Watch This Space, tried. Producer Michael Crewdson, was subjected to such management interference that, of the footage shot, not enough survived to make a program.
The Bulletin, which Frank Packer gave more leeway than he did any other of his outlets, was told to cut some material before the magazine would be distributed. The principal difficulty was a Tanner cartoon portraying Bolte as the hangman, with a huge noose behind his back ... and a caption:
“I do not bow to mob protests – only mob support.”
It was typical Tanner at its best: gallows humour of an excoriating nature.
This issue was due for publication on Tuesday, 31 January – the day scheduled, at the time, for Ryan’s hanging. The hanging should have been over before the issue hit the newstands.
About 40,000 copies were withdrawn from circulation...and that takes time.
The regular delivery trucks had left to begin distribution of the original version before the replacement run was ordered. There was one principal problem: subscribers usually got the first issues; and “subscribers” included a lot of libraries.
So, many of the original copies were kept safely on library shelves, while the replacement edition went erratically who knows where.
Victoria’s alleged leaders could not organize a two-up game on ANZAC Day. All that was achieved by pulling a show off TV was further discussion and debate in the community at large.
Bolte could sabotage all forms of media, but he was merely adding fuel to the fire in homes and streets, drawing attention to his own absence from the front line.
Four thousand members of the Waterside Workers’ Federation and the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation marched up Bourke Street in the city. That on its own was enough to bring the city to a halt: trams, trains, buses, cars, pedestrians, and business...the one sector Bolte wanted to support.
A large proportion of the protesters tried to storm the Parliament House. The Parliament was not sitting, but the building has always represented, more than any other building, the State.
To me, it was especially that: it was the place I first learned of this thing called politics.
The marchers ran into a solid wall of police when they arrived.
Dozens of protesters raced up the steps that I recall from my first visit there, and began beating on the doors with their banners and placards. They shouted their opinions: “Hang Bolte!” “Bolte: murderer!” Photographs of the violence appeared in the papers that afternoon.
Usually when we read about somebody having “form” – prior offences – we are talking about criminals. In Victoria, it was Premier Bolte who had form.
In 1962, as Premier, he had repeatedly called for the execution of Robert Peter Tait, convicted of murder in 1961.
Four times, Tait’s execution was scheduled.
Four times, he did not hang.
In his first trial, in 1962, Tait was represented by Jack Starke, a leader of the Victorian Bar.
At that time, the Governor of Victoria was Sir Dallas Brooks, GCMG, KCB, KCVO, K StJ, a military hero. One cannot avoid in Melbourne knowing at least the name, Dallas Brooks.
Dallas Brooks was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of Victoria from 1951 to 1963. He was Victoria's longest serving Masonic Grand Master, and he was the only Governor of any Australian state initiated to the craft while serving as Governor.
It was during the debates and protests about Ryan’s execution that I began to notice the role – not front and centre, but in the mix all same – of sectarianism. I had never given it much thought before, but in the atmosphere of the time, it seemed, to say the least, odd.
Dallas Brooks, it would appear, was not a great supporter of Roman Catholics like Ryan.
Brooks remained Governor until 7 May, 1963, when he was replaced by Sir Rohan Delacombe. Delacombe was military: he did what he had to do. He encountered little or no criticism before, during, or after this tense phase.
Just hours before the fourth scheduled execution, Tait was granted a permanent reprieve by the High Court of Australia, because he was not guilty by reason of insanity, which Bolte described as “a legal technicality”.
The submission before the High Court was made by Jack Starke.
Given Starke’s standing at the Bar, it was inevitable that he would sit on the Victorian Supreme Court Bench one day. That he would be the Judge in The Queen v Ryan and Walker was unpredictable, but it happened. Starke was opposed personally to capital punishment, but knew when he moved to the Bench that he could be called on to judge a capital case. He was called; he certainly would not have been there otherwise.
After 12 days of hearing, Justice Starke’s associate asked: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?”
“We have,” the foreman replied.
“Do you find the accused Ryan guilty or not guilty of murder?”
“Guilty of murder.”
“Do you find the accused Walker guilty or not guilty of murder?”
“Not guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter.”
There had not been an execution in Victoria for more than a decade. Starke could not find a black cap to don before passing sentence; neither did he seem keen to search one out.
He did ask the jury to retire to the jury room. He also directed that Walker be removed from the court a moment before he passed judgement. The Judge’s associate had to continue:
“Prisoner at the bar Ryan, you have been found guilty of murder. Have you anything to say, or do you know why the sentence of death should not be passed upon you according to law?”
Ryan answered: “I still maintain my innocence. I will rely upon my counsel to appeal. That is all I have to say.”
These formalities obliged Starke – no matter how strongly he opposed the very idea of capital punishment – and he always had – to say the words used on such an occasion:
“Ronald Joseph Ryan, you have been found guilty of the murder of George Henry Hodson.
“It is the sentence of this court that you be taken from here to the place from whence you came and, on a day and hour to be fixed by the Executive Council, you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God rest your soul.”
On the way back to Pentridge, Walker said to Ryan: “Jesus, mate! They’ll commute it.”
Ryan had a more sophisticated grasp of the situation:
“Mate, I’m in the hands of the politicians.”
Ryan could read the situation better than anyone in the State. He would, wouldn’t he?
The stake in this political game was his life.
Jack Starke was anguished about what he had been obliged to do. He had all the tools to help him get over it, especially a lifetime of legal training and his deep commitment to the law which had obliged him to follow the duty that it imposed on him.
That did not make it any easier for him, then or later. Nobody criticized him, and, over many years, he worried about it many times. It was not merely, for this lawyer, a matter of following the law. Starke had long regarded the death penalty as immoral. His personal belief, as separate from his professional position, was a longstanding moral belief.
The Americans had their electric chair – we’d seen it on TV. Later they came up with “lethal injection.” These ideas were supposed to be more humane than the guillotine or other public methods of execution.
That, however, was never the point. The idea of something more humane is only a favour to those whose emotions and equilibrium might be upset by the horror of witnessing a planned death.
The pain of the moriturus is irrelevant. Execution is about taking a life, a soul. As john Donne had written centuries earlier, no man is an island; when the bell tools for one, it tolls for all.
It is a moral issue, not a medical one, and it should never be a political one, either. As long as governments continue to authorise such immoral behaviour, though, it will be political.
Father John Brosnan was a folk hero in Melbourne. To many, despite his passing, he still is. The executioner, known only as Mr Jones, objected to the priest being on the scaffold where he (Mr Jones) would be working.
When Ryan heard that, he had one of his Ned Kelly moments of fluency: “I don’t need anyone to hold my hand,” he told the priest. “What do they think it is? A debutante ball? Who stands where, and that sort of thing? By a quarter-to-eight tomorrow, you’ll have done all you can for me. Just you anoint me afterwards. We’re bigger than they are.”
That night, as if to prove Ryan correct, there were 3,000 people outside Pentridge, trying to pray, or say, or do, what they could to comfort Ronald Ryan and show Henry Bolte that he was wrong.
Unlike the American footage we had seen in the black-and-white world of TV news (colour broadcasting began in Australia in 1975), we did not see protesters shouting at each other across the road to the prison, waving placards, each abusing the other.
There was no division about Ronald Ryan. Yes, he had been found guilty of murder and sentenced to die, and the 3,000 who were there were 99 per cent sure that the hanging would take place.
One was the State MP for Richmond, Clyde Holding, later to lead the ALP in Parliament. Holding was bailed by the ALP State Secretary, Bill Hartley, at about 1 am.
There were still 1,000 people outside the prison when Hartley arrived in a personal political commitment to the solidarity of the anti-hanging committees, protesters, marchers, and the vigilantes - a usage that for once is appropriate, rather than offensive.
The issue at hand was the moral one, and the protesters knew that they would not change the outcome...this time. More than 90 people were arrested on the usual basis: the indefensible charge of “offensive behaviour.”
There has, however, not been a legal execution in Australia since that night.
How did I get caught up in protests, marches, and vigils? How could I not?
That was the temper of the times and, it would seem, I had been born to collide with it.
[1] The Secretary of the Victorian anti-hanging campaign was, ultimately Barry Jones, the quiz champion known throughout the nation and, later, Minister for Science in the Commonwealth Government.
[2] Richards, Mike. The Hanged Man: the life and death of Ronald Ryan. Scribe Publications, Melbourne.2002; revised edition, 2003.
[3] NOT George Houston Reid, the former Prime Minister who long before, had moved to England and won a seat in the House of Commons. That George Reid had died in England in 1918.
[4] Just over 150cm.
[5] Emphasis added for this account
