Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 61
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B AT H U R S T
GAO L
H O R S E S T E A L I N G B OY
George Morrison
HORSE STEALING, L ARCENY
George Morrison, a 16 year old labourer from Sydney, was photographed at
Bathurst Gaol on 4 March 1897 while serving a sentence of six months hard labour
for horse stealing and larceny.
Morrison was tried at Bourke Quarter Sessions on 1 February 1897 for
stealing a horse, saddle and bridle on 15 January from Thomas Dierke, the lessee
of the Belalie artesian bore. The trial heard that Morrison was apprenticed to
Dierke from the nautical school ship, Sobraon, for a four year period commencing
in July 1896.
Sobraon was run by the NSW Government as an industrial school and
reformatory for boys. Commissioned in 1892, it replaced Vernon, which had served
the same purpose for destitute and vagrant boys from 1867. Both ships were moored
on Sydney Harbour and boys received a combination of moral training, nautical
training and instruction, as well as elementary schooling. Boys were the
responsibility of the school superintendent until the age of 18, unless
apprenticed out or discharged beforehand.
In his teens and bound to farmer Dierke on a property in outback NSW,
Sydney-raised Morrison’s conduct had been described by his master as ‘very bad’.
On the January 1897 day in question, Dierke had returned to his property from a
short absence to find Morrison and a bay horse, saddle and bridle, missing.
The Court heard that a week later Morrison was arrested outside Coolabah
railway station. When questioned, he had reportedly said to the police constable,
“Dierke don’t own the horse. Mrs Dierke hit me with a stick and gave me the horse,
bridle and saddle and told me to clear out”. In Court, Mrs Dierke denied having
said this. Faced with the evidence, Morrison pleaded guilty. In pronouncing
Morrison’s sentence, the judge said that it would be “no use sending the boy
back to the ship”. Morrison was discharged from Bathurst Gaol on 13 July 1897
after completing five months of his six month sentence. His release was granted
as a Diamond Jubilee remission in celebration of the sixty year reign of
Queen Victoria. George Morrison does not appear again in the NSW Gaol Photographic
Description Books, 1870-1930.
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