Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 84
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PA R R A M AT TA
GAO L
A S S A U LT A N D S I L E N C E
John Mansted
A S S A U LT
John Mansted, a 26 year old French polisher from the Sydney suburb of Sydenham,
was photographed at Parramatta Gaol on 17 December 1909 while serving a sentence
of three years hard labour for assault.
Mansted appeared before Judge Backhouse at Sydney Quarter Sessions on
8 October 1907 charged with the assault of a young woman, Nellie Chatburn. ‘Deaf and
dumb’, Mansted was unable to hear or speak at the proceedings, so was allowed the use
of an interpreter. Newspaper accounts of the trial remarked on what was considered a
very unusual process at the time:
As fast as a witness could speak and as quickly as the deposition clerk could
record, the words were made clear to the prisoner by the interpreter.
So quickly did the interpreter manipulate his fingers, and later the prisoner,
that the movements could not be followed by those intently watching in Court.
Yet the two mutely engaged and understood each other instantly, neither
asking to have a message repeated.
Mansted was found guilty and commenced his prison term in Darlinghurst Gaol.
He was later transferred to Parramatta Gaol to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Mansted’s assault of Chatburn was not his first offence, nor his last. He was
convicted at Paddington Police Court of assaulting two women in 1905, but avoided
serving a gaol term by paying a fine of £4. In 1915, now using his birth name, Andrew
Theodore Manstead was incarcerated at the State Penitentiary, Long Bay having been
found guilty of stealing and being a ‘suspected person’. He served a sentence of six
months hard labour. He returned to the State Penitentiary in 1916 for break, enter
and uttering offences.
It is difficult to say to what degree if any Mansted’s impairment impacted on
his criminal offending or the way he was treated by the NSW criminal justice system.
The fact that he was described as a ‘deaf and dumb mute’— a term that is no longer
used in reference to the deaf community — made for sensational newspaper headlines at
the time.
It is known that Mansted did go on to marry and have a family. At his death on
9 November 1940 his estate was valued at £500 pounds and was bequeathed to his wife.
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