Gold lures magistrate to wrong side of law

Thomas John Griffin was the police magistrate in the Rockhampton area in 1868. Like most of the police magistrates of the day, he was also the mining warden, the land commissioner and, more importantly, the gold commissioner.

One of the duties of the gold commissioner was to buy gold from individual prospectors, as well as acting as a banker and a security service on the goldfields. In this capacity, Griffin took £252 from some Chinese miners on the Mackenzie River goldfields, in the area between Emerald and Clermont, on the understanding that he would forward the money to Rockhampton for their families, who would send it on to their principals back in China. In those days, many of the Chinese prospectors were indentured servants working for wealthy businessmen back in China.

The Chinese community in Rockhampton approached Griffin for the money sent by the miners from the Mackenzie River fields. Griffin had not paid them and it remains a mystery as to what happened to the money. Later that day, however, he sent Trooper John Power to the bank—on his express orders as gold commissioner —to withdraw £4000, ostensibly for payment to the diggers at the Mackenzie River fields who had sold him gold. The bank prepared four parcels, each of £1000, and
Power is supposed to have delivered them to Griffin.

Griffin paid the Chinese community the money he owed them from the £4000, and resealed the packets with the gold commissioner’s seal. However, fearful of discovery of the theft, Griffin accompanied Trooper Power and his mate Trooper Cahill up the road and, in a quiet and secluded spot, murdered them both.

The trial, before Mr Justice Lutwyche, proceeded at the Rockhampton Assizes in March 1868. In what was considered an open-and-shut case, Griffin was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The matter went on appeal before Lutwyche and Cockle, the Chief Justice, with Ratcliffe Pring, QC as Attorney-General and Charles Lilley, QC for the Crown. Representing Griffin were MacDevitt, Hely and a young barrister named Samuel Walker Griffith. So flimsy were the grounds of the appeal, and so raw was Griffin’s legal team, the court noted that it acted with ‘tenderness to the inexperience’ of the three defence counsel, before it summarily dismissed the appeal.