David Armstrong
Contents
Background
Mentioned on Rev. T.J. Linnane's List.[1]
Goldfields Involvement, 1854
Gold Commissioner at Ballarat.
Post 1854 Experiences
In the News
- A REMINISCENCE OF '52. (To the Editor of. the Advertiser.) Sir, — Reading in the Argus of Thursday last of the death of David Armstrong, who in the early days held the post of Inspector of Police on Bendigo, recalls to my mind an episode of those rough times in which Armstrong played a prominent part. One afternoon in December of that year a great commotion, with cries of "murder," proceeded from a grog tent belonging to a man known as Crib Williams, when I, along with the crowd, ran to see what was up. On getting there we saw Williams streaming with blood, Armstrong having gone to Williams' tent and ordered it to be pulled down. On Williams remonstrating with him, Armstrong struck him on the head with a loaded whip, which nearly killed him. The crowd were indignant, and would have lynched Armstrong on the spot, but just in the nick of time about a dozen mounted troopers arrived and surrounded Armstrong, and amidst the groaning and yelling of the crowd all rode away to the camp, some four miles distant. Now that his digger hunting days are over, it is to be hoped that he has gone to a happier hunting ground, but no one armed in a little brief authority ever acted the bully with greater gusto than David Armstrong. And many a better man than he has gone down into the grave without one word of eulogy in their favor being written by the public Press, for it was he and the like of him that exasperated the residents of the goldfields to such an extent that ultimately ended in the Eureka Stockade, where the present Speaker in the Assembly lost an arm, and for which, at one time, £1,000 was offered for his body. In the paragraph alluded to, Mr. Panton's name is mentioned, but the two names ought never to be classed together, for if Mr. Panton at any time had occasion, in the execution of his duty to come in contact with the diggers, the business was done in a manly manner, he being as much respected on Bendigo in '52 as he is in the metropolis in '83.
- Yours, sir,
- AN OLD RESIDENT.[2]
