John Wilson

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A picturesque touch at the Eureka Stockade anniversary on Sunday was an address by Mr. J. W. Wilson, who arrived on the field a few days after Australia’s only battle. Mr. Wilson is now 88., Sun News Pictorial, 06 December 1922.

Background

Goldfields Involvement, 1854

A John Wilson signed the 1853 Bendigo Goldfields Petition.


STOOD HIS GROUND
Now He Owns It
Mr. J. A. Wilson, a Eureka veteran, now living in Ballarat, is proud of the fact that he now owns, in the centre of Ballarat city, the land whereon he was handcuffed to a log for two nights because he would not pay the gold tax.[1]


CHAINED TO LOG
Veteran Owns Gaol Site
BALLARAT, Friday.—Mr.
J. Wilson, of Errard street, a veteran of the Eureka battle, celebrated his 91st birthday today.
It is his boast that he owns the site of the temporary gaol where he was chained to a log for the whole of one night in 1854.
His offence was his refusal to pay the exorbitant digger’s licence fee.[2]

Post 1854 Experiences

Wilson was residing at Ballarat when he signed the Benden Hassell Petition in 1856. [3] A manuscript item is held in the State Library of NSW titled "Eureka Stockade". It contains information about a John Wilson, Mount Egerton, 4 July 1856. [4] He writes:

Tom Wilson came very near to getting shot on Monday night after the Stockade affair. The (Government) Camp took false alarm and kept up a continued fire all over the flat which is densely populated. For more than 20 minutes the thickest of the fire fell were Tom was living, riddling the tents all around about.
The ground had been rushed at one time but afterwards left dotting the locality over with holes from three to four and five feet deep (one to 1.5 and 1.8 metres), to these holes the inhabitants crowded for safety and Tom among the rest. Unfortunately, the one he got into had been used for a certain purpose - but he won't tell how much soap it cost him to make his clothes nose sweet again though we often ask him.

J.B. Humffray corroborated these events:

On the Monday Night, the fourth of this month (December), I was on the flat a short distance from the bridge at about seven or eight o'clock when I heard the rapid and consecutive reports of an immense number of firearms, and I heard a number of bullets whiz over my head, and I sat upon the ground to escape the bullets. Robert Rede released a Proclamation on 3 December 1854 after the Eureka Battle.[5]

See also

Benden Sherritt Hassell Compensation Case

Eureka 63, 1917

Eureka Timeline

Further Reading

Wickham, Dorothy, Shot in the Dark: Being the Petition for the Compensation Case of Benden S. Hassell, Ballarat Heritage Services, 1998.

References

  1. Sun News Pictorial, 20 September 1924.
  2. Sun News Pictorial, 29 September 1926.
  3. Wickham, Dorothy, Shot in the Dark: Being the Petition for the Compensation Case of Benden S. Hassell, Ballarat Heritage Services, 1998.
  4. Eureka Stockade, ML DOC 2771, 6-660c
  5. Eureka 150, Ballarat Courier Supplement, 24 November 2004.

External links