The Mayne Inheritance Page 5

  There was no doubt about Mayne’s business ability. In addition to his busy shop, he wholesaled meat to J. Gibson, the butcher at South Brisbane. And for some years he had been developing a strong trade in hides, tallow, and sheepskins. Once regular coastal shipping became available, he advertised that he would ship goods on reasonable terms. As his business expanded and flourished, he needed to buy and fatten his own stock. This required rural land, not too far out, but close to the route for his supply in the grazing districts. In a deal with T.L. Murray-Prior he began paying off 693 good grazing acres at Moggill. It was now only a short step further up the ladder to the world of graziers. He would breed his own stock on his own broad acres. In September 1862, fourteen years after he had robbed and murdered Robert Cox, Patrick Mayne arrived at the top of his colonial ladder. He took a five-year lease on the 32,000 acre Rosevale Station, but borrowed heavily to buy outright the pre-emptive homestead area of 640 acres and stock the property.

  This was good cattle land, watered by the upper Bremer River on the eastern side of the Great Divide. Life was indeed satisfying. His business acquaintances may not have been his best friends but his rise to fortune was openly spoken of as one of the colony’s success stories.

  4

  Consolidating an Empire

  There was a great deal more to Patrick Mayne than barbaric behaviour and the accumulation of property. He had an innate ability to plan meticulously for long-term action and not deviate from his decision. Despite all the cunning and savagery of the Cox murder, it clearly reveals this ability. Once Patrick crossed the poverty line and stepped into a more satisfying world where he was a man of business, his still untutored mind channelled its instinctive ability to make wise choices for long-term business success. Where others made hope a paradigm for their future, Patrick made use of vitality, action and single-mindedness. His negative, darker, satanic self, which unwisely exploded with savage aggression to minor irritations was not subdued, but he seemed able to separate it from his world of business, where he remained mentally in control. He had decisive ideas to increase his own wealth and his community standing and to benefit the town. Despite burdening himself with a large number of civic and private projects, he retained for some years the determination and concentration to steer them to successful conclusions.

  In the first four years as shop owner and man of property, he consolidated rapidly. Young Rosanna, and Isaac (born on 14 January 1852), both named for Patrick’s parents, played in and out of the shop and the backyard. Mary was pregnant again, and although the Maynes were considered a bit too rough to be on the visiting lists of most of the other Queen Street traders, Patrick had established himself as a man who could move with the times and afford to keep up with the best. By 1853 the worst of the prevailing depression was over. There was a rising real estate market, and changes in Queen Street reflected confidence in the future of the area. Robert Cribb began building his new brick drapery establishment, Moreton House, with its Sydney-style fashionable plate-glass windows. Patrick followed suit, but planned differently. He began with a new large brick home across the road from his shop, near the Edward Street corner of Queen Street. Both Cribb’s and Mayne’s modern premises were much admired, but Patrick was only beginning. He added an adjoining brick shop. In November 1853, just after their second daughter, Evelina Selina was born the complete move was made and he proudly advertised his butchery’s new location. A block away at his recently purchased yard at the corner of Elizabeth and Albert Streets, he could slaughter his stock at sundown, hang it overnight and quarter it early; even in the hottest summer he could now provide freshly killed meat for his customers.

  It was to be expected that his new shop would include a meat room built with charcoal between the walls to keep the meat cool, but with the convenience of his Elizabeth Street yard, he could quite profitably slaughter only every two or three days. At the end of the first day any unsold meat would be rolled in dry salt and drained. But there was no real problem with waste meat turning black or becoming fly-blown. European housewives were accustomed to ‘‘hung’’ meat which they trimmed if necessary, washing it with wine or vinegar before cooking.

  Patrick Mayne also established himself as a man to be counted on when the town rallied for a cause. His name appears on a wide variety of lists. Together with those who bought land in the North Quay area in 1853, he petitioned the Government Resident, Captain Wickham, for the rough tracks called George and William Streets to be made passable for horses and carriages. The following year he added his name to the petition for a bridge to link North Quay with South Brisbane. When Queen Street rallied behind the ‘‘reverend republican’’, John Dunmore Lang, with a request that he represent the Stanley Borough in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, Patrick’s name was published on the supporters’ list. With Tom Petrie, Hobbs the surgeon and twenty-two other leading townsfolk, he petitioned the Governor General to exercise clemency and remit the last year of the sentence of Patrick Irwin, a ticket-of-leave holder. (Their request was turned down.) His signature in those days was awkwardly formed, as though by a hand unused to writing. Occasionally he tried a flourish of loops and swirls but they show no fluidity, and a certain lack of penmanship.

  In 1853, a second reward for the discovery of gold was offered, and Patrick’s increased contribution of £75 joined those of the eighty-five hopeful townsfolk who put up £2,825. These leading townsfolk rallied for a variety of reasons. On one occasion they raised over £500 as a reward for information about the malicious stabbing of a horse. In that horse-oriented society such a sum is an indication of just how necessary a good riding horse was, and how difficult to replace. Beyond the town boundary the lack of decent roads and the density of the scrub, with its rocky ridges and shallow rifts, could prevent a horse and cart or even a bullock and dray from travelling very far. Butchers needed to ride out to find straying stock; others rode to their new allotments; and—important to most of the entrepreneurs—a horse was vital for inspection of the uncleared outlying Crown land which the government intermittently released for sale. Even where there were discernible roads it was not uncommon, after rain, to find a lumpy bullock wagon bogged to its axles, barring the passage of all other wheeled vehicles. A sick or damaged horse could hobble a business man for a long time; this was why, to stop that sort of vindictiveness, John McCabe offered £100 reward for information. Almost every other trader, Mayne included, put up £5 each: in all, £513.11.0d. was offered. This was the equivalent of ten years’ wages for a labourer or butcher’s assistant. The reward was not claimed; the culprit was not caught.

  From the beginning Patrick Mayne’s name is always well down on the variety of published lists, and throughout his life it continues that way. In a list of fifty or more names, his will be somewhere in the last half-dozen. These lists were rarely alphabetical; they clearly show a hierarchy of townsfolk. Always at the top are names such as Petrie, Cribb, Elphinstone, Raff, Markwell, Stephens and Eldridge. It begins to look as though Mayne is frequently among the last to be asked—or, alternatively, he does not offer, but has to be asked. The latter is unlikely. Reading his character from what is available, he actively sought a civic role and he also knew what was good for business. Most probably, as town scallywag who did not fit the others’ idea of respectability, he was one of the last called on and the last listed.

  There are some lists on which his name does not appear. They usually involve donations which would provide little benefit to himself. In the Patriotic Fund list of 1855 for the war in the Crimea, the establishment and bourgeoisie names are there, led by pastoralist William Tooth, who gave £100. They also include, well down on the column, ‘‘Mr Chinaman Leon’’ and ‘‘a poor man’’ who each gave 2/6d. It is not surprising that Mayne is absent; in keeping with the political scene in Ireland, there is a conspicuous absence of Irish names. In the same year, a well-received fund to help the town shows an average donation of £3. Again, ‘‘a Chinaman’’ gave £3, but Patrick,
clearly out of step with the other Queen Street traders, reluctantly gave £1.

  One sad period in these years must have been the death of the baby Evelina Selina, who lived barely a year. Born in October 1853, she died, like so many of the colony’s infants, in the warm, fly-blown months and was buried in November 1854 in the new cemetery at Paddington. There is no indication whether the death of Evelina was a time of great grief, or whether it was stoically accepted in a colony where more than half the children failed to live beyond the age of five. Patrick’s energetic organisation of his growing empire left little time for his family. At the time of Evelina’s death, his brand-new acquisition of fifty-nine acres at Breakfast Creek urgently required fencing and stocking before the cattle belonging to his neighbour, Elphinstone, started grazing on his summer grass. There was no break in Patrick’s frenetic extension of his business or his activity in town affairs.

  At those new, extensive cattleyards at Breakfast Creek, and his holding paddock in Elizabeth Street, he employed shepherds. There were up to two butchers in his shop and at home he hired a servant girl for Mary, who was soon pregnant again this time with William McIntosh whom she named after her father. Most certainly there would be someone to mind lively Rosanna and young Isaac. As well Patrick employed two fencers to split timber and fence the Breakfast Creek yards, then his land at Milton and elsewhere. He had a minimum of nine people on his payroll and continued to expand. His idea of work was not simply to extract every physical ounce of labour out of his men. He was efficient, and his orderly mind made him want to fix what he saw as intolerable government inefficiency. In September 1855 he called his own public meeting to discuss an amendment to the law relating to slaughtering of sheep and other animals within the colony of New South Wales. There is no record to say whether he attracted any supporters, or, if he did, the result of the meeting.

  As more immigrants arrived, the pressure on rental housing became acute. It was another opportunity for gain for those with money. In 1855, when the usual town worthies called a meeting at the Exchange Rooms to re-establish a lapsed building society, Patrick offered himself as one of fifteen committee members. As usual, at the head of the list were the businessmen Buckley, Cribb, and Markwell; Mayne was number fifteen. They issued 151 shares of £50 each and were confident that by the next meeting they would reach their target of 200 shares.

  Patrick Mayne’s energy must have been prodigious. He had confidence in his ability to organise and manage affairs and by the mid-1850s he was seeking involvement in almost every event in town. His ability was recognised by many others: he seems to have been accepted and actively involved in many financial and civic spheres of town life. Between his jousting in the court for his law infringements and his prosecution of others, his work at his yards and shop, his hides and tallow trade and his property investments, there were political and town business meetings to attend and petitions to sign. His civic involvement was vocal as well as physical: he was never one to remain mute in a gathering. The minutes of the early Council meetings reveal the scope of his advice and suggestions on town matters. He enjoyed vigorous debate, and at times his aggression makes him appear a thorn in the side of others present.

  In August 1855 he was a signatory calling for John Richardson to come forward as a candidate to represent the Borough of Stanley in the by-election caused by the resignation of Henry Stuart Russell, MLA. Six months later, his name was listed with John Markwell, George Edmonstone, and Robert Cribb as members of a committee favourable towards the return of Henry Buckley for the County of Stanley. The following week he was appointed to a committee to promote the re-election of John Richardson. All these endeavours were successful.

  Meanwhile, the idea of colonial separation was in the air. The people of Moreton Bay had many grievances against the Government so far away in Sydney. At all the political meetings the candidate enthused his audience when he spoke rousingly about Government neglect of basic needs such as a bridge to link north and south Brisbane, the untrafficable roads and the abysmal lack of a decent water supply. By the New Year of 1856, the people had reached a ceiling of frustration. The enthusiastic and vocal Mayne was at the lively separation meeting on 23 January 1856, but his signature on the petition tail-ends that of thirty-two of the town’s leading citizens.

  Neither his public nor his business life were ever dull routine. Even bonded employees put their heads up now and again and caused him trouble. The system of bonded employees was well established and generally worked well for both parties. It had secured Patrick his passage to Australia and a chance to establish himself. But sometimes the system failed. He had bad luck with several Germans. One of them, Jacob Schelling, died in mysterious circumstances. After Patrick’s death in 1865, this tragedy was one of several apocryphal stories that was to haunt his children.

  Schelling was a herdsman at Mayne’s bullock paddock, next to George Parsons’ farm at Milton. For almost two years Schelling’s accommodation had consisted of a large box about 150 yards from the waterhole in the paddock, which was some six feet deep. It was part of the watershed that fed Western Creek. The waterhole was his laundry tub, his bath, his water supply—and his death bed. He was a melancholy man who suffered fits of depression, a good target for a bully. It does not take much imagination to accept that on his pitiable days Schelling would have been a source of irritation to Patrick, provoking intimidation and constant harassment from his belligerent employer. Appearing to be frank and open, Mayne told the inquest into Schelling’s death that his employee was ‘‘terrified of him’’. Ten months earlier, an attempt by Schelling to hang himself from a tree had been aborted when the neighbouring farmer, George Parsons cut him down. On that occasion Mayne had remonstrated with his employee, giving him a tongue-lashing. Such castigation would have done nothing to ease Schelling’s suicidal depression. He was clearly a nuisance to Mayne, but still under bond. Two weeks before his death, when Mayne was killing a bullock (and quite likely accompanying it with a verbal attack on Schelling), the terrified man had begged his boss not to hang him. On 9 February 1858, one of Mayne’s labourers was sent on an errand to the German but could only find his shoes by the waterhole. He hurried back to Queen Street, where Mayne suggested that Schelling had drowned himself. The two then returned to Milton, and with George Parsons’ aid Schelling’s fully-clothed body was dragged from the waterhole, and with it a spare pair of trousers. Patrick suggested he may have been washing them.

  At the inquest next day, Dr Barton gave evidence that the body did not present the appearance of death by drowning. There was more rigidity of the limbs than he would have expected, and the forearms were flexed on the arms. There was an unusual congestion about the face, with a good deal of frothy blood about the mouth and eyes, as well as dark marks on his posterior. Since Schelling had a brother of unsound mind in the Brisbane Hospital and there was no evidence to show how he had died, the case was closed without further investigation.

  Perhaps the need to manhandle Jacob Schelling’s body from that watery grave triggered disturbing thoughts in the dark recesses of Patrick’s mind. The inquest over, he walked up to the solicitors Little and Rawlings to make his will. He was thirty-three, wealthy, with a young wife and three very bright and lively children. His will provided a very generous £100 each to the brother and three sisters he had farewelled in Ireland, and demonstrated his enduring care for his wife, Mary. She was to inherit £300 a year in half-yearly instalments, and if she remarried she would still receive £100 a year, which in those days, would have provided adequately for her needs. He gave total power to the executors and trustees of his estate. They were the influential merchant and entrepreneur, George Raff, and Patrick’s cousin, Joseph Darragh, whom he had sponsored in 1850, and trained and employed in his butcher shop.

  Darragh’s wife Eliza had spent those years as Mary’s servant. Like Patrick, Joseph Darragh had been a farmhand at Cookstown, but after three years’ training with Patrick, he opened his own butchery at Kang
aroo Point and was soon on the road to wealth. He was a singularly cruel and uncaring man. After twenty-three years of ill-treating his wife, the mother of his eleven children, he violently threw her into the street and began to cohabit with a young local girl, Mary Merritt. Although he owned property valued at £20,000 he abandoned Eliza with no means of support.

  In 1858 Patrick could not have foreseen the final outcome of the Darragh marriage, but as both Joseph and Eliza had worked and lived on his premises, he must have known something of his cousin’s constant ill-treatment of her. Women at that time were frequently held in contempt; knowing Patrick’s own explosive temper and penchant for cruelty, one can only speculate about how he treated his own wife and children.

  Raff and Darragh were appointed guardians of both the person and the inheritances of Patrick’s children—his boys until they turned twenty-one, his daughters during their ‘‘minority and discoverture’’. This clause, which embraced spinsters, divorced wives or adult widows, was common where large fortunes were concerned; it is particularly interesting in the light of Patrick’s deathbed confession, and the directive that none of his children was to marry.

  Whatever Patrick’s role in Schelling’s death or any disturbing thoughts he may have had after it, they were quickly put behind him as his business activities claimed his time and continued to fill his coffers. Rents came in from two hotels, the Sawyers Arms and the Lord Raglan, from shops, houses, and farmland, and from the auctioneer R. Davidson, who hired his stockyard in Elizabeth Street for periodic stock auctions.