Labour Australia

Coombemartin Station (Qld) 'perjurers', 1894 [Casey is far right, bottom row]

Queensland Police Museum, PM0270

Henry Casey (1863-?) shearer, gaoled trade unionist 

Birth: 1863 in Victoria. Marriage: unknown. Death: unknown. Religion: Catholic. 

• Arrived in Queensland overland in 1892.
• A shearer’s labourer who lived “sometimes in Rockhampton, but generally out west … I’ve got a good many 6 x 8 pitches out by the billabongs in the west, but I don’t know if you call that living”. Was at Robert Christison’s Coombemartin station with striking shearers on 20 July 1894 when Charles Ashford was shot.
• At the Circuit Court, Rockhampton, on 27 September gave evidence for the defence in the trial of Charles Prior at the Circuit Court, Rockhampton in September, alleging that Inspector Carr shot Ashford.
• For that evidence he was arrested on 5 October at Beaconsfield Station, and charged with wilful perjury. With six other men on 26 November 1894 at District Court, Rockhampton, Casey was sentenced by judge Granville Miller to imprisonment with hard labour for four years.
• In St Helena prison, Casey worked “in the ‘gangs’ as field labour”.
• Prison records describe him as a shearer, able to read and write, born in Victoria, aged 29, arrived in the colony overland in 1892, stout, 5 feet 7 inches (cm) tall, with dark brown hair, grey eyes, a scar on his right cheek, right arm broken, cannot turn palm of right hand upwards, several moles on the right side of neck and a mole on the back of neck. He weighed 10 stone 10 lbs (kg) on admission and gave his religion as Roman Catholic.
• Following a petition for clemency, he was discharged on 15 June 1897. On release he received £8 3 shillings from the Prisoners’ defence account. Weight on discharge was 9 stone 12 lbs.