The Grange owners find 200 year warrant at historic home

The new owners of a historic Campbell Town’s homestead have stumbled across a rare piece of correspondence authorising a local constable to use a cat o’ nine tails whip on a convicted criminal.

While some might argue the punishment would have merit today as a crime deterrent, the warrant was from nearly 200 years ago.

Hallett Shueard and his wife Sharon Kelsey are renovating the nationally significant Victorian gothic manor which was built in 1847 by architect James Blackburn.

It’s located behind Valentine Park in the town centre, named after the original owner of The Grange, Dr William Valentine, and in the 12 months since receiving a key to the front door, the couple have made it their home and embraced its past.

Mr Shueard, an avid historian and author, is researching the life of Dr Valentine, the town's assistant surgeon and founder of the Campbell Town Hospital, which led him to delve into boxes of books and paperwork left behind in the house.

“I was going through boxes that had been passed on from previous owners when I came across the piece of paper authorising the flogging,” he said.

“But this warrant is from 20 years before this house was even built, so how it came to be here and why is unclear.

“We’d love to know more before it makes its way into the state archives.”

The form says:

“To James Rush, chief constable of Campbell Town, cause to be inflicted in the usual way, with a Cat o’ Nine Tails, on the bare back of William Lony, 50 lashes. And for which this shall be your sufficient warrant and authority given under my hand at Campbell Town this twenty ninth day of October 1828.”

It is signed by James Shipton, most likely a magistrate which back then meant a large local landholder who had authority for such decisions.

Mr Shueurt has met with the Queen Victoria Museum’s senior history curator John Addison, who has never seen anything like it and was amazed at the find.

“It’s an exciting thing and very rare - I’ve never seen one before,” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of convict records but never one that details the order of lashings - it’s a rare insight into the period.”

Flogging with a cat o' nine tails was the primary and most feared tool of physical punishment used against convicts in Van Diemen's Land during the 19th Century. 

It was designed not just to cause intense pain, but to visually terrify the convict population into submission.

In Tasmania, magistrates usually ordered sentences of 25, 50, 75, or a maximum of 100 lashes and the floggings were usually carried out by other convicts who were hired for the job, referred to as scourgers or flagellators.

Mr Shueard, 79, has self-published seven books, covering diverse topics from a century of South Australian beverage makers and a military history biography detailing the World War I service of Corporal William Agar, to a 500-page historical sports encyclopedia tracking every single match, score, and statistic over a century for the Barmera-Monash football club.

He’s also written three novels, with one maritime crime novel set in both Launceston and on Kangaroo Island selling 5000 copies and coming close to being turned into a film by the producers of Wolfe Creek.

When he and his wife decided to move to Tasmania, they looked at many properties and met with a real estate agent in Campbell Town over a cup of coffee to discuss options.

“I spotted The Grange over the road and I said to her if that ever came on the market I’d love to buy that,” Mr Shueard said.

“As it turned out she had just listed it that day and within a week we were signing the contract - it was meant to be.”

Mr Shueard, now retired from a varied career in water treatment, chemical sales and health and safety around hazardous materials, and his wife who is a lawyer, are enamoured by the fascinating history of The Grange.

The grounds still contain a telescope hut which once housed a movable refractor telescope to watch the transit of Venus in 1874 after the US Naval Observatory chose Campbell Town as one of only eight places worldwide to record the event.

In that same year Dr Valentine reputedly held the first telephone conversation in Australia from The Grange, using an early device modelled on Alexander Graham Bell's designs to speak to a friend in Launceston.

The property features beautiful gardens that carry incredible botanical history, including The Hampton Court Vine, grown from a cutting taken from the Royal Gardens at Hampton Court in England. It was planted more than 150 years ago and still bears fruit.

The estate also features historical, rare species of olive trees originating from France.

Both the ground floor and upper two levels of the residence contain a rabbit warren of rooms, one of which had been a sauna, 

“We aim to return it to its original glory - it’s an unusual place, once under the ownership of Adult Education who installed extra bathrooms and added a fire escape,” Mr Shueard said.

“We’ve bought a block of land to the north to make into an additional point of entrance for trucks and trade vehicles during the renovation and in the future we hope to give people the opportunity to tour the grounds."