Two escaped convicts in 1838 join initial South Australia police: third in world, Australia's first centrally-run force
From its struggling start in 1838, South Australia built the first centrally-controlled police force in Australia and third oldest in the world behind its concept models: the London and Dublin metropolitan forces.
Two escaped convicts, Josiah James Rogers and Thomas Jones, were part of South Australia’s colony's first paid police force in 1838. The South Australian acting governor George Milner Stephen expressed his “surprise and displeasure” upon their eventual discovery but, because the police work was so poorly paid and replacements hard to find, the two men were allowed to remain in the force.
South Australia had been settled without any funding for a police force. Initially, the colony relied on royal marines, including 20 who arrived with first governor John Hindmarsh from Britain on HMS Buffalo in 1836. But peace officers from among the settlers had to be appointed to control the marines and “the depredations of the armed banditry. Who sallied forth nightly on infant Adelaide”.
To many early colonists, the marines were nothing but “a rioterous, rioting crew who did as they liked, drank when they could and, like the praetorian guards of ancient Rome, would almost have taken control of the colony had not the governor occasionally tied their ringleaders to a tree for a time to sober the brain and dampen the spirit”. The marines were recalled to England with governor Hindmarsh in 1838.
Former convict, Frederick Waller (alias Charles Fleetwood, alias George Rees), was appointed superintendent of convicts (prisoners) at the Adelaide Gaol in July 1853, where he was oversaw the prisoners' hard labour. On November 11, he absconded with £357 of government money he’d received from the central road board to pay for stone broken by the prisoners. Waller was traced to Melbourne and then to Sydney where he was apprehended and brought back to Adelaide for trial.
During this time, Waller was found to have been a convict himself, having been transported from England and, with good behaviour, served as a clerk in a convict stockade. Waller had simply fabricated a new identity and the credentials that secured his position in Adelaide. He admitted at the trial to absconding with the money only because there were prisoners in his charge who recognised him from Van Diemen's Land.
Another colourful South Australian character with a convict past, Daniel Fisher became mayor of Kensington and Norwood in 1863 and was later elected to the South Australian parliament. Fisher had been sentenced to transportation from England to Van Diemen's Land after committing a minor offence. Fisher’s innocence was revealed 33 years after he'd received his sentence when his accuser “confessed to falsehoods on his deathbed”. Fisher went on to receive a full pardon from Queen Victoria.