William Westwood | |
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&sq=&lang=&file=File:William_Westwood_Jackey_Jackey_death_mask.jpg) Westwood's death mask | |
| Born | August 7, 1820 |
| Died | October 13, 1846 (aged 26) |
| Other names |
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| Occupation | Bushranger |
| Parents |
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| Conviction(s) | Murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death by hanging |
William Westwood (7 August 1820 – 13 October 1846), also known as Jackey Jackey, was an English-born convict who became a bushranger in Australia.
Born in Essex, Westwood had already served one year in prison for highway robbery before his transportation at age 16 to the penal colony of New South Wales on a conviction of stealing a coat. He arrived in 1837 and was sent to Phillip Parker King's station near Bungendore as an assigned servant, but grew to resent working there due to mistreatment from the property's overseer. In 1840, after receiving 50 lashes for attempting to escape, Westwood took up bushranging. The following year, troopers captured Westwood at Berrima, where he was convicted of armed robbery and horse stealing and sentenced to life imprisonment at Darlinghurst Gaol. Westwood escaped again and continued bushranging until his re-capture in July 1841. Sent to Cockatoo Island, he led a failed mass escape, and was transported for life in 1842 to Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land.
Westwood tried to escape from Port Arthur two times and received 100 lashes for each attempt. He successfully escaped in 1843 by swimming the channel; two other convicts who accompanied him were eaten by sharks. His new bushranging career ended that November when he was captured and sentenced to twelve months' hard labour and solitary confinement. The following year, William Champ, Port Arthur's new commandant, promoted Westwood to his boat crew, and approved his removal to Glenorchy on probation after the convict rescued two drowning men. Within several months, he returned to bushranging, and after his capture in September 1845 outside Hobart, was transported for life to Norfolk Island. There, in response to commandant Joseph Childs' confiscation of the prisoners' cooking utensils, Westwood led the 1846 Cooking Pot Uprising, during which he murdered three constables and an overseer. He was captured and executed along with eleven other convicts.[1]
In the days before his execution, Westwood wrote an autobiography at the suggestion of Thomas Rogers, a religious instructor, who later had it published in The Australasian. Westwood also wrote a letter to a prison chaplain who had once befriended him, detailing the severe treatment of Norfolk Island prisoners by the authorities, and decrying the brutality of the convict system as a whole. It was published widely in the press and cited by activists campaigning for the end of penal transportation to Australia.
- ^ "The Norfolk Island mutiny was led by the Gentleman Bushranger". The Argus. Melbourne. 19 January 1957. p. 14. Retrieved 6 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.