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Biographical information

At 8am on 28 October 1834, Stirling led a party of 25 people to attack a Pindjarup Noongar encampment on the Murray River. His party including five mounted police officers, eight soldiers of the 21st Regiment, police superintendent Theophilus Ellis, surveyor general JS Roe, prominent colonist Thomas Peel, and eight civilians. They shot and killed between 15 and 80, or possibly more, Noongar women, men and children. [3] As Chris Owen demonstrates, quotes from the time indicate this was not a 'battle' but a massacre. In Stirling's letters to the colonial secretary in London, Lord Glenelg, he declared a 'check' was needed on Noongar as they had killed colonist Hugh Nesbitt, one of Peel's employees, and that he intended to inflict 'such acts of decisive severity as will appal them as people'. Stirling told surviving Noongar: 'If any person should be killed by them, not one would be allowed to remain alive this side of the mountains.' Owen states that 'Glenelg responded to Stirling’s report with alarm, suggesting that the attack was more a form of warfare than enforcement of British law. He pointed out that Aboriginal people were British subjects and thus protected under the law.' In 1868 a description attributed to Corporal Haggarty of the 63rd Regiment called it 'indiscriminate slaughter of a harmless and unoffending tribe' where '200 to 300 peaceable natives [were] deliberately shot down'. [3]

Links to slaver

Stirling had multiple connections to the slave trade. His intergenerational family businesses traded in slave-produced goods in the United States and Caribbean. His brother Walter Stirling received compensation for the loss of enslaved people in Guiana and Barbados. Stirling was stationed in the Royal Navy at Jamaica, where his Uncle Charles Stirling was Commander-in-Chief. They received prize money for capturing ships, some of which contained slave-produced goods. Stirling's father-in-law James Mangles owned a ship which transported enslaved people between Africa and the Caribbean. [Georgie refs]

Attitudes around race

At 8am on 28 October 1834, Stirling led a party of 25 people to attack a Pindjarup Noongar encampment on the Murray River. They shot and killed between 15 and 80, or possibly more, Noongar women, men and children. [3] As Chris Owen demonstrates, quotes from the time indicate this was not a 'battle' but a massacre. In Stirling's letters to the colonial secretary in London, Lord Glenelg, he declared a 'check' was needed on Noongar as they had killed colonist Hugh Nesbitt, one of Peel's employees, and that he intended to inflict 'such acts of decisive severity as will appal them as people'. Stirling told survivors: 'If any person should be killed by them, not one [Noongar] would be allowed to remain alive this side of the mountains.' In 1868 a description attributed to Corporal Haggarty of the 63rd Regiment called it 'indiscriminate slaughter of a harmless and unoffending tribe' where '200 to 300 peaceable natives [were] deliberately shot down'. [3]

Attitudes around labour

Images

Laurel Nannup, Quirriup, 2011: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2679424

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References