| Establishing
Authority in the British Colony |
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The British
had to move quickly to
establish their power
over the mainland.
As Governor, Douglas was
the only form of British
authority in the area
until the arrival of Judge
Begbie and the
Royal Engineers in late
1858. Douglas was forced
to hastily create and
appoint British
authoritative offices to
govern the vast interior
region and mining
population. |
One such
office was Justice of the
Peace, which was
responsible for settling
disputes and maintaining
law and order within a
designated territory.
With the advent of the
Gold Rush these positions
had been hastily
appointed, with sometimes
unsuitable men acquiring
the post. Two of these
men were P.B. Whannell,
Justice of the Peace in
Yale, and George Perrier,
Justice of the Peace for
Hill's Bar. |
Living in Perrier’s
jurisdiction was one man
with an extremely suspect
past: Edward McGowan.
McGowan’s arrival at
the mining camp of
Hill’s Bar in 1858
alarmed British officials
who were well apprised of
his alleged criminal
past. The infamy of
McGowan’s name -
combined with the rivalry
between Whannell and
Perrier - eventually
erupted into “Ned
McGowan’s War”. |
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NED McGOWAN'S WAR (PART
2)
Words and Music
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The Justice wrote to Douglas, and
appealed for relief
This shifty Ned McGowan, he's the
cause of all our grief
He's a threat of annexation and
if he is left alone
Of Californians he could raise an
army of his own
With near two dozen Sappers came
the Governor's reply
Fifty sailors & marines with
a field piece close behind
And so a strange flotilla made
way from Derby side
With a steamboat and a whaleboat, and a war
canoe besides
If you lived to be a hundred, and
you roamed the wide world over
You'd never live to see the likes
of Ned McGowan's war
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| It came about that Whannell
issued a warrant for the arrest of a
perpetrator in Hill’s
Bar, which at the time was in Perrier's jurisdiction. Whannell also placed the victim in
gaol (British spelling) to ensure his
witness at the trial. Whannell then sent
a message to Perrier, asking him to
arrest the culprit and send him to Yale.
Perrier arrested the man but decided that
the trial should occur in his court. He then
sent one of his constables to Yale to demand the trial be set in Hill's Bar. Whannell immediately placed the constable in gaol and insisted that
the trial would only take place in his
court. |
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| Perrier would not
yield to Whannell’s orders, however. When Perrier
discovered his constable had been imprisoned, he
appointed a group of twenty men to act as special
constables with Ned McGowan as their leader. Perrier
charged Whannell with contempt of court and wrote a
warrant for his arrest. Ned McGowan and his band set out
with the warrant and headed to Yale in search of
Whannell. They found him holding court and promptly
arrested him, but not before breaking both the
constable and a witness of the trial out of prison. |
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