Oral History

There are many examples of old family stories regarding Ben Hall that have been passed down over the generations since his death which are at best simply exaggerated, at worst grossly incorrect.

The problem with oral history is that the original facts become blurred with each re-telling of the story.  Furthermore, in most cases these stories originated from people who were not eyewitness to the events; they are simply created from information read or heard many years after the events occurred.

The source for many of these family stories is The Wild Colonial Boys, that classic Australian bushranging work by Frank Clune first published in 1950.

Unfortunately Frank was not particularly careful with his research, having relied for much of his work on information gleaned from acquaintances he met on his travels through western NSW in the 1930s.

A classic example of Clune’s careless application of quite isolated facts to create an apparently believable story is his claim that in 1863 “Ben Hall returned from gaol to find his wife gone, the house burnt down and his stock having died of thirst in the yards”.

The real chronology is very different.  Biddy left in early 1862, Ben was arrested on suspicion of having been involved in the Escort robbery in late July 1862, was released on bail in August 1862 and the house was not burnt until March 1863.  During his time in the lockup at Forbes his stock were cared for by his brother Bill, and at the same time his mistress Susan Prior was living in his house, as was John Maguire’s wife Ellen.  So there we have events spread over fifteen months compressed into a single sentence.

However, that is not to say that oral history has no value.  On the contrary, historians know that with every family story there is quite often a grain of truth in there somewhere, a seemingly minor and disconnected piece of information that can be used to tie together other seemingly innocuous pieces of information.

In recent years historians have carried out a great deal of new research, aided by increased access to government and newspaper archives which have unearthed much new information regarding Ben Hall and enabled a more accurate chronology of events to be established.

Some classic examples of erroneous family history versions of the Ben Hall story include:

(i)  “Billy Dargin crept up on Ben Hall and shot him while he was asleep” This story is not supported by the weight of evidence available from the Coroner’s inquiry nor from the description of wounds given by Dr. Assenheim and by reporters who were in Forbes on that day.

(ii)  “Ben Hall’s body was used for target practice by the police after he was killed”.  As above, the evidence simply does not support this story.

(iii)  “Mick Coneley was holding money for Ben Hall in a Forbes bank.”  This story first appeared in Hunted Down or Recollections of Crime and Criminals of the Australian Colonies from the early days to the present time, published in 1882 and was subsequently repeated by several other authors.  However there is no evidence that Coneley had a bank account at all in 1865.  Further, the obvious question to be asked is why Hall would continue to live a desperate and dangerous life as a hunted man if he had money available which would have enabled him to escape from the Colony.  This story has no basis in either fact or logic.

(iv) “Mick Coneley was married to a half-caste Aboriginal woman who had a baby by Ben Hall.  The baby was seen to have birthmarks which exactly matched the wounds which Ben Hall received.”  Absolute nonsense of course.  Coneley married Mary Ann Strickland, the daughter of Pierce and Lititia Strickland, both of 100% English/Irish immigrant stock.  Furthermore, she gave birth to a boy, James on 2^nd March 1866 – that’s ten months after Ben Hall died!