Alured Tasker Faunce of Queanbeyan

1833 portrait by Richard Reed

         Alured Faunce (1807-1856) arrived in Sydney with the 4th Regiment of Foot on 9 Oct 1832 on the Lord William Bentinck escorting 185 male prisoners most of whom were discharged at Hobart before the vessel came on to Sydney ¹. His commission as a Lieutenant was purchased in Dec 1824 when he was seventeen years of age. His father was Alured Dodsworth Faunce C.B. (1775-1850), who from 1822 to Feb 1832 was the Lieutenant Colonel in command of the regiment, and later a Major-General ². Alured was his eldest son and the main beneficiary of his will. At the time of his arrival in Sydney his rank was Lieutenant and he was the regiment's Adjutant. His younger brother Thomas, whose Lieutenant's commission in the 4th was purchased early in 1832, arrived in Sydney a week after Alured on 16 Oct 1832 on the Dunvegan Castle. During the September quarter of 1834 Alured purchased a Captain's commission ³. On 27 Jan. 1835 at St. Luke's, Church of England, Liverpool ⁴ he married 18 year old Elizabeth Mackenzie, a daughter of Lieutenant Colonel John Kenneth Mackenzie who arrived in Sydney on 27 August 1832 on the Clyde, with his wife, five daughters, and four sons. Mackenzie was promoted to the rank without purchase on 24 Feb 1832 and took over the command of the 4th regiment from Alured's father. He retired on 11 July 1834 to follow other pursuits in the colony. Between 1836 and 1855 Alured and Elizabeth had eleven children. Before his marriage to Elizabeth Mackenzie, Faunce also had an illegitimate daughter Jessie Gordon, whose mother Caroline Gordon was a daughter of the Matron of the Parramatta Female Factory Ann Gordon and whose father was former 48th regiment soldier Robert Gordon. She was baptised in the same church at Liverpool where Faunce subsequently married ⁵.
         Alured Faunce retired from the army at 29 years of age in 1836 and sold his commission in April 1837 ⁶. Shortly after his retirement the Governor of the colony Sir Richard Bourke appointed him effective from 1 Oct 1836, at an annual salary of £250, as Police Magistrate at Brisbane Water (first settled in 1823) replacing that district's first Police Magistrate who had resigned after only nine months in the job. Before the arrival of the first Police Magistrate the Brisbane Water district had been administered by a Justice of the Peace who was a local landowner acting as an unpaid magistrate with police constables acting under his instructions ^{7, 8}. In 1836 the district had a total white population of 621 of whom 459 were non-convict including 246 males aged over 12 years ⁹.
         Within a few months Alured Faunce became a person of considerable notoriety in the colony of New South Wales. Such arose from erroneous decisions he made, when instead of comprehending there was insufficient evidence of furtive behaviour to found a felony charge, and accordingly dismissing allegations re a dead cow named "Blindberry" as being a long standing civil dispute over its ownership and thus a matter outside his jurisdiction correctly for resolution by way of an application by the aggrieved party to the Court of Requests, he committed for trial in the Supreme Court of NSW three persons on charges of cattle stealing, of whom one was Willoughby Bean who had been the largest landowner in the district and the person who as a Justice of the Peace and Magistrate had administered the Brisbane Water district for most of the decade before the appointment of the first Police Magistrate, who later took an MA in England and became a Church of England clergyman in Victoria, and another Henry Donnison J.P. who at that time was the only other magistrate within 50 miles. Faunce held the three for varying periods as prisoners in the local lockup secured in leg-irons before sending them to Sydney to stand trial.
         The ensuing collection of criminal and civil court cases in 1837 and 1838 intigated by or involving the three persons are collectively known as the "The Brisbane Water cases". They were reported in great detail by the Sydney newspapers of the day. Following the determination of the felony charges by not guilty verdicts, all three persons successfully sued Alured Faunce for illegal acts in their committal process, and for their subsequent without proper reason incarceration in leg-irons etc. They were awarded damages respectively of £300, £350 and £250 and total costs of £450. In all the cases Faunce was represented without cost by Crown law officers who included the Attorney-General. One of the cases was Bean v Faunce and another Donnison v Faunce. A subsequent plea to the Governor Sir Richard Bourke, followed by two more in 1838 and 1840 to the Secretary of State for Colonies in England, for relief from the combined damages and costs amounting to £1350 awarded against him for acts done whilst in the employ of the government fell upon deaf ears, with unbeknown to Faunce in the case of the 1840 plea the then NSW Governor Sir George Gipps having strongly recommended to England that no reimbursement be granted ^{10, 11}. Thus Faunce had to meet the full amounts awarded. He also had to meet his and the plaintiff's costs in another legal action taken against him by one of the three that was settled out of court with him publicly acknowledging he had erred - see Moore v Faunce.
         In the newspaper reporting and editorial comment on the cases Faunce was referred to as incompetent and an imbecile etc. and a call was made for him to be required to personally meet the damages awarded against him and for his removal by the Governor from Brisbane Water to a distant district. On 26 Oct 1837 the Sydney Gazette referred to him as a "holiday military captain" and said he must be either "the victim of extraordinary mental imbecility" or possessed of a "depraved state of feeling". Continuing its campaign on 11 Nov 1837 the same newspaper branded him "a man who has rendered himself so notorious for magisterial delinquency and mental incapacity". In March the next year Alured Faunce sued the publisher of the Sydney Gazette on two counts for defamatory libels and sought £3000 damages. In summing up to the Jury the Judge said the question for it to determine was, did the newspaper articles complained of fairly, freely, and candidly criticise the conduct of Alured Faunce. After a mere three quarters of an hour retirement the Jury found for the newspaper publisher on the first count, and on the second for the plaintiff, awarding him the smallest possible sum of ONE FARTHING! - see the online case report Faunce v. Cavenagh, and for publications on the Brisbane Water cases see footnote ¹².
        In response to the newspaper campaign, and before Faunce instigated his ill-advised libel action against the newspaper publisher, he was transferred by Governor Bourke effective from 28 November 1837 to a newly created position as Police Magistrate at Queanbeyan ¹³. He thus became the first Police Magistrate at Queanbeyan. By sending him to such a then remote outpost Governor Bourke was seemingly giving him a chance to make a second start. Faunce remained in the position of Police Magistrate at Queanbeyan until 1842 when it was abolished due to budgetary constraints imposed by the non-elected Legislative Council ¹⁴. In subsequent years through until at least 1848 his name appeared on a list, that was forwarded each January by the Governor to the Secretary of State for Colonies in England, of persons who had lost positions as police magistrates through no fault of their own and were considered suitable for re-employment should the occasion arise ¹⁵. However Faunce failed to secure government employment again during his lifetime. During the 1840s the use of paid police magistrates became a political issue, with the large landowner dominated Legislative Council taking the view that Justices of the Peace acting as unpaid magistrates could cope with a resulting saving to the public purse. The number of rural police magistrates was progressively reduced from twenty-seven to a mere seven. It was not until NSW gained responsible government in 1856 that police magistrate numbers began to increase and the position at Queanbeyan was re-established with the appointment of Charles E. Newcombe in 1857 ^{16, 17}. By then Alured Faunce was dead.
        Faunce's five years as the Police Magistrate at Queanbeyan were not without controversy, which would not have endeared him to Governor Gipps, as evidenced by Gipps recommendation he be given no reinbursement of the damages and costs he incurred resulting from the Brisbane Water cases. Several proposals put to the Governor for public works such as road building were turned down on grounds of being an extravagances etc. In early 1840 complaints to the Governor about the administration of justice in the area, such as that half the prisoners committed there between 14 June and the end of December 1839 had escaped, were seized upon by the Faunce's old adversary the Sydney press who demanded corrective action be taken by the Governor ¹⁸. Such resulted in the appointment on 15 Apr 1840 of two Commissioners Charles Windeyer and Samuel North to investigate and report. They commenced closed hearings in Queanbeyan on 18 May 1840 and continued daily until 3 June when no further witnesses remained to be heard. On 11 June they reported, that of nine specific and three general accusations against Capt. Faunce only one had been founded in truth - that he had not personally superintended floggings he ordered. So he was virtually exonerated on all charges, so much so that when it published the full report one newspaper editor commented - "On the whole we can congradulate Capt. Faunce on the result of the inquiry". In the same edition, as well as in the other principal newspaper of colony, there appeared a copy of an address to him which had accompanied an inscribed piece of silver plate with which he had been presented. The address stated it had been signed by most of the residents of the Queanbeyan district and expressed the signers high opinion of Faunce's "public character" ^{19, 20}. In 1843 when district councils first came into existence in the colony twelve names including Faunce's were submitted to Governor Gipps to select from to form a seven member Queanbeyan Council. However Gipps ignored Faunce for membership, despite one of those on the list who Gipps had sounded out as to his willingness to preside, having in declining the position for himself recommended Faunce as suitable for the position due to distinguishing qualities he displayed on the bench of "courtesy and evenness of temper" ²¹.
        Shortly after his transfer to Queanbeyan at the end of 1837 Faunce purchased 810 acres of land adjoining the southern side of what was to become the town reserve, along which boundary today is located Dodsworth Street, that he named ‘Dodsworth’ after his family's ancestral home at Clifton, Bristol, England. In 1839 he built on it, by the standards then applying in the area, a palatial home in which his widow Elizabeth remained living until 1870 when the property was sold. The earliest available statistics for the area are for 1842-43. They show the Queanbeyan district then had a water-powered flour mill. It was perhaps the water-powered mill Faunce built on the ‘Dodsworth’ property, that was later converted to steam, and over the years had several lessees until it burnt down in 1881. In the early 1850s, in partnership with a local shopkeeper, Faunce investigated mineral deposits on ‘Dodsworth’ in an area later to become known as Primrose Valley. The Dodsworth name is perpetuated in the name of the precinct/suburb in Queanbeyan that incorporates much of Faunce's original 810 acres. The land on which the 1839 built house stood until the 1960s now (2003) forms part of the Queanbeyan Golf Club ²².
         Alured Faunce died at Queanbeyan at 5 o'clock on 26 April 1856, aged 48 years, while playing the game of cricket that he is credited with being instrumental in introducing to the area,. A newspaper then reported, that as a member of the town team he had been bowling and, while in the act of picking up the ball and hitting the wicket, suddenly fell dead upon the green so instantaneously that according to all present he never moved a hand or foot ^{23, 24}. After his death a public subscription limited to ten shillings ($1.00) per person was taken to erect a tablet in his memory which is assumed to have been the one installed in Christ Church where he worshipped ²². In 2003 there was a project named ‘the 12 Apostles’ directed at erecting twelve bronze sculptures in Queanbeyan to commemorate six selected men and six women pioneers of the district. The aim was to tell the story of the Queanbeyan district before Canberra was chosen as the site of the Federal Capital. Alured Faunce was one of the chosen twelve and it was proposed to erect the sculpture commemorating him on the once Market Reserve, now Elizabeth Park, opposite to where he chased bushrangers after they had robbed Grey's store and where he died whilst playing cricket ²⁵.