‘the vilest man I have ever known’

Yesterday there was considerable attention given around Australia to the ongoing plight of the Indigenous population. The choice of the date (6 June) was perhaps unintended for its significance, but it was fortuitous as it was the 185^th anniversary of the day that John Batman signed a spurious treaty with the Aboriginal elders of the Kulin nation and ‘claimed land’ which would become the city of Melbourne.

John Batman is considered to be one of Melbourne’s pioneers, and for this he is memorialised in the city through any number of street names, parks, a railway station, a municipality and buildings. Most biographical writings describe him as a grazier, explorer and entrepreneur best known for saying of the current site of Melbourne: ‘This will be the place for a village’ and declaring the land be named ‘Batmania’. Batman has been largely positively mythologised, but recent research has provided evidence of a more complex individual.

Born on 21 January 1801 in Parramatta, New South Wales, John Batman was the first child of his family to be born in the new colony. His father, William Bat(e)man a cutler and grinder from Middlesex, was transported in 1797 for receiving stolen goods. Batman’s mother, Mary, was a free settler who joined her husband on the journey to Australia with their two children.

After serving his time and receiving a ‘ticket-of-leave’, William started a prosperous timberyard business and the family became quite affluent, owing properties and having the licence for The Duke of Wellington hotel in Parramatta. In 1810, the family changed their surname to Batman – possibly to avoid the convict stigma of their past.

In 1816, John Batman was apprenticed to a local blacksmith, James Flavell. The apprenticeship did not last for more than a few months, and ended when Flavell and a convict, William Tripp, stole clothes from a neighbouring house. Evidence provided by Batman at the trial led to the hanging of both men for the crime.

For the next few years, Batman worked as a jack-of-all-trades before moving with his brother, Henry, to Van Diemen’s Land in 1821 to work as a leasehold grazier. The historian Alastair Campbell has found evidence that Batman probably left New South Wales due to a relationship he had with a young orphan, Elizabeth Richardson, who became pregnant in 1821 and named John Batman as the father. The Orphan Institution Committee suggested Batman marry the girl which he refused to do – opting instead to pay ‘expenses’ of £25 (negotiated down from £50 by his father). Three days after the matter was settled, Batman left New South Wales – probably at his father’s instigation.

Batman did well in Van Diemen’s Land and within two years was a government contractor. By 1824 he had made enough money to obtain a grant of 600 acres and acquired a property, Kingston, in the Ben Lomond area of north-east Van Diemen’s Land which was near Patterdale, the property of the early Australian landscape artist, John Glover.

In early 1826 Batman became locally famous through his capture of two bushrangers – the notorious cannibal, Thomas Jefferies, and fellow bushranger, Matthew Brady. Both were sentenced to death and hanged in Hobart.

Although primarily a sheep grazier, Batman was also involved in hiring Aboriginal people from Sydney to participate in ‘roving parties’ that hunted down and captured Tasmanian Aborigines on behalf of the local government. He was involved in the Black War of 1830 and took part in the Black Line – the formation of a ‘human chain’ across the island to round up the local Indigenous people from their lands and corral them into a more ‘manageable area’.

Batman’s dealings with the Indigenous people of Van Diemen’s Land are the subject of a number of books including: ‘Fate of a Free People: A Radical Re-examination of the Tasmanian Wars’ (1995) by Henry Reynolds, ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ (2008) by James Boyce and ‘The Roving Party’ (2011) by Rohan Wilson. He was clearly implicated in their deaths – the local Colonial Governor, George Arthur, observed that Batman ‘… had much slaughter to account for’.  But he curiously also seemed to take a ‘proprietorial role’ with Indigenous youths – who he clothed, fed and raised to become ‘useful members of society’. It is believed that the Indigenous people depicted in Glover’s paintings were based on worker’s on Batman’s farm. Glover also titled one of his sketches ‘Batman’s Lookout, Benn Lomond’ (1835) ‘… on account of Mr Batman frequenting the spot to entrap the Natives’.

The year 1835 is significant as it is the year that the Port Phillip Association (established in 1834 by Batman and John Wedge to seek grazing opportunities in new regions) decided to explore Port Phillip Bay for suitable settlement sites. Batman arrived in the area in early June and met with the local Indigenous elders on 6 June on the banks of Merri Creek in present-day Northcote. He presented them with a ‘treaty’ or land deed which gave him ownership of almost 250,000 hectares of land in exchange for blankets, axes, knives, scissors, mirrors, handkerchiefs, shirts and flour, and a promise of annual rent. It is unlikely the Indigenous people would have understood this as a transfer of land or agreed to it if they had. For Indigenous people land is not about possession but is about belonging – it is not something that can be bought or sold.

Batman’s Treaty (also known as the Melbourne Treaty or Dutigalla Treaty) with the Kulin peoples was deemed illegal and invalid by the New South Wales Governor Richard Bourke. On 6 August, Bourke declared that the British Crown owned the entire land of Australia, and that only the Crown could sell or distribute land. However, this did not deter Batman and others from settling on the land. Within two years, there were more than 350 people and 55,000 sheep ‘in residence’.

In 1836, Batman brought his wife of 8 years, the former convict Elizabeth (Eliza) Callaghan, and their seven daughters to the new settlement. The story of John and Eliza’s ‘meeting and mating’ is another convoluted tale in the life of Batman (and worth following up). In Melbourne, they lived in the area known as Batman’s Hill at the western end of present-day Collins Street and a year later their only son, John, was born.

Initially, Batman did well in the Port Phillip area and made considerable money through property and business ventures. However, through extravagant living, and coping with deteriorating health as a result of syphilis acquired more than a decade earlier, his life declined rapidly. Within a year, his was unable to walk. His nose was eroded from the infection forcing him to wear a bandage to conceal his face. He was no longer able to conduct his business ventures.  And, Eliza left him to return to England.

John Batman died alone on 6 May 1839 at the age of 38. He was buried in the Old Melbourne Cemetery but later exhumed and re-buried in the Fawkner Cemetery (named after a fellow colonist and great rival – John Pascoe Fawkner).

Eliza returned to Australia after her husband’s death and took up with Batman’s clerk William Willoughby. In 1845, Batman’s son drowned in the Yarra River while fishing. Following this, Eliza left Willoughby and her daughters. There is evidence to suggest she was murdered in Geelong in 1852.

In recent years, Batman’s legacy has been challenged as his treatment of Indigenous people has come to light. In 2016, the Darebin Council voted unanimously to change the name of Batman Park to Gumbri Park after the great-niece of Wurundjeri leader William Barak who was the last girl born on the Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve in Healesville. The Victorian electoral Division of Batman was abolished in 2018 and renamed the Division of Cooper after the Aboriginal political activist, William Cooper. And, the Australian artist, Ben Quilty, has called for Batman’s statue to be removed from the Melbourne CBD or to have the inscription on the statue changed to ‘mass murderer’.

Throughout his life, Batman was always conscious of his ‘lowly standing’ due to his convict origins, and it is clear he made considerable efforts to improve his situation.  He was described as a person of considerable intelligence and vigour, with a merry eye, a handsome face, and a flattering tongue to please the other sex.

However, in his endeavours to seek approval, success and fame, he did many unscrupulous and unconscionable things. It is hard not to forget John Glover’s description of him: ‘a rogue, thief, cheat and liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I have ever known’.

Many readers have told me how much they enjoy the weekly ‘Cocktails with a Curator’ from The Frick Collection. This week, The Frick Collection chose not to discuss a work of art but, instead, to post a message of; ‘In Solidarity with the Black Community’.