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PREFACE.

Table of Contents

It is within the memory of many living Australians that a lad named William Monckton was tried in the year 1869 at Armidale, N.S.W., before Mr. Justice Meymott and a jury, charged with having committed numerous robberies under arms in company with the famous outlaw, Captain Thunderbolt. Monckton made no serious effort to defend himself, and was convicted. But the youth of the culprit (he was under 18 years of age), and the fact, attested to by a clergyman and several other respectable witnesses at the trial, that parental cruelty had driven him to the bush, operated to secure for the lad the comparatively trifling sentence of three years' imprisonment, with hard labour, in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney.

Monckton, however, was released after having served only fourteen months of his sentence, for good conduct in prison; and from that day forward he led a life of such exemplary rectitude that he has long been regarded by all who know him as a worthy citizen of the Commonwealth.

He is at present a well-to-do farmer, resident at Howell, N.S.W., and the head of a large family much respected in the neighbourhood. An easily intelligible delicacy of feeling has during the last thirty years prevented Mr. Monckton from publishing any record of his lawless and romantic youth. Lapse of time, however, and the persuasion of his friends, have combined of late to overcome his long habit of silence, and induced him to lay his experiences before the world. In the work of editing his memoirs I have received valuable assistance from Mr. F. Herbert Gall and from Mr. M. O'Shannessy, of Howell, two acquaintances of Mr. Monckton, who have been at pains to verify wherever possible, the more important details of his narrative.

AMBROSE PRATT.