How did Lalor escape capture?
Unfortunately, his wound wasn't aware of the need for hiding. He was bleeding fairly heavily from the wound in his arm. And the blood trickled from beneath the slabs even while the soldiers were rampaging and murdering, and burning tents and huts, roasting wounded diggers lying inside.
When those troops still under the command of their officers had gathered their prisoners and headed off for the government camp, Lalor was apparently helped out, and put on a horse. No-one went with him to look after him, as he rode, probably with enormous difficulty, considering his blood loss and the nature of his wound, through the bush in the direction of Warrenheip. There he headed for the hut of a bloke he knew. His friend wasn't there, so his wife went to look for him.
But Lalor suspected she had really gone to dob him in to the police. Whether he was right or not, we don't know. However, it would be surprising if he was totally in command of his mind by now. On the other hand, as far as he knew his life was at considerable risk, and discretion was the better part of valour. So he shot through and headed into the bush. He spent the night staggering around in the dark, apparently. What happened to the horse is unknown.
Having been caught in the bush at night, he would probably have spent more time on the ground than walking, as he would have been tripping over roots, small plants and the like. So Lalor probably really spent most of the night sitting and lying around, possibly slipping in and out of consciousness, scared of dying, lost, his body rotting away unknown to anyone else.
Unsurprisingly, Lalor, with his smashed arm hanging uselessly, and still without even the medical attention available at the time, was greatly weakened from loss of blood. As morning approached, he decided to get help from another bloke, called Stephen Cummins, who he reckoned he could trust. Cummins and his wife lived on Pennyweight Hill.
The decision was a deadly one. For Lalor, because there was a very strong chance all the huts of anyone whom he knew would be searched. Following which, as far as he knew, he could be hanged. And for the Cummins's, because if he was caught there, it was not entirely impossible they also could be hanged. Remember, they were rebels against the Crown, and were perhaps lucky drawing and quartering was no longer in favour.
So, apparently, early on the Monday morning, Cummins's wife drew her husband's attention to a bloke slowly heading towards them, around the mine holes on the flat. She was sure it was Lalor. Cummins ran down to him. As he approached, he could see Lalor's face was, unsurprisingly, considering the combination of pain and blood loss, grey and worried. Cummins reckoned he looked like "a frail old man rather than a powerful young one".
Cummins and his wife patched up Lalor as best they could, but were well aware both that this was a very dangerous place for him to be, and that if some of the people around and about caught even a sniff of Lalor, the Joes would be banging on their door. Cummins ran over to the Catholic priest Smyth's hut and explained the situation.
Fortunately, despite some suggestions over time that he might have been traitorous to his parishioners, Smyth proved he was only concerned with their safety. He told Cummins to bring Lalor over that Monday night. After which Cummins and his wife must have sat in their tent for the rest of what must have seemed a very, very long day, fearful of every footfall outside. Although, actually, one suspects one of them might have been on watch to warn the other and Lalor to get out the back as best they could.
When darkness fell, the Cummins's helped their friend over to Smyth's place, and, as Cummins watched, Doctors Doyle and Stewart cut off Lalor's arm. Cummins was perhaps deputed to help hold Lalor down, as there was to be no anaesthetic. And while this was taking place, the police searched Cummins's hut. It's unknown what Lalor was given to bite on as the surgeon's saw bit into his flesh and bone, and possibly afterwards if the stump was cauterised (burnt). The reports written afterwards say Lalor was heroic in his bearing of the pain, even making the occasional joke. Whether or not this is true is, of course, unknown.
A servant, probably Smyth's Armenian helper, took the arm away and apparently chucked it down a mine hole. Hopefully it was an unused hole, otherwise a miner would have gotten quite a shock when he got to the bottom of his shaft, except Smyth later ordered that it be retrieved and buried properly. We're unsure if it has its own little grave in the Ballarat cemetery, but we don't think so.
Despite the presence of two doctors, a piece of the ball had to be removed in a second operation a while later when Lalor got to Geelong, carried on a cart under, yet again, a pile of timber. This operation enabled his wound to heal properly. He was extraordinarily lucky, considering all that occurred to him, how it occurred, and the circumstances under which it occurred, that his wound didn't become infected. If it had, he would almost certainly have died, very unpleasantly.
Lalor was on the run. We know he was in Geelong being hidden by his fiancée and her family. In fact, by 10 July, 1855, Lalor had recovered sufficiently among his Geelong supporters to marry his fiancée, Alicia. The people of Ballarat raised a substantial amount of cash for his support.
Lalor, no ideological revolutionary, but a great believer in the importance of the private ownership of land, and especially wanting to own some himself, used a goodly lump of this cash to buy a small piece of land about 10 km from Ballarat. We don't know how much of the donations were left, and whether they helped him, in addition to this land, set him on his way to the wealth he later accumulated.
In all this time he had a price of £200 on his head, but no-one seems to have found the price worth what would probably happen to them if anyone found out they had sold him down the river. But he didn't even get a wanted poster to himself. He had to share it with his self-styled "Minister of War", a bloke called Black, who wasn't in the stockade at 3am on the Sunday. Black was in charge of the men out and about seeking weapons and anything else useful.
When those troops still under the command of their officers had gathered their prisoners and headed off for the government camp, Lalor was apparently helped out, and put on a horse. No-one went with him to look after him, as he rode, probably with enormous difficulty, considering his blood loss and the nature of his wound, through the bush in the direction of Warrenheip. There he headed for the hut of a bloke he knew. His friend wasn't there, so his wife went to look for him.
But Lalor suspected she had really gone to dob him in to the police. Whether he was right or not, we don't know. However, it would be surprising if he was totally in command of his mind by now. On the other hand, as far as he knew his life was at considerable risk, and discretion was the better part of valour. So he shot through and headed into the bush. He spent the night staggering around in the dark, apparently. What happened to the horse is unknown.
Having been caught in the bush at night, he would probably have spent more time on the ground than walking, as he would have been tripping over roots, small plants and the like. So Lalor probably really spent most of the night sitting and lying around, possibly slipping in and out of consciousness, scared of dying, lost, his body rotting away unknown to anyone else.
Unsurprisingly, Lalor, with his smashed arm hanging uselessly, and still without even the medical attention available at the time, was greatly weakened from loss of blood. As morning approached, he decided to get help from another bloke, called Stephen Cummins, who he reckoned he could trust. Cummins and his wife lived on Pennyweight Hill.
The decision was a deadly one. For Lalor, because there was a very strong chance all the huts of anyone whom he knew would be searched. Following which, as far as he knew, he could be hanged. And for the Cummins's, because if he was caught there, it was not entirely impossible they also could be hanged. Remember, they were rebels against the Crown, and were perhaps lucky drawing and quartering was no longer in favour.
So, apparently, early on the Monday morning, Cummins's wife drew her husband's attention to a bloke slowly heading towards them, around the mine holes on the flat. She was sure it was Lalor. Cummins ran down to him. As he approached, he could see Lalor's face was, unsurprisingly, considering the combination of pain and blood loss, grey and worried. Cummins reckoned he looked like "a frail old man rather than a powerful young one".
Cummins and his wife patched up Lalor as best they could, but were well aware both that this was a very dangerous place for him to be, and that if some of the people around and about caught even a sniff of Lalor, the Joes would be banging on their door. Cummins ran over to the Catholic priest Smyth's hut and explained the situation.
Fortunately, despite some suggestions over time that he might have been traitorous to his parishioners, Smyth proved he was only concerned with their safety. He told Cummins to bring Lalor over that Monday night. After which Cummins and his wife must have sat in their tent for the rest of what must have seemed a very, very long day, fearful of every footfall outside. Although, actually, one suspects one of them might have been on watch to warn the other and Lalor to get out the back as best they could.
When darkness fell, the Cummins's helped their friend over to Smyth's place, and, as Cummins watched, Doctors Doyle and Stewart cut off Lalor's arm. Cummins was perhaps deputed to help hold Lalor down, as there was to be no anaesthetic. And while this was taking place, the police searched Cummins's hut. It's unknown what Lalor was given to bite on as the surgeon's saw bit into his flesh and bone, and possibly afterwards if the stump was cauterised (burnt). The reports written afterwards say Lalor was heroic in his bearing of the pain, even making the occasional joke. Whether or not this is true is, of course, unknown.
A servant, probably Smyth's Armenian helper, took the arm away and apparently chucked it down a mine hole. Hopefully it was an unused hole, otherwise a miner would have gotten quite a shock when he got to the bottom of his shaft, except Smyth later ordered that it be retrieved and buried properly. We're unsure if it has its own little grave in the Ballarat cemetery, but we don't think so.
Despite the presence of two doctors, a piece of the ball had to be removed in a second operation a while later when Lalor got to Geelong, carried on a cart under, yet again, a pile of timber. This operation enabled his wound to heal properly. He was extraordinarily lucky, considering all that occurred to him, how it occurred, and the circumstances under which it occurred, that his wound didn't become infected. If it had, he would almost certainly have died, very unpleasantly.
Lalor was on the run. We know he was in Geelong being hidden by his fiancée and her family. In fact, by 10 July, 1855, Lalor had recovered sufficiently among his Geelong supporters to marry his fiancée, Alicia. The people of Ballarat raised a substantial amount of cash for his support.
Lalor, no ideological revolutionary, but a great believer in the importance of the private ownership of land, and especially wanting to own some himself, used a goodly lump of this cash to buy a small piece of land about 10 km from Ballarat. We don't know how much of the donations were left, and whether they helped him, in addition to this land, set him on his way to the wealth he later accumulated.
In all this time he had a price of £200 on his head, but no-one seems to have found the price worth what would probably happen to them if anyone found out they had sold him down the river. But he didn't even get a wanted poster to himself. He had to share it with his self-styled "Minister of War", a bloke called Black, who wasn't in the stockade at 3am on the Sunday. Black was in charge of the men out and about seeking weapons and anything else useful.