Timeline

James Rilley and John Perry abscond from Castle Forbes; James Ryan receives 50 lashes for disobedience and pilfering

James Ryan strikes Lanarch with a stick, later receives 100 lashes for insubordination

James Rilley and John Perry each sentenced to 50 lashes for absconding and 50 lashes for neglect of duty; James Ryan receives 100 lashes for insubordination

John Perry sentenced to 50 lashes for being absent at night, his 3rd sentence in 4 weeks

James Reilly brought before the bench for refusing to work; Surgeon Henry Glennie refutes his claim that he was unable to work because of the effects of previous punishments; Reilly receives 50 lashes, his 5th flogging in 4 months

Thomas Hale and William Smith, servants in the employ of Scott, while visiting Castle Forbes, are attacked in a hut and robbed of clothes and a blanket; Hitchcock, David Jones, Parrott and Ryan charged

Hitchcock brought before Bench by Lanarch, and found guilty of ‘hiding a dead sheep under suspicious circumstances’, sentenced to 25 lashes; David Jones receives 75 lashes pertaining to the loss of sheep

Perry absconds

Hitchcock, Parrett and David Jones and James Ryan appear before the Bench re robbery and assault of Hale and Smith on 17 October; Hitchcock, Parrott and Jones found guilty and sentenced to 12 months to an iron gang; James Ryan acquitted; Poole found guilty of disobedience and insolence and given 50 lashes

Hitchcock, Jones and Parrot taken away under escort to Maitland; John Poole, James Reilly and James Ryan abscond from Castle Forbes, and join Perry; they attack the escort and free Hitchcock and Jones; Parrot refuses to join them; Hitchcock and others return to Castle Forbes and threaten Lanarch

Mudie writes to Governor Bourke to inform him of ‘one of the most violent and determined outrages I have ever known in this part of the colony’; reports that the prisoners are heading towards Sydney

the bushrangers rescue Parrett from the constabulary while being escorted to Maitland, but Parrett refuses to join them and is tied to a tree with the constables

Government Gazette advertises £70 reward for the capture of the six convicts and another person unknown in relation to ‘various outrages’ at Castle Forbes

bushrangers captured and brought to Maitland

trial of Hitchcock, Poole, Riley, Jones, Perry, and Ryan begins at the supreme Court in Sydney before C.J. Forbes; prisoners pleas Not Guilty; evidence heard from John Hart, Samuel Cook, Daniel Cradditch, Alexander Flood, Robert Cushion, Robert Scott and John Lanarch; George Frost subpoenaed

trial concludes; prisoners found guilty and sentenced to death

Court of Enquiry into the Castle Forbes affair opens at Patrick’s Plains

Perry, Riley and Ryan hanged in Sydney; Hitchcock and Poole hanged at Patrick’s Plains

the last day of the Court of Enquiry; eight convicts appear