Introduction
The year 1854 is remembered in Victorian history as
the year of the Eureka Stockade, when the miners won the right to vote
but it also saw the beginning of conflict within the Police Force.
In 1853, London responded to LaTrobe's predicament
of having to use troops to maintain law and order by sending fifty
London police under Inspector Freeman. For the next thirty years there
was friction within the Force concerning the methods of Inspector
Freeman versus the semi-military mode of police work based on the Irish
model. The London men were appalled at the semi-military conditions
they were expected to work within; they were told that, if they didn't
carry out orders they could be fined, jailed, or both; they were
expected to remain for the three years they had volunteered to stay.
John Sadleir, an Irishman who arrived in Melbourne
in l852 and joined the Police Cadets, said that he was fortunate to
come under the influence of Inspector Freeman, and he remembered his
guidelines for the rest of his life in the Police Force.
Superintendent Freeman died in 1862; John Sadleir
said that his methods were forgotten, as the Commissioner of Police,
Captain Frederick Standish, formerly of the Royal Artillery, derided
his methods. It was not until the Police investigation of 1881, after
the capture of Ned Kelly, that Freeman's methods gained repute.
Not only George and Emma Briant arrived at Ballarat
in 1854, but many carpenters and other tradesmen, recruited from
Britain in answer to the urgent call for skilled migrants. Another of
my great grandparents came to Melbourne with his wife, two small
children, his mother and father-in-law, his sister-in-law her husband
and children. They too settled in Ballarat, but this family's history
is not as interesting or as colourful as the Briants, who fit into the
general history of Victoria and its Land Acts.
Page last
updated - 18 Jan 2006