Jasper County Democrat, Volume 16, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1914 — “Captain Charlie” [ARTICLE]

“Captain Charlie”

By M. QUAD

To begin at the beginning, Charles F. Thorpe was the son of an innkeeper near Cheltenham, England, and at the age of eighteen had the reputation of being a roysterer. He did not drink or gamble, and no one could say that he was dishonest or unfilial, but he craved adventure and was constantly in trouble. He accidentally shot a gamekeeper and was sent to the penal colony at Botany Bay, Australia. He escaped from there and became a bushranger. I was herding sheep on the Bogan river when one evening young Thorpe walked in on me. He'was in good health, full of good nature, and his convict life had not hardened his heart. Young Thorpe had no sooner taken to the bush than he was given the title of “Captain Charlie.” For the first seven or eight months he had no companions. During this time all his work was on the highway. He held up several stages and half a hundred lone travelers and. on three occasions shot men from their saddles. He bad the reputation of being brave to recklessness and of being a “square man.” He would not rob a poor man, nor would he shoot unless fired upon first. If he stopped a stage and there were women passengers he treated them with the utmost courtesy. He would take nothing from a settler without paying for it. and now and then he gave them warning that the natives were out on a raid and gave them time to prepare for defense.

He would probably have continued to worst alone had it not been for an escaped convict named Treat. This man was thoroughly vicious and had not one redeeming trait. In escaping from the penal settlement he killed two of the guards, and he was no sooner in the bushithan he gathered around him five or six other hard cases and began a merciless war on ail outsiders. In three months they killed eight travelers, settlers and herders, and. not content with highway robbery 1 , they looted stores, taverns and farmhouses and .applied the torch in sheer wantonness. Looking upon “Captain Charlie” as a namby phmby fellow, who was unworthy of being called a bushranger, they sought to hunt him down. In self defense he organized a band of his own, numbering five, and. though they were pretty tough fellows, he held them well in hand and would permit no violence when it could be avoided. The first meeting between the two bands took place on my range. Treat had" somehow heard that I was friendly to “Captain Charlie..” He made a night ride of thirty-five miles with his band to kill me and destroy the herd. The captain heard of his intentions, and just at sunrise one morning both bands rode out of the scrub within fifty rods of my hut. A tight took place at once, and within ten minutes Treat’s band was driven off with the loss of three men. “Captain Charlie" had one man killed and two wounded. An adventure much talked of through New South Wales was the “bailing up” of sixteen mounted police, who had followed “Captain Charlie" and three of his men into the hills. Worn out with thirty hours of hard riding, the entire band fell asleep at night in their camp. The bushrangers crept in on them and ran off their horses and removed every firearm and then vanished. Every one could have been killed while he slept, but no one was harmed. On another occasion “Captain Charlie” learned that two bushrangers who had lately set up in business in his territory had made prisoners of three men and their wives, who were traveling by stage, and were holding them in the hills for ransom. He made a ride of forty miles with his men, hunted through the hills for two days and finally found the captives. As the bushrangers refused to give them up without ransom, the captain paid over to them the sum of $2,000 in gold and escorted the grateful people to the nearest farmhouse. He then returned and warned the two trespassers to leave his territory, and while making their way north they were captured by the police. In only one instance did the chevalier of the bush betray a spirit of revenge. A settler whom he had several times befriended put the police on his track, and in escaping pursuit he rode his favorite horse to death. Later on he captured his betrayer on the highway and tied him to a tree and gave him a terrible whipping. For a period of tfro years and a half “Captain Charlie” held full sway in the district, hotly pursued most of the time, but always escaping, but at last his time came, as it came to all others of his ilk. There was a quarrel in his band, and it divided. He came to my hut with a cpmpaniou one night at midnight, and after I had prepared them a meal they lay down and slept till daylight. Meanwhile the men who had broken away got word to. the police, and at daylight the bluecoats were in ambush around the hut. As the two men stepped out they were shot down in their tracks, and both were dead when the officers got them. Somewhere among the hills “Captain Charlie” had planted plunder, believed to amount to $50,000; but, though it has been searched for by scores of men for the last thirty-five years, it has never been found.