A CRIME ROMANCE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2624, 25 August 1923, Page 4

A CRIME ROMANCE

DAYS OF CAPTAIN MOONLITE,

The modest little tuck shop, with its substantial folding shutters, which stands opposite.the Dana St. State School, Ballarat, was at one time the centre of a dramatic incident (says a writer in the Sydney Sun). It was the original Union Bank, which years ago was removed from Mount Egerton. This is the bank that was the scene of Captain Mooulite’s stirring bushranging adventures.

Henry Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, was at the time a Church of England lay-reader, whose headquarters was at Mount Egerton. He was a well-educated man and a fluent, forcible speaker, beloved by the whole district both for his pleasing personality and his gallantry. One night a masked man walked into the living-room behind the bank and ordered the manager who was alone, at the time, to bail up. The manager, who was on most friendly terms with the clergyman, at once recognised his voice and asked.the intruder whether this was a suitable practical joke for a clergyman. He threatened to shoot the manager unless he surrendered and obeyed his commands. Scott gagged him and took him to the

schoolhou.se, and forced him to sign the following statement: —“Captain Moonlite has stuck me up and robbed this bank.” Scott then took the manager back to the bank, bound him hand and foot, and then helped himself to a thousand pounds in notes and gold. On the following day the schoolmaster found the paper. He handed it to the police, who, on going to the bank, found tile manager bound and gagged. Ail considered the bank manager’s story about the clergyman too absurd and ridiculous to be true. The manager and the schoolmaster were both arrested and tried for being jointly concerned in the crime. Henry Scott was very active in trying to find incriminating evidence against his two friends. Both were committed for trial, but on account of insufficient evidence, the case broke down.

Just before the trial Scott disappeared from Egerton. He went to Sydney. Here he spent money freely, putting up at a leading hotel. Ho represented himself as a wealthy tourist travelling over Australia. He purchased a yacht, and after passing a number of valueless cheques, he set sail for the South Seas He was taken back on the charge of forgery and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment. When released he was sentenced to ten years for the Egerton robbery. He escaped from the Ballarat Gaol in a most daring and adventurous manner but he was recaptured. When in prison he behaved so well that he was allowed a remission for good conduct. After his release he made a living by lecturing on prison reform. One day he disappeared from his old haunts. His imagination had been tired by reading of the actions of the Kelly gang. He soon managed to gather around him a gang of desperadoes, and after many lawless acts of looting and bushranging the police man-

aged to break up the gang, after a terrible affray in which a policeman and a bushranger were killed. Captain Moonlite and one other of the gang were hanged in Darlinghurst Gaol. He was then in his thirty-seventh year.