Jack Donahue [Laws L22]

DESCRIPTION: Irish highwayman Jack Donahue, transported for life, soon escapes prison and returns to his trade. After a hair-raising career, he is confronted by a gang of police and shot after inflicting several casualties upon the constables
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1830 (Sydney Gazette, Sept. 7. 1830, according to Ingleton)
KEYWORDS: transportation crime death prison
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Sept 1, 1830 - Jack Donahue, formerly of Dublin (transported 1823), is killed by police near Sydney. He was 23. None of the police were injured in the battle
FOUND IN: US(MW,So,SW) Canada(Mar) Australia Ireland
REFERENCES (25 citations):
Laws L22, "Jack Donahue"
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 103, pp. 241-242, "Jack Donahoo" (1 text)
Smith/Hatt/Fowke-SeaSongsBalladFromNineteenthCenturyNovaScotia, pp. 104-106, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text)
Mackenzie-BalladsAndSeaSongsFromNovaScotia 123, "Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia, pp. 97-98, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, pp. 119-121, "Bold Jack Donahoe"(1 text, 1 tune)
Scott-ACollectorsNotebook-31TraditionalSongs, p. 9, "Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune, the latter fitted by Scott from "The Banks of the Condamine")
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 44-45, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text)
Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion 76A, "Bold Jack O'Donohoe" (1 text)
Morton/Maguire-ComeDayGoDayGodSendSunday 21, pp. 47-49,111,165, "Bold Jack Donohue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 99, "Bold Jack Donohue" (1 text)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 59, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fahey-Eureka-SongsThatMadeAustralia, pp. 82-83, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Pound-AmericanBalladsAndSongs, 71, pp. 158-159, "Jack Donahoo" (1 text)
Manifold-PenguinAustralianSongbook, pp. 48-49, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, pp. 69-72, "Bold Jack Donahoo" (1 text)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 111-113, "Jack Donahue" (1 text -- the Lomax "Cowboy Songs" version)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 198, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text)
DT 428, DONAHUE DONAHU2*
ADDITIONAL: Bill Wannan, _The Australians: Yarns, ballads and legends of the Australian tradition_, 1954 (page references are to the 1988 Penguin edition), pp. 163-164, "Bold Jack Donahue" (1 text)
A. K. MacDougall, _An Anthology of Classic Australian Lore_ (earlier published as _The Big Treasury of Australian Foiklore_), The Five Mile Press, 1990, 2002, pp. 117-118, "The Wild Colonial Boy" (1 text, clearly mixing "The Wild Colonial Boy" [Laws L20] and "Jack Donahue" [Laws L22])
Bill Beatty, _A Treasury of Australian Folk Tales & Traditions_, 1960 (I use the 1969 Walkabout Paperbacks edition), p. 268, "Bold Jack Donahoe" (1 text)
Lyn Innes, _Ned Kelly: Icon of Modern Culture_, Helm Information Ltd., 2008, pp. 83-84, "Bold Jack Donahoe" (1 text)
Geoffrey C. Ingleton, _True Patriots All: or News from Early Australia as told in A Collection of Broadsides_ ("Garnered and Decorated" by Ingleton), Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988, p. 130, "(no title)" (1 text, listed as a "copy of the verses," on a broadside that is primarily an announcement of the "Death of the Bushranger, bold JACK DONAHOE")
Hugh Anderson, _Farewell to Judges and Juries: The Broadside Ballad and Convict Transportation to Australia, 1788-1868_, Red Rooster Press, 2000, p. 199; "Bold Jack O'Donoghue" (1 text, with a tune on p. 569)
Roud #611
RECORDINGS:
John Greenway, "Bold Jack Donahue" (on JGreenway01)
A. L. Lloyd, "Bold Jack Donahue" (on Lloyd4, Lloyd08)
New Lost City Ramblers, "Bold Jack Donahue" (on NLCR05)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Wild Colonial Boy" [Laws L20]
cf. "Bold Jack Donahoe" (subject)
cf. "Jack Donahue and His Gang" (subject)
NOTES [1237 words]: John Greenway believes this ballad to be the ancestor of "The Wild Colonial Boy" (see the notes on that song). He is not alone; EncyAust, p. 158, declares, "The song 'A Wild Colonial Boy,' based on his [Donahue's] exploits, was banned." Nunn, p. 76, says that it was "Bold Jack Donahue" which was banned and then, when underground, became "The Wild Colonial Boy." On the other hand, it looks to me as if Greenway's version is a mixture of "Bold Jack Donahoe" and "The Wild Colonial Boy." And the fact that "The Wild Colonial Boy" is widely known outside Australia hints that it did not originate there.
This piece mixes frequently with the other Donahue ballad, "Bold Jack Donahoe." The key element to distinguishing them appears to be that the other song describes Donahue's desertion by his companions at the time of his fatal fight. This song does not mention the companions.
(Exception: The Lomax text in "Cowboy Songs" mentions the companions, but in very debased form. It might be another of the Lomaxes' deliberately muddied versions. But Laws files it here, so I do the same.)
Hughes, p. 126, notes that Jack Donahue was not the first bushranger -- in Van Diemen's Land, in fact, they existed from the start, because the only means the colony survived was by hunting kangaroos, which meant that the convicts were armed. But the Tasmanian bushrangers, even though they all but controlled the island, left little if any ballad record.
Bushranging came much later to Australia proper, and Jack Donahue was the first truly memorable example. Hughes, p. 237, declares that "'Bold Jack' was a short, freckled, blond-haired, blue-eyed Irishman named John Donohoe (1806-1830), sentenced to life transportation in Dublin in 1823." The sourde of this might be the Sydney Gazette of June 8, 1830, which reported Donohue as a "Native of Dublin, twenty-three years of age, five feet four inches in height, brown freckled complexion, flaxen hair, blue eyes, and has a scar under the left nostril" (quoted in Manifold, p. 26).
Arriving in Australia 1825, he was assigned to work for a settler named John Pagan, acted up, spent time on a road gang, was assigned again, and took to the bush (Hughes, pp. 237-238; Manifold, p. 26).
Donahue's crime in Australia was robbing bullock teams; at this time (December 1827), he had companions Kilroy and Smith (Hughes, p. 128). All three were taken; they were sentenced to be hung in March 1828. "Kilroy and Smith duly swung" (Hughes, p. 238, though Nunn, p. 16, gives the date as 1832), but Donahue escaped. The price on his head eventually reached a hundred pounds (Hughes, p. 239).
In this time "he carried on a successful career of highway robbery (that is to say, at something over subsistence level) for another two years; for the first part of the time with one associate, Walmsley or Underwood, and for the latter part with two, Walmsley and Webber. He does not appear to have worked with Macnamara, though it was believed at the time that he did" (Manifold, p. 26). Manifold adds that Donahue and associated worked on foot, not horseback, and "showed decency to women and children as well as to settlers who were known as goo masters.... Landowners and big-wigs were his main victims, with storekeepers and teamsters in second place." In the winter of 1830 Donahue was wounded but survived.
When the police caught him near Bringelly, Donahue cursed them and tried to fight, but was shot in the head (not the heart!) by a trooper named Muggleston or some similar name (Hughes, p. 240; Manifold, p. 28, offers the names "Mugglestone" and "Mucklestone"). His confederate Walmsley would later turn informer, and led police to some thirty settlers who had traded with him.
According to Nunn, p. 76, Donohue was only 21 at the time of his death, which would mean he was barely in his teens at the time of his transportation (but recall that Hughes, p. 237, gives his birth year as 1806, making him 23 or 24 when he died and 16 or 17 when first convicted). Nunn adds that the Underwood Gang, to which Donohue belonged, operated in the vicinity of "Campbelltown, Liverpool, Penrith, and Liberty Plains for nearly twelve years" [i.e. 1820-1832]. On p. 16, Nunn reports that Webber was also killed in 1830, and Underwood in 1832.
Prior to his death, Donohue seems to have been less noteworthy than his companions. Boxall refers to him only once, on pp. 55-56, calling him "Johnny Donahue," listing him as a member of the Underwood gang, and briefly mentioning that he was killed by "Maggleton." Nunn, p. 16, also calls him a member of the Underwood gang, though conflating his time with Underwood, Webber, and Walmsley with his earlier exploits with Kilroy and Smith.
Nunn, p. 76, reports that Donohue was known as "The Stripper" but was "less violent than most bushrangers, gallant to women and had a sense of humour enough to make him a popular hero." He does not cite the source for this data. But Hughes, p. 240, seems to agree: "If Donohoe had been a sadist, a rapist or a baby-killed like Mark Jeffries in Van Diemen's Land, the outpouring of popular emotion that coalesced in the Donohoe ballads would not have occurred. But Australians admired flashness; most of them disliked Governor Darling and took great glee in seeing his authority ridiculed by this elusive bushranger." As a result, we are told that, in addition to songs, there were other memorabilia, including a series of clay pipes which allegedly showed Bold Jack's head, complete with bullet hole, released less than a month after his death (Hughes, p. 240).
About his companions, Manifold, p. 28, says, "Both were caught later, Walmsley in January 1831 and Webbe in June. Both offered to give information in return for pardon, and there appears to have been public information in their favour. Walmsley's offer was accepted; Webber was hanged. You will notice that their offer puts them outside the pale of ballad-sympathies. Walmsley's information led to the arrest of dozens of 'few-acres settlers' for 'receiving,' six of whom were condemned to fourteen years' transportation to a penal colony, e.g. Moreton Bay. Four of the condemned were adolescent colonials, two were elderly transports."
Ironically, Donahue was the only famous bushranger of the transportation era. All the other "big names," such as Ben Hall and Ned Kelly, came later. This is somewhat surprising, given that Clark, p. 71, states that the bushrangers "were recruited in the main from absconding Irish convicts." Clark also thinks there was an element of Catholic/Protestant tension in their behavior, although I have seen little sign of this in the ballads.
Donohue did become the subject of standard outlaw legends; according to Davey/Seal, p. 90, he was (said to be) courteous to women, never robbed 'the poor' (in this case the convict and ex-convict population), was heroically daring, and 'died game'."
Compare Manifold, pp. 24-25: "It may be chance that links so many of these early ballads around the name of a single hero, Jack Donahue. It may, on the other hand, be seen as the outcome of a natural process, the addition of a catalyst to the right ingredients. The ingredients are: a language rapidly becoming common, a common hatred of The System, a common habit of clandestinity in singing "the treason-songs" and of picking them up by ear rather than from print. The catalyst is a ballad-hero, and Donahue was precisely that."- RBW
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