January 2002 Volume 83 Number 1
"serving the protectors"
| January 2002 Volume 83 Number 1 "serving the protectors" |
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Trooper’s Murder an Education |
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| By Brett Williams |
A group of Adelaide schoolgirls has learned about the perils of police work from the 1881 murder of SA police trooper, Harry Edmonds Pearce.
Year 10 Wilderness School students pondered his tragic end as they helped last month to restore the Wesleyan Cemetery at Walkerville, where he now lies.
Pearce – the second SA police officer murdered in the line of duty – was stabbed by a horse-thief just out of Kingston in the South East. He was 24.
Student Celia Polkinghorne, 16, was quick to recognize the depth of the trooper’s sacrifice. “He gave up his life for his job,” she says. “He went in and fought for what he thought was right.
“I just thought: ‘It goes to show how dangerous police work can be’.”
Jill Pearce – a descendant of the murdered trooper and herself a police officer – visited the cemetery as students undertook their work. Proud of her place in the Pearce bloodline, she described her ancestor’s death as tragic.
“It’s sad to think that, in different times, he might have lived,” she says. “I wonder about what sort of person he was, and the shame (it was) that he only reached the age of 24. You think: ‘What would he have turned out like?’
“It’s good that the girls are tidying it (the cemetery) all up, and it’s nice to know it’s not being forgotten completely. It is a part of the history of Australia.”
The girls’ clean-up efforts – weeding and painting – came as a response to calls for assistance from the Wesleyan Cemetery Committee. The committee has worked toward the historic cemetery’s restoration for the past two years.
The cemetery opened in 1850 and contains just fewer than 4,000 graves. They include those of suffragette Mary Lee, John Cleland – after whom Cleland Wildlife Park was named – and one of Australia’s Federation fathers, Sir Samuel Davenport MP.
It is also the resting-place for the ancestors of many of SA’s best-known families, including the LeCornus and Scarfes.
Police Association president, Peter Alexander, described the Wilderness students’ contribution as “a great effort”. “I think the state’s history is so important,” he says, “important for young people to know about.
“It was a savage murder, but that’s part of our history and tradition in the police. It’s great that the young people get an opportunity to identify that history and be part of preserving it. The school is to be commended.”
Wilderness School principal, Carolyn Granstkalns, says her students were interested in the circumstances of Pearce’s murder. “I think the details add to their understanding of what life was like then,” she says.
“If it happened today, you’d get immediate medical treatment and probably survive.
“They (the students) will do a little more research, and we are looking at having groups of girls work on particular grave sites and gather information about them.”
Celia Polkinghorne has no passion for a police career but says that, if she did, the Pearce story would loom large in her mind.
She says: “It would make me think: ‘What are the kinds of things I’m going to have to handle if I become a police officer?’ but it wouldn’t turn me off it.”
Police Trooper Harry Edmonds Pearce lost his life after a brutal stabbing near Kingston on May 16, 1881. He had on that day arrested habitual horse-thief, Robert Johnston, for supplying liquor to Aborigines near Wellington.
As Pearce attempted to escort his prisoner by road to Kingston police station, Johnston stabbed him 14 times in his chest.
Johnston fled, but a passerby later found Pearce lying in grass off the road and still alive. His father and state parliamentarian, James Pearce, learned of the incident while Parliament was in session.
Pearce senior rushed to Kingston where he saw his son just before he died two days later. Pearce junior had identified his attacker to a colleague before his death.
Johnston was later arrested and convicted of Pearce’s murder. He was hanged in the Mount Gambier jail on November 18, 1881. His hanging was the last in that jail.
Pearce had, as a 22-year-old, attempted to join the clergy. He was considered too young, however, and told to reapply at the age of 25. He felt time as a police officer would give him some valuable life experience.
In 1988, the Kingston Bicentennial Committee honoured Pearce with a memorial stone and commemorative plaque near the scene of his attack.
– Brett Williams
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