With his skull crushed in, NSW police constable, Joseph Luker, lay dead just 300 metres from the scene of a theft.

Several men had stolen goods from the home of Mary Breeze in Back Row, Sydney Town, in 1803. Among the thieved possessions was a desk, later found abandoned in the bush about 200 metres from Breeze’s bungalow.

Missing from the forced-open desk were money and valuables. On top of it were several spots of blood.

Arrested and charged with theft, the offenders faced intensive questioning in court. One of them, Joseph Samuels, confessed to his part in the crime.

He also implicated several of his companions, including a Luker colleague, Constable Isaac Simmonds, who denied any knowledge of the murder. Samuels, in his self-incriminating testimony, claimed that one of his charged companions, Richard Jackson, had in no way taken part in the crime.

The following day, however, Jackson declared that he had indeed been a principal participant in the robbery. And more confessions came from among the other offenders. Eager to show their sincerity, they indicated the place where they had buried the proceeds of their crime.

But all denied any knowledge of the murder of Joseph Luker.

Samuels – now caught in a lie to the court with his claim that Jackson was innocent – would, along with James Hardwicke, pay the price for Luker’s murder.

The following Monday morning, the two prisoners arrived at Castle Hill in an open cart surrounded by an armed contingent of the New South Wales Corps. Preparations were already underway for authorities to execute the pair.

It was said that “both prisoners conducted themselves with becoming decency”. Rev Marsden attended to their spiritual needs, and prepared them for their fate.

Both were then asked if, before their deaths, they wished to ease their consciences with the disclosure of further information about Luker’s murder.

After a moment of silence, Samuels said he would like to make a statement. He went on to explain that he had spoken of Luker’s death with Isaac Simmonds – while confined in a cell with him. He now appealed to heaven, and all those present, to bear witness to his statements.

Samuels alleged that, in conversation, Simmonds had said he had returned alone to the crime scene to rummage again through the stolen desk but, to his surprise, found Luker there.

Simmonds allegedly said he “knocked Luker down and gave him a topper for luck”.

The now accused constable, present at Castle Hill to witness the execution of his cohorts, heard Samuels’ statement. He tried but failed to have the declaration halted.

Because Samuels had delivered his statement calmly and without acrimony, the spectators turned their attention to Simmonds, who they regarded with suspicion. Released from his cell only days earlier to act as a pallbearer for his colleague Luker, he had helped lower the murdered man’s coffin to its final resting place.

With all preliminaries dispensed with by about l0 o’clock, the condemned felons re-ascended the cart as the executioner adjusted the nooses around their necks. But, suddenly, the proceedings came to a halt. The provost marshal announced that a reprieve had come through for James Hardwicke.

Meanwhile, Samuels used his last moments for “most earnest and fervent prayer”. Finally, an official gave a signal and the cart drove from underneath him (Samuels). Strangely, however, the rope failed to take the strain and parted around its centre. Samuels fell heavily to the ground, where he lay motionless with his face in the dirt.

He was given support on each side of his body, as the cart returned and another rope was found to place around his neck. Again he was launched from the back of the cart but, this time, the rope began to slip from its point of anchor. It kept slipping until Samuels’ legs trailed on the ground, leaving only half of his body suspended.

The spectators became restless. Armed with picnic baskets, they had come to watch a convicted felon’s death throes. But anger and disgust soon replaced the humour and picnic-like atmosphere.

Some witnesses asserted that the infinite hand of providence had intervened, for a man who had repented and revealed all. Others cried for the poor unfortunate to be cut down and turned loose.

Several of the male spectators stepped forward from the crowd to lift the stunned and trembling man onto their shoulders. No one could imagine what thoughts, if any, might have raced through Samuels’ tormented mind.

As the spectators held Samuels’ aloft, the executioner prepared yet another rope and placed it around his neck.

The concerned spectators then gently lowered him until the replacement rope became taut and left the doomed man suspended above the dusty earth.

But, extraordinarily, the rope again failed to hold. This time it snapped close to the noose and, again, Samuels crashed to the ground.

The spectators, by now in a collectively mutinous voice, demanded compassion. The provost marshal, also visibly distressed by the strange ordeal, sped off toward the Lieutenant Governor’s residence. Moments later, he returned and announced to a thunderous roar of approval that a reprieve had been granted.

Samuels’ mental faculties were by now totally impaired. He could only mutter incoherently and likely had no sense of what had happened.

Medical help came to him quickly, before he was again loaded aboard the cart – this time to be taken from the scene.

A later inspection of one of the ropes revealed only the defect – at the point of the break itself – which had caused it to snap.

After that visual inspection, the rope – with weights that totalled 350lbs (159kgs) attached to it – was slung over an overhead beam. One of the rope’s three strands was then cut with a knife, as was a second strand soon after. The weight remained suspended from the one remaining strand of a rope that had earlier given way with a much lighter load.

Whether Samuels ever made a mental recovery from the failed execution is not recorded. But one journalist of the day wrote: “...and may the grateful remembrance of these events direct his (Samuels’) future course.”