sketcher, policeman, gold commissioner and murderer, was born on 27 July 1832 in County Antrim, Ireland, son of John Loftus Griffin and Anne, née Thompson. He served in the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British Army and was decorated and commissioned for his Crimean War record. By April 1857 Griffin was in Victoria, where he married and rapidly deserted a mythically wealthy widow. He then had a reasonably successful career in the police forces of New South Wales (1858) and Queensland (Rockhampton 1859, Brisbane 1860-63 and Clermont 1863-66) until accusations of theft and embezzlement of public money surfaced at Clermont. Then, astonishingly, he was transferred to Rockhampton as gold commissioner. At the end of 1867 he robbed the Clermont gold coach, which he was officially accompanying, of £8151 in cash (less the £252 he had already stolen to pay an outstanding debt to some Chinese miners) and shot its two trooper escorts. He then began to spend the easily traceable notes. Sentenced to death on 18 March, he confessed his guilt and was hanged on 1 June.
Even in the condemned cell Griffin offended the Northern Argus , which reported somewhat belatedly on 10 June 1868 that he had abused the privilege of being allowed pen, ink and paper: 'we hear a letter was written and sent out which the governor did not see, and a sketch, or perhaps sketches, were made which never came under his notice’. The potentially inflammatory subject of the smuggled 'sketch, or perhaps sketches’ was not mentioned and is difficult to imagine.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
