Captain Moonlite
Andrew George Scott - Bushranger - New South Wales - Mt Egerton - Victoria - Ballarat jail - Thomas Rogan - James Neshitt - Thomas Williams, aka Jones - Augustus Wernicke - and Graham Bennett - Wantabadgery Station - Wagga Wagga - 1879
"Captain Moonlite". There were bushrangers in New South Wales after
"Thunderbolt", but none of any great note until the appearance of a man
who called himself "Captain Moonlite". His real name was Andrew George Scott.
Scott took £1,000 in notes and gold from the bank at Mount Egerton, Vic. He was arrested in New South Wales for giving a bad cheque in payment for a yacht, and served 18 months in prison before being sent back to Victoria.
He escaped from Ballarat jail, but was caught a week later and sent to prison for 11 years.
On his release in March 1879, Scott turned bushranger, enlisting five youths - Thomas Rogan (23 years), James Neshitt (20), Thomas Williams, alias Jones (19), Augustus Wernicke (15), and Graham Bennett (20). Most of them were Victorians; Wernicke seems to have been the youngest bushranger known.
The gang was finally dispersed at Wantabadgery Station, in the Wagga Wagga district, on 18 November 1879. Wernicke is said to have cried when shot, "Oh, God, I am shot and I'm only fifteen."
Constable Bowen hit a second bushranger, but was then shot dead by Scott. When a third bushranger was hit, Scott surrendered. Nesbitt was dead and Wernicke died a few days later. It was at first thought that the Kelly gang had been captured.
At the trial in Sydney, Scott pleaded for the lives of his three surviving companions. "If the law has been so broken that it must be avenged by a human life," he said, "let me be the victim and spare these youths. God created them for something better than the gallows." Scott and Rogan were hanged on 20 January 1880. The death sentences on Bennett and Williams were commuted to life imprisonment.
Three shot dead in Moonlite raid
19 November 1879 - Three hundred people in the Wagga district gathered to watch the shoot-out between Captain Moonlite’s gang and police on Monday evening, in which two bushrangers and one policeman were killed.
Six men, including Moonlite, had raided the Oura Hotel and then Wantabadgery Station on Saturday night, taking the residents hostage. Captain Moonlite’s accomplices were Thomas Rogan, 23, James Nesbitt, 20, Graham Bennett, 20, Thomas Williams, 19, and Augustus Wernicke, just 15.
By Monday they held 52 people.
A passerby who heard the story rode to Wagga to inform the police. Four local constables tried to surprise the gang at surprise 4 o’clock that morning, however they failed and were forced to wait for reinforcements.
By the time the additional police arrived the bushrangers had fled.
The police took chase at midday on Monday and caught up with them not far from the station. Constable Bowen shot one dead and the five remaining took over the hut of a selector called McGlebe.
Wernicke was hit next and cried ‘Oh, God, I am shot and I’m only 15!’
The shooting lasted for half an hour and another bushranger was hit before Moonlite surrendered.
Two of the bushrangers were dead, one injured, one escaped and two surrendered.
Constable Bowen was shot in the neck and died shortly afterwards.
1880 Moonlite hanged
21 January 1880 - Captain Moonlite, or Andrew George Scott as he was born, was hanged yesterday with fellow gang member Thomas Rogan. A phrenologist, Mr McGill, who examined the bushranger’s head after the execution, said the shape of his skull suggested he was devoid of all moral courage and found it impossible to tell the truth.
Moonlite was known for his charm and had spent his early years in the colony as a lay preacher until he committed his first crime of robbing the Union Bank of almost £700. He spent seven years in gaol for the robbery before being released on to the lecture circuit, speaking on prison reform.
However he was captured again after he raided Wantabadgery Station with a gang of four young men last year and after a trial, which Moonlite tried to postpone, he was sentenced to death.