convicted under the name ‘John Smith’ of “highway robbery”. He had stuck up two travelling hawkers in the Castlemaine district in Victoria and left them tied up to trees. The police followed his tracks and captured him after “a desperate resistance”. As ‘John Smith’ Morgan was sentenced to twelve years hard labour and eventually confined in the prison ship Success lying offshore at Williamstown. While working at a quarry near where the Success was berthed, Morgan lost the top of one of his fingers in an accident. The finger “was jammed between a heavy bar and the stone they were lifting”. On 27 March 1857 the Inspector General of Penal Establishments, John Price, was brutally murdered by a group of prisoners from the prison-hulk Success. Price had been standing on the tramway of the bayside quarry where the prisoners were working, hearing complaints about rations, when he was attacked. A number of the prisoners overpowered him and “dragged him down the side of the earthwork opposite the Bay, out of sight of the guard, felled him to the ground, and battered his head with large stones”. Price later died of his injuries. Seven of the prisoners were convicted of Price’s murder and were hanged for the crime. Morgan may have been considered to be amongst the group that had rushed at the Inspector and was transferred to Pentridge prison after the incident. In June 1860 Morgan was granted a ticket-of-leave for the Yackandandah district (south of Albury). Morgan later claimed that he had gone to Yackandandah “where he asked a man for a job, which was refused him on account of his having been at Pentridge, and that he then determined never again to ask for employment”. After failing to report to the authorities Morgan was proclaimed to be a “prisoner of the Crown illegally at large”. Almost immediately upon his release Morgan “entered upon a continual course of crime”. Identified as “Jack-down-the-River” (appropriate to his ‘prisoner illegally at large’ status) he visited a pastoral run in the Murray District belonging to Dr. J. P. Rowe (from which the doctor was absent) and stole a gold watch. From there he proceeded to Evans’ ‘Whitfield’ station (in the upper King River valley 25 miles south of Wangaratta) where he stole a horse. After that ‘Jack’ stole a saddle and another horse from the Bond’s ‘Upotipotpon’ station. From there he went to