In June 1826 in a small settlement outside Sydney, Australia, a local farmer named Frederick Fisher suddenly disappeared. Two months later a neighbor of the missing man was walking home late at night when he crossed a bridge near Fisher's farm. Sitting on the railing of the bridge was the ghostly image of Frederick Fisher. As the neighbor looked on in horror, the ghost raised his hand and pointed to a nearby creek before disappearing. The next day, the police acting on the report of the spectral sighting went the bridge and searched the creek. Along the bank the searchers discovered the body Frederick Fisher in a shallow makeshift grave. Officials quickly arrested another local farmer who confessed to the murder and was tried, convicted and hanged. It seemed that the ghost of the dead man had returned from the grave in order to solve his own murder.
In June 1826 in a small settlement outside Sydney, Australia, a local farmer named Frederick Fisher suddenly disappeared. Two months later a neighbor of the missing man was walking home late at night when he crossed a bridge near Fisher's farm. Sitting on the railing of the bridge was the ghostly image of Frederick Fisher. As the neighbor looked on in horror, the ghost raised his hand and pointed to a nearby creek before disappearing. The next day, the police acting on the report of the spectral sighting went the bridge and searched the creek. Along the bank the searchers discovered the body Frederick Fisher in a shallow makeshift grave. Officials quickly arrested another local farmer who confessed to the murder and was tried, convicted and hanged. It seemed that the ghost of the dead man had returned from the grave in order to solve his own murder.
The Ghost Called it Murder
Narrated by Jay Nix
Good evening and welcome back for Season 2 of Beyond the Fringe. My name is Jay and I’ll be your host as we explore some of history’s most enduring mysteries and then try to make some sense of it all.
On tonight’s episode of BTF were going revisit one of the most famous murder cases of the early days of Australian statehood which occurred way back in June of 1826. While no doubt gruesome, this homicide seems almost tame by today’s standards. This wasn’t a killing spree as there was only a single victim. It was neither a crime of passion nor politically motivated. And neither the victim nor the assailant was particularly wealthy, well connected, famous or otherwise notable in the community in which they lived. Yet to this day this episode in British colonial history is recounted in documentaries, stories, poems and even commemorated annually during a 10-day festival each November in the village of Campbelltown in New South Wales. So, what is it about this run-of-the-mill murder that has captivated readers the world over and for almost 200 years after the killer was brought to justice? According to contemporary oral history and written records dating back virtually to the time of the slaying, it is claimed that the murdered man’s ghost returned from grave and played a key role in solving his own murder.
If you are new to the podcast, first of all thanks for joining us. Our MO here on BTF is we take a purportedly true paranormal legend, recount it as it is often presented in the press and in popular lore and then break it down to see if the tale holds up under scrutiny. And that’s what we’re going to do tonight. We’re going to revisit the fascinating life, the tragic death and the reputed ghostly return of Frederick Fisher and see if we can separate the facts from the fallacies of this iconic supernatural mystery.
Our story begins in the small agricultural community of Campbelltown in New South Wales near Sydney. Frederick Fisher had begun his life as booksellers clerk in London at the turn of the 19th century but relocated to Australia in 1815 to seek his fortune in the burgeoning colony. An educated with financial and manufacturing experience, Fisher used his business savvy and entrepreneurial industriousness to form several ventures including a tavern, and inn and a large working farm. Like many successful businessmen, Fisher made powerful connections through his dealings as well as powerful enemies. He had run afoul of several business partners through the years but had always managed to emerge from the ruckus unscathed. Life was good for the Australian entrepreneur and things were looking up as he sought to expand his growing agricultural empire.
Then on June 17th, 1826 Frederick Fisher vanished. He had been seen the night before by his field hands after they returned from a night of drinking to the communal farmhouse they shared with Fisher and another farmer named George Worrall. But when Worrall and the workers came down for breakfast the following morning, Fisher was nowhere to be found.
For the first few days after he went missing, no one thought too much about the farmer’s absence. Perhaps he was away on a business trip to Sydney or maybe he had traveled to Winsor to visit his younger brother. Some even suggested that he might have sailed back to England to reunite with his wife and the daughter born after he had left for Australia. But as the days stretched into weeks and then into months, friends and colleagues began to grow increasingly concerned for the wellbeing of their friend. Search parties scoured the farm and surrounding area and even a government-sponsored reward was offered, yet all efforts to locate the missing man failed to turn up any clues as to his whereabouts. It was as if Frederick Fisher had vanished into thin air.
Two months would pass before the mystery surrounding the fate of Frederick Fisher would take a dramatic turn. In mid August, during one of the coldest and darkest nights of the southern winter, John Farley, a landowner and neighbor of the missing man, was walking home along a narrow dirt road that ran adjacent to the Fisher Farm. As Farley approached a makeshift bridge spanning a creek which bisected the road, he was stopped dead in his tracks. Sitting atop the railing of the bridge and staring dead ahead with a blank expression on his face was his friend and neighbor, Fredrick Fisher. Initially Farley was relieved believing that his missing friend had at last turned up safe and sound. But something was not quite right about the man poised atop the wooden rail. Though the night was dark, Farley could easily make out Fisher’s features as the man appeared to be glowing. As Farley looked on, Fisher lifted his head and stared directly at the startled man. The spectral figure then raised his arm and pointed behind him toward a bend in the creek some distance away from the bridge. Then, without a word, Fredrick Fisher slowly faded away and was gone.
Terrified, Farley turned and raced back to the Harrow Inn. He burst into the bar, breathless and wide-eyed and began babbling nonsensically. It took several minutes and a couple of stiff drinks to calm the hysterical man. When he was at last able to speak coherently, Farley related to the bar patrons his encounter on the bridge and the cryptic behavior of what he now believed to be the ghost of Fred Fisher.
Word of the ghostly sighting spread through Campbelltown like wildfire and immediately attracted the notice of the local police. The following day, Chief Constable Burke, accompanied by a deputy and two native trackers, traveled to the bridge where John Farley had seen the apparition. As soon at the trackers arrived on site, they discovered blood spatter on the bridge’s handrail. Slipping into the frigid water, one of the trackers -- an Aboriginal hunter named Gilbert -- began to sniff the brackish pool of water and taste the slime floating on the surface.
“I smell the fat of a white man”, the tracker announced and continued wading upstream. At a fork in the creek, Gilbert began plunging a wooden pole into the muddy bank and examining the ooze adhering to the stick. At one point the pole would only go down a few inches, to which Gilbert turned to the policemen and pointed to the bank.
“Dig. White fella here.”
The search party cleared away the overgrowth from the spot indicated by the trapper and discovered what appeared to be a makeshift grave. After only a few minutes of digging their spades stuck an obstruction in the muddy soil. A horrendous smell emanated from the ground, and at the bottom of the shallow pit the searchers found the body of Fredrick Fisher. Though badly decomposed, the body was easily identified by the victim’s build and purple jacket adorned with silver braces, a favorite clothing article of the missing man and one familiar to all who knew him.
Armed with this new found evidence, the constable at last had proof of a crime and immediately arrested Fisher’s house mate, George Worrall, on suspicion of murder. Confronted with the grizzly evidence, Worrall quickly confessed to the murder of Fred Fisher. He was transported to Sydney Jail where he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang. George Worrall was executed on the gallows just 3 days later. With justice for the murdered man finally realized, his spirit at last seemed to have found peace. Since John Farley’s encounter on that frigid August night in 1826, the ghost of Frederick Fisher has never been seen again.
What sets this ghostly tale apart from most other stories in this vein is that the particulars of the crime upon which the story is centered are easily found in official records, newspapers and letters and are therefore imminently verifiable. The murder happened, there’s no question about it. At the time of the homicide, the case caused a minor sensation in the colony and the story appeared in print, albeit belatedly, as far away as London. But as for the claim that the phantom of the dead man led authorities to the location of his body and thereby solved his own murder, well that’s where things get a little murkier.
Was the appearance of Fisher’s ghost a terrifying reality or was it – as is often the case -- a latter-day addition to an already fantastic tale? To understand the mystery of Fisher’s ghost, there’s a lot to wrap one’s head around with respect to this story. Who was Fredrick Fisher? What brought him from England to Australia? What were the motives and the means behind the murder? And how does the ghost aspect of this legend actually fit within the overall framework? We’ll need to take good long look at this legend in order to extricate the myths from the realities. And the best place to start is with our protagonist himself, Fred Fisher.
Fredrick George James Fisher was born in London on 28 August 1792. While not exactly wealthy, the Fisher family was well enough off that Fredrick and his younger brothers Samuel and Henry were able to attend school. The ability to read and write was a rarity in Georgian England and these skills offered young men like the Fisher boys prospects not readily available to most young Londoners. As the eldest, Frederick was the first to find gainful employment and he didn’t have to look far to find it. He was hired by his father to act as clerk and accountant in the family bookshop. It wasn’t a sexy occupation by any stretch and the pay, while nepotistic, was pedestrian to say the least. But it was -- as they say -- a living.
But in July of 1815, just a few days shy of his 23rd birthday, something happened that would dramatically alter the course of Fred Fishers life. Through his dealings at the bookshop, Fred came into possession of a quantity of bank notes that turned out to be forgeries. Whether he innocently accepted them as payment from an unscrupulous customer or he was more directly involved in the perpetrating the forgery isn’t known. What is known is that Fisher was arrested and tried at the Surrey Jail Delivery on July 26th. And upon being found guilty of the crime, was sentenced to “transportation”.
What’s “transportation”, you ask? Well in the early years of the 19th century, England was in the midst of a massive global expansion of its overseas empire and Australia in particular was in dire need of colonists to forge its infrastructure and secure its claim on the continent. But convincing everyday Brits to leave England and migrate to what was at that time a desolate outpost was a hard sell. So, the crown decided that if they couldn’t entice colonists to pull up stakes and head to Australia on a voluntary basis they would do so by decree. Persons convicted of crimes in Georgian England, even for minor offences like shoplifting, were often sentenced to death by hanging. But these egregious capital punishments could be set aside if the convicted agreed to “transportation” for a set number of years in the penal colony of Australia. The terms of this legal exile stipulated that the convict would serve in a menial governmentally mandated position, usually forced manual labor, and be provided a modest stipend and housing. After about 5 years or so and once the convicts had proven themselves trustworthy and industrious members of society, they were allowed to apply for parole in the form of what was known as a Ticket of Leave. Though this designation was not a commutation of their sentence and did not permit them to legally repatriate to England, it did allow them certain freedoms and rights under the law including the ability to enter into contracts, conduct business and even own property.
Also, it was well known in England that several criminal outcasts who had been transported Down Under had through their hard work and ingenuity become quite wealthy. Another mitigating factor that made transportation sentences more attractive was that living conditions and employment opportunities in the greater London area had deteriorated to the point to where many otherwise law-abiding citizens willingly turned to crime with the sole intention of getting arrested, tried, and sentenced to Australian conscription where they saw at least a fighting chance of survival and prosperity. Though it’s unlikely that a skilled clerk like Fredrick Fisher could be counted among this latter group, he nevertheless accepted his sentence of transportation and in late 1815 boarded the schooner Atlas bound for Sydney.
In those days the journey from London to the colony was a time-consuming and dangerous ordeal, but in 1816 Fisher along with 187 similarly fated Englishmen arrived on the continent to begin serving out their sentences. But unlike his uneducated cohorts whose only recourse was back-breaking manual labor, Fisher’s skill set allowed him to bypass this tortuous career path. When local officials learned of his training and talents, he was quickly attached to the office of the Colonial Administrator, TJ Campbell. After serving in this capacity for two years where he proved himself not only highly capable but eminently trustworthy, Fisher was promoted to a supervisory role and transferred to the state-sponsored Waterloo Flour Company where he worked under Samuel Terry, William Hutchinson and Daniel Cooper – now I want you to remember these names because all three of these men would prove valuable contacts and play decisive roles in Fisher’s later life.
It was at this time that Fisher began to formulate a plan that would not only benefit the colony and the crown but make him rich beyond his wildest aspirations.
The economy and infrastructure of colonial Australia was a pretty bare-bones operation, relying heavily on unreliable and expensive imports from England. While farming was booming and livestock and food crops were able to keep pace with the growing populace, there were other materials which the people and more to the point the government were in desperate need. One of these materials in critically short supply was paper. While working in his pops bookshop, Fred had a gained an impressive working knowledge of the paper biz and was familiar with both its production and distribution. As a government administrative clerk, Fisher had firsthand experience with this paper shortage and surmised that if someone – namely himself – were to start a papermill in the colony, he could effectively corner the market and become the sole provider of this valuable commodity to the entire country.
But before he could even entertain this notion of a manufacturing paper, Fredrick would need to apply for and receive his Ticket of Leave. So with the help of, Daniel Cooper, remember this was his former supervisor at the flour mill, Fisher applied for and was wholeheartedly granted his Ticket of Leave in March of 1818.
The mill itself was to occupy a preexisting structure near a stream on the property of one of Fisher’s other former bosses, John Hutchinson. Described as the mad genius of the colony for his many scientific experiments and often hair-brained schemes, Hutchinson offered Fisher the use of the building, the land on which it sat and access to the stream which would provide the water critical to the manufacturing process; all rent free for the first 6 months of the lease. Another of Fisher’s former supervisors at the flour company, Samuel Terry, was also brought onboard by Hutchinson as a somewhat silent partner. While Fisher no doubt assumed this generosity was simply a matter of one convict helping out another, Hutchinson and Terry appeared to have had a more sinister intention in mind.
By granting Fisher the 6-month grace period, Hutchinson and Terry were allowing the young entrepreneur to use all his available capitol in getting the bones of the enterprise in place, i.e., purchasing and installing the necessary equipment, securing the raw materials, advertising, etc. But what his former bosses were actually betting on was that the mill would be unable to turn a profit within that 6-month time frame. And when Fisher and his fledgling mill fell into arears, Hutchison and Terry would then swoop in and take over the now turn-key business lock, stock and barrel.
Though Fisher had sold shares in the mill to a number of wealthy investors, payment for these shares was in the form of promissory notes rather than hard currency. And when it was time for the shareholders to pony up the promised funds, most balked leaving Fisher on the hook for several hundred pounds. With no way to pay his mounting bills, Fisher was eventually forced to abandon the mill he had worked so hard to build. As for Hutchinson and Terry? Well though the initial phase of their evil plan did come to fruition, the rest didn’t pan out the way they had hoped. As I mentioned Fisher was well-liked and respected by the members of the local magistrate, and they were determined to prevent a whack-a-doodle like Hutchinson and a slime-ball like Terry from screwing Fisher over. So through liens, stays and other shall we say creative legal wrangling, the Campbelltown government blocked the takeover of the mill by the two buzzards, and the mill was later purchased by Thomas Clark in 1820. This acrimonious experience taught Fisher a valuable lesson in trust and resulted in a bitter grudge between the three men which lasted for the rest of Fisher’s life.
After the failed paper venture, Fisher returned to government work serving for a time as the managing clerk for the Provost Marshall’s office. But less than a year later the indefatigable Fisher was appointed acting Quit Claim agent or tax collector for the region. And when deputy surveyor general James Meehan became physically incapable of continuing in this job, Fisher took it over on a permanent basis. This new position proved a windfall for the parolee. In addition to his salary, Fisher also was paid to act as bailiff when cases against landowners in arears of their taxes came to court. He was also paid duties on the sales of defaulted properties as well as commissions on the taxes he collected. One side note: his position as tax collector also allowed him to exact a small measure of revenge when one of the foreclosures he recuperated was a property owned by his penultimate nemesis, Samuel Terry.
As a result of his new-found prosperity and with Ticket of Leave in hand, Fisher was now legally and financially able to purchase 4 tracts of land, three he intended to rent out in order to generate cash flow with the fourth and largest he intended to operate himself as a working farm.
One of Fisher’s new neighbors was a property magnate by the name of Bradbury whose land was separated from Fisher’s by a small stream known to the locals as Bunbury Curran Creek. This offshoot of the George’s River which flowed through Campbelltown proper was dry much of the year and when it did run was little more than a muddy marsh consisting of series of pools fed by the seasonal rains. Across this unremarkable creek, a platform of hand-hewn logs allowed travelers on the road into town a means of passing over this muddy morass without bogging down. While it was little more than a roughly slapped together series of boards, it was equipped with an outer rim called a lip rail that would prevent a wagon’s wheels from slipping off the platform and into the creek. Locals referred to this ramshackle construction as “the bridge”.
Like other farmers and landowners of the time, Fisher sought to expand his burgeoning empire by building a small inn or tavern on his property. For this he employed the skills of a well-known if not well thought of contractor named William Brooker to construct the tavern, which Fisher would name The Horse and Jockey. But not long after the job had been completed, Brooker accused Fisher of not making good on a payment that was due him and took the latter to court. Now one idiotic codicil in the colonial constitution at that time allowed free Australian settlers, like William Brooker, to sit as jurists on court cases, including litigation which they themselves were party. So, it came as no surprise that the court found in favor of Brooker and Fisher was ordered to remit the payment claim in full plus penalties. This infuriated Fisher to no end and bad blood boiled between the two men.
So, when Brooker showed up at The Horse and Jockey one night very drunk and very insistent that Fisher make good on this payment then and there, a heated argument ensued. Fisher became enraged and whipping out a small pencil knife chased Brooker out into the street. Brooker was so drunk he could barely stand much less run and tumbled to the dirt. Fisher caught up with the contractor and jabbed him lightly with the knife. Though the wound was little more than a scratch, Fisher hoped it was enough to let the drunken Brooker know that he was in no mood for his nonsense. But just as Fisher was walking away, Brooker again began to harangue the inn keeper to the point that Fisher turned and jabbed Brooker again with the small blade before returning to the inn.
Fisher must have known immediately the dire straits his rage-fueled attack on Brooker had placed him. For a probationary convict to attack a free settler with a weapon was grounds for jail time that could range from a few months up to a life sentence. If convicted, he would also forfeit all his possessions and property. Something had to be done and quickly to guard his interests not only from the opportunistic Brooker but from other unscrupulous vultures like William Hutchinson and Samuel Terry.
A few years earlier, Fisher’s younger brother Henry had also been transported to Australia under similar circumstances as Frederick. While the brothers had a bit of a falling out upon Henry’s arrival, they soon made amends. So, Frederick Fisher quickly devised a plan in which he would transfer conservatorship of his property to his little brother until after the trial. But at the time, Henry was working in Winsor over 40 miles away. While that might not sound like an insurmountable distance today, at the time there was no reliable postal system in place and roads connecting the settlements were either primitive or nonexistent. Thus, even if word did reach the younger Fisher brother, a reply might not make it back to the court in time for Henry to be assigned as his brother’s legal agent. But the other and more immediate problem with this plan was that Henry had yet to receive his ticket of leave, which essentially barred him from acting as an authorized representative for his brother or anyone else for that matter.
But to Fisher’s relief, a couple of his former paper mill investors came forward with a plan that would not only afford the Fisher farm legal protection but would also keep it operational and thus generating cash needed to fund his defense. Reverend Thomas Reddall, the ranking cleric in Campbelltown and William Howe, perhaps the wealthiest landowner in the territory, convinced Fisher to sign over guardianship of his farm to a man who was renting and operating a farm on the Bradbury property that adjoined Fisher’s estate.
George Worrall was another ticket of leave convict and though not well known to Fisher, had the reputation as an up-and-up sort of fellow, a hard worker and an expert horseman. In fact, Worrall had been a waggoneer in his former life before being sentenced to transportation to Australia after being convicted of stealing a large sum of bank notes. Again with the bank notes. Like Fisher, Worrall proved himself a trustworthy chap and like Fisher soon acquired his ticket of leave. But unlike Fisher who had worked in clerical and financial areas most his life and could read and write quite well, Worrall was completely illiterate and was forced to employ another convict named John Vaugh to act as his signatory when needed.
It’s not known whether or not Fisher was wary of trusting his interests to Worrall, but he did trust Reddall and Howe implicitly. So, heeding their counsel Fisher in essence signed his life away to Worrall with only the promise of getting his possessions back either after his unlikely acquittal or his expected jail term at the Sydney prison.
Fredrick Fisher went on trial for the attack on William Brooker on 25 September 1825 in the territorial capital. In that the case was taken up by the supreme court and not at the Campbelltown city hall, Brooker was thus barred from acting as a jurist on his own case as he had during the payment dispute. But his cocksure manner that had served his interests so well in the civil trial backfired when he took the stand in Sydney. He made a complete fool of himself with his rambling incoherent gibberish and his inability to accurately describe the alleged assault due his having been blind drunk at the time cost him valuable points with the judge. Fisher on the other hand claimed responsibility for his actions, showed remorse, and produced several character witnesses that testified not only to the defendant’s stature in the community but also to the commonly recognized deplorable conduct of the plaintiff.
But after a brief deliberation, the judge did find sufficient evidence to convict Frederick Fisher of assault with intent. But to the elation of Fisher and the bewilderment of everyone else including Brooker, the judge sentenced Fisher to only a 50-pound recognizance, with no jail time and no additional terms tacked onto his original forgery conviction. In other words, Fisher got off with what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Brooker was now the furious party, but the law had spoken, and Fisher was now not only a free man – at least as free as a ticket of leave man could be – but was also now legally able to regain and retain full possession of all of his property.
Perhaps the only person more bewildered than William Brooker over Fisher’s acquittal was George Worrall. Like virtually everyone else on the continent, Worrall was certain Fisher would be sent up the river and do hard time for his attack on the builder. This would have allowed Worrall to continue operating the Fisher farm in tandem with his own and the additional acreage along with the continued use of Fisher’s horses – a labor-saving commodity that Worrall did not possess – would have been a financial boon. He had gotten a taste of this good life while Fisher had been awaiting trial, but now it was over. He’d be back to plowing his fields by hand, hiring wagons and horses to haul his crops, and paying additional wages to the extra workers necessary to tend his fields. Adding insult to Worrall’s injury, Fisher had rented out his own farmhouse during his captivity in order to raise extra capitol. And since Fisher couldn’t return to his own house until that lease had expired, he just moved into George Worrall’s house and made himself right at home.
Though the living situation was far from ideal, the two men apparently got along well enough and continued to work their respective farms. Campbelltown life returned to a semblance of normalcy, and at least for a while all was right with the world. But a dark cloud was forming on the Australian horizon. It was bureaucratic maelstrom that would threaten the very fabric of life in the colony and launch Frederick Fisher and George Worrall on a collision course that would end in murder.
The governor of New South Wales at that time was a man named Thomas Brisbane. Though not exactly a man-of-the people when it came to the convict population, he had for the most part stayed out of the way of local officials and business leaders who had worked tirelessly in ensuring the effective administration and prosperity of the colony. But in 1824, Brisbane’s cabinet had become embroiled in a series of on-going scandals which so degraded his ability to govern that he was recalled to England by the crown regent for colonial policy, Lord Henry Bathurst.
His replacement was to be Sir Ralph Darling, an army general with a reputation as a kill joy and a tyrant who was reportedly fond of torturing prisoners. His pep rally-esque zeal for King and country coupled with his disdain for the convicted criminals who inhabited the colony made Darling the absolute worst man for the job with which he had been entrusted. One of his first acts as governor was to severely restrict the rights of the existing convict population, the very men and women who had transformed the desolate wilderness into a viable country. Concurrently, he afforded free settlers wide-ranging and preferential access to land, job postings and financial grants regardless of their skill, education, or ability to contribute to the wealth and health of the colony.
Additionally, Ticket of Leave men would no longer be allowed to manufacture or even sell alcohol, effectively putting hundreds of brewers, distillers, inn keepers and tavern owners out of business. Darling also prohibited parolees from hiring other convicts, decreeing that those still under criminal sentence were only allowed to employ freemen. This law alone would cause the labor costs incurred by manufacturers, builders and farmers like Frederick Fisher and George Worrall to skyrocket overnight. And that was assuming there would be any free settlers willing to work for a convicted felon. I mean what self-respecting Englishman would voluntarily immigrate all the way to Australia just to take a menial farm job working for a criminal? Certainly not enough to provide a viable workforce needed to sustain the existing agricultural infrastructure.
Now while it’s true that these new laws affected both Fisher and Worrall, it did not affect them equally. Remember, Frederick Fisher was a landowner. So, while being forced to hire freemen at considerable expense would prove costly, he did have livestock, liquidity, and equity in his other properties from which he could raise needed capital to cover his costs as the new laws took effect. Worrall did not enjoy this luxury. In that he was renting his farm from Bradbury, he had squat to fall back on and when the time came when he’d be forced to replace his convict workforce with free settlers, he’d be absolutely screwed.
Luckily for both men and convicts across the country, the gears of government ground slowly. Thus, compliance and enforcement of these new Draconian Darling laws were slow to take effect. These bureaucratic delays allowed Fisher and Worrall the time to plot their next moves. Worrall was growing increasing desperate and when Fisher mentioned that he was considering selling some of his horses, he began to flat out panic. While Fisher had been on trial for assaulting Brooker, Worrall had had ready access to the horses to plow his fields and haul crops. Now all of a sudden access to this valuable asset was on the verge of drying up completely.
Fisher was at this time also moving forward with other business ventures as well. One of these enterprises brought Fisher into league with a farmer named Nathanial Boon. Boon was quite well off by emancipationist standards and Fisher probably felt comfortable doing business with him. But as with some of his other business dealings, Fisher soon found himself at odds with this new associate. Boon accused Fisher of forging a payment document by signing Boon’s name without his knowledge. Fisher vehemently denied this charge, but when the local magistrates examined the document, they determined that the signature had indeed been forged. Although they could not say for certain that it was Fisher who had forged Boon’s name, it was clear that someone had and an inquiry into the matter was launched. While it was suggested that Boon had himself altered his own signature in order to incriminate Fisher, the latter was nonetheless understandably concerned in that he was a convicted forger, and this fact was sure to bias the investigation and subsequent jury against him.
Of course, George Worrall was elated at this new development. Again, Fredrick Fisher had found himself afoul of the law and again Worrall saw an opportunity to profit from it. If like before the accused were remanded to await trial, this would allow Worrall to not only continued use of Fisher’s horses and land, but should Fisher be convicted and sentenced to jail like most thought he’d be after the Brooker affair, Worrall would have months if not years before all the legal entanglements involving Fisher’s estate were resolved and thus allow him unfettered access to the horses, the farm and all the equipment contained therein. All Worrall had to do was sit back and wait.
But once again Worrall’s hopes were dashed. That’s because rather than knuckle under and flee the country like Worrall and Boon assumed and hoped he would, Fisher steadfastly stood his ground and vowed to fight Boon’s accusation of forgery in the courts. To Worrall’s utter dismay, it appeared that Frederick Fisher wasn’t going anywhere.
But just as the Boon lawsuit was heating up and the Darling Laws were beginning to take effect, Fredrick Fisher vanished. He was last seen on the evening of June 16th 1826 at the home he shared with George Worrall, but when the field hands came down for breakfast on the morning of the 17th, Fisher was nowhere to be seen. This raised an immediate concern among the workers in that it was payday and Fisher had yet to give them their wages. But Worrall told the workers not to worry because Fisher had left their money with him, which he dutifully doled out to the men -- payment in full. A day passed, and then a week and still there was no sign of Frederick Fisher. Some surmised he was simply on a business trip, others that he had made the journey up to Winsor to visit with his brother Henry. Worrall seemed as perplexed as everyone else but kept operating the joint farm all the same.
It was only after Worrall tried selling off some of Fisher’s belongings that suspicions began to arise. At first it was just a few tools, a stack of lumber and a pair of leather boots. But when Worrall tried to sell two of Fisher’s prized horses, people began to take notice. When asked about why he was trying to offload Fisher’s belongings, Worrall claimed that unlike the missing man’s previous assertions about fighting the charges, Fisher had become increasingly worried about the impending lawsuit brought by Boon had indeed decided to flee the country for England aboard the passenger ship Lady St. Vincent. To prove his claim, Worrall produced a power of attorney reportedly signed by the missing farmer that gave him the authority to dispose of Fisher’s property and then send the money to him in England at a later date. Authorities took one look at this document and immediately recognized it as a cheap forgery with John Vaughn, Worrall’s semi-literate agent, as the most likely signatory.
Suspicions mounted and rumors spread about George Worrall being somehow involved in the missing man’s disappearance, but there was as yet no evidence of foul play or that any harm had indeed befallen Frederick Fisher. A check of manifests for all passenger liners bound for England – including the Lady St. Vincent -- were scrutinized and Fred Fisher’s name didn’t appear on any of them. Of course, if Fisher had in fact knowingly violated the terms of his parole by fleeing Australia, he certainly wouldn’t have risked traveling under his own name, but rather would have utilized an alias so as to avoid detection on leaving the country and arrest upon arriving in London. And tracking down and verifying every name on every ships manifest would have been Herculean task that the authorities were none too keen to undertake.
Friends of the missing man contacted his brother in hopes he could shed some light on the mystery, but Henry had neither seen nor heard from Fred in months. In fact, there were no indications that Fisher had traveled outside Campbelltown on business or otherwise since his forgery trial in Sydney several months earlier. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that the last verifiable sighting of Frederick Fisher occurred on the evening of June 16th and that he had not been seen since. The ambivalence of the local authorities coupled with the lack of any viable leads pointing to the man’s whereabouts caused the case to languish in limbo for almost 3 months.
Reaching his wits end with the Campbelltown constabulary, James Norton, Fisher’s friend, and a prominent attorney, wrote directly to then Australian Secretary of State, Pax Bannister, urging that an official investigation be launched into the disappearance of Frederick Fisher. Bannister immediately contacted the colonial solicitor general, Alexander M’Leay who, with the approval of Governor Darling, offered a reward of 20 pounds for any information about the missing farmer. Pax Bannister did not seem overly impressed with the efforts of the Campbelltown police had expended in the Fisher case. Even an initial glance at the circumstantial evidence Norton had outlined in his letter was enough to convince the Secretary that there was sufficient grounds to move forward with an official inquiry and that one man in particular had a lot of questions that needed answering. So on the very day that the reward was posted, Secretary Bannister issued an arrest warrant for George Worrall for suspicion of murder. Chief Constable John Burke took Worrall into custody and escorted him to Sydney for questioning on September 16th, 1826.
Worrall initially appeared before a pair of magistrates; Police superintendent Francis Rossi and Edward Wollstonecraft, who happened to be the nephew of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of “Frankenstein” and wife of the poet Percey Byshe Shelley. After a brief discourse into Worrall’s behavior and conduct in the weeks following Fisher’s disappearance, evidence was deemed sufficient to remand Worrall for trial and he was officially charged with murder on September 20th. John Vaughn, the likely hand behind Worrall’s forged power of attorney, was also remanded for trial.
Things immediately looked bleak for accused killer. For upon arriving in Sydney on September 23rd for what would turn out to be the first of 8 inquiries looking in Fisher’s disappearance, Worrall learned that the magistrate overseeing the proceedings was none other than Fisher’s close friend and confidant, the Reverend Thomas Reddall: the very man who had urged Fisher to sign over his interests to Worrall during the Brooker affair a year earlier.
In the course of the inquiries, four of Fisher’s employees, Edward Weston, Thomas Lawrence, Samuel Hopkins, and Nathaniel Cole all testified that on the night Fisher was last seen, they had been drinking at the Harrow Inn and returned to the farm house at around 9 PM. The men also stated that both Fisher and Worrall had left the house within minutes of each other at around 10 PM that fateful night. And while Worrall was seen at breakfast the next morning, Fisher was not, nor was he ever seen afterwards.
Though officially offered and posted on the 16th, the public notice about the reward in the Fisher case didn’t appear in the Sydney Gazette until the 27th. But when it did, it resulted in a virtual land rush as amateur sleuths and fortune hunters descended on Campbelltown in hopes of collecting the sizable prize.
And while locals citizens scoured the Fisher farm for clues in hope of securing the reward, in Sydney the legal inquiries continued. Witnesses testified about the temporary conservatorship that Worrall used to lay claim to the property long after it had expired. They spoke of Worrall’s vacillating claims about why Fisher had left the country: first it was to see his wife and daughter, but later it was to avoid the Boon lawsuit. They told of Worrall’s odd behavior after being informed that he was suspected of killing his housemate, the fact that he appeared to have been the last person seen with Fisher before his disappearance, of his selling Fisher’s property and the commandeering his horses and land. And while certainly damning, all this evidence was still highly circumstantial. What the prosecution needed to secure a conviction was a corpus delecti, or the body of the missing man that would prove beyond a doubt that a homicide had indeed been committed.
And scarcely 3 weeks after Worrall’s arrest, they got just what they were after.
On the morning of October 24th, 12-year-old John Rixon rose early and hurried down to the bridge near the Fisher farm in order check on a baited fishing line he had left tied to the railing overnight. The winter snows had begun to melt and as a result the waters were rising and the fish were returning to the relative seclusion of the creek to spawn. As the young man was removing the hooks and spooling the line atop the bridge planks, Rixon spotted something on the wooden posts and slats of the bridge that no one, not even the police, had noticed in the four months since Fisher went missing. It was blood.
While some sensational accounts claimed that there were pools of the stuff all over the bridge, it seems highly unlikely that a gruesome crime scene of such magnitude could have been missed by the scores of amateur sleuths and local authorities that had swarmed over the area hoping to collect on the sizable reward. The truth was that there was very little blood and it had therefore escaped the notice of the casual observer. It was after all the middle of winter in Australia at the time of Fisher’s disappearance, and as such the surface of the bridge and the railings would likely have been perpetually covered in snow and frost. This would have effectively concealed the evidence until the spring thaw had cleared the ice and brought the fish and John Rixon back to the newly uncovered bridge.
But regardless of how the blood had remained undetected for so long, word of the gruesome discovery spread quickly and soon reached the office of Chief Constable John Burke. The next day Burke, along with Constable George Luland and two Aboriginal trackers, traveled to the Fisher farm to investigate the alleged crime scene.
As soon as they were on site, one of the trackers, a serious chap named Gilbert, lay prone on the bridge and sniffed the worn and weathered planks.
“Hm, white man blood for sure”, Gilbert confirmed as he rose and stared down the length of the little creek. Then stepping into the icy water, the tracker began wading slowly through the murky bog. As he did so, the tracker produced a corn leaf which he proceeded to skim across the surface of the stream. Sometimes Gilbert would smell the water that dripped from the leaf, other times he would actually taste it. Nodding to himself as if to confirm his own suspicions, Gilbert turned to the policemen on the bridge.
“White fella fat”.
As he continued to test the surface of the water, Gilbert’s associate joined him and employed a long narrow cane pole as a probe which he began to plunge into the muck along the bank. Within minutes, the probe struck something that prevented it from penetrating more than a few inches into the soil. Upon extracting the pole, gilbert touched the foul ooze to his tongue. When the other tracker did the same, they looked at each other, nodded in agreement and turned to the constables.
“Dig, white fella here.”
It was easy work tilling the rocky mud. And within minutes their spades struck something that would allow them to go no deeper. Upon scrapping away the damp soil from the obstruction, Burke and Luland discovered a body. Though the exposed flesh was badly decomposed, the officers could clearly see that the head of the victim had suffered horrific blunt-force injuries to the point that the skull was crushed, and the facial area distorted. But the groundwater permeating the site was rich in alum, which helped preserve much of the unexposed flesh as well as the dead man’s clothing, and in particular the victim’s purple jacket adorned with brass braces. This garish garment had been a familiar sight in Campbelltown and was known to everyone as Frederick Fisher’s favorite coat. The constables also noted that the corpse was barefoot. Thinking back to Worrall’s suspicious behavior shortly after Fisher disappeared, they remembered that one of the lots George Worrall had sold off was a pair of fine leather boots which had been purchased by a local worker for a few shillings.
A coroner’s inquest was convened the following morning during which several people, including Nathaniel Boon, positively identified the body found in the creek as Frederick Fisher. In his report, the coroner listed the cause of death as severe bunt force trauma to the head and counted 6 separate wounds caused by a heavy rounded object.
Immediately after the inquest, Fredrick Fisher’s remains were taken to St. Peter’s Cemetery just outside Campbelltown for burial. The rites were conducted by Reverend Reddall in the presence of Fisher’s brother, Henry. For reasons unknown, no headstone was erected at the burial site and today the location of Frederick Fisher’s grave has been lost to history.
News of the discovery of Fisher’s body reached George Worrall the next day, October 28th and he knew he had to act fast in order to cheat the hangman. He quickly had his lawyer, a public defender named Rowe, draft a statement to the magistrate in which he accused two of the field hands, Thomas Lawrence and James Smith, of being the real murderers. In his declaration, Worrall claimed that when he returned home on the night in question, he discovered the men beating something with a post rammer “atop a dung heap”. The men claimed that it was a dog that they had beaten to death, but as he approached Worrall realized that it was in fact Fredrick Fisher. Lawrence and Smith allegedly told Worrall that they had killed their employer for “a large sum of money”. The men also threatened Worrall with a similar fate if he told anyone what he had seen.
Needless to say, nobody believed a word of Worrall’s idiotic accusation and the magistrates dismissed it as an obvious deflection of blame for a crime he himself had committed.
Due process and scheduling conflicts resulted in the murder trial of George Worrall to be pushed back until the 2nd of February 1827. On that morning the jury was seated at the Supreme Criminal Court in Sydney with Supreme Court Justice Judge Francis Forbes presiding.
Worrall found himself between a rock and an even harder rock, his prospects appearing exceedingly dim. For one thing, colonial law forbade an accused from making any verbal statement on his own behalf. Thus, Worrall would not be allowed to testify and give his own version of events that led to the death of Fred Fisher. But he was allowed to enter testimony into the record in the form of the declaration he had submitted to the magistrates. But since this document, in which Worrall had falsely accused Lawrence and Smith had already been tossed out, the accused was now left with nothing with which to defend himself.
The only hope the defense had left was to somehow smear Fisher by suggesting that the dead man somehow provoked the attack and thus had it coming. But the only person Rowe could muster in an attempt to besmirch the victim was Fisher’s antagonist, Nathaniel Boon. But having Boon trample on Fisher’s grave was a huge miscalculation for Rowe and Worrall and exposed the defense’s tactic as a grade-school ploy. Needless to say, this did not go over with the jury and the maneuver did more harm than good.
The prosecution on the other hand called a veritable parade of witnesses willing to testify to Fisher’s character, his standing in the community and, probably most importantly, his movements on the night of his disappearance.
Jane Hopkins, Fisher’s housekeeper, swore that she had seen Worrall and Fisher leave together on the night of June 16th, but when Worrall returned before dawn the following morning, he was alone.
Daniel Cooper spoke of Vaughn’s crudely forged power of attorney that Worrall had tried to use in selling off Fischer’s assets.
Thomas Hammond recalled that when he met Worrall at the Emu Inn in Sydney in August and told him of the suspicions of murder against him, Worrall had raced out of the hotel and hadn’t returned until the following morning. This was surmised to be the opportunity Worrall used to move Fisher’s body to a more secluded area of the creek.
One by one, witnesses offered ever more damning testimony for which Worrall’s lawyer had no response.
In his summation, the judge stated that Worrall’s behavior was “irreconcilable with the natural course which he ought to under the extraordinary circumstances to have pursued”. This was an overly diplomatic way of calling Worrall an idiot in open court. It was late in the afternoon on February 2nd when Forbes released the jury to begin deliberations.
At 6 PM, and only 15 minutes after the jury had been led out of the courtroom, word was sent to the bench that a verdict had been reached. To no one’s surprise, not even the accused, the verdict returned was one of “guilty”. Judge Forbes wasted no time in sentencing George Worrall to death by hanging, the sentence to be carried out the following Monday, three days later.
A local reverend by the name of Cowper would spend the final evening of George Worrall’s life with him in his cell, praying with the condemned man and taking his final confession. Okay, yes, admitted Worrall. He had indeed killed Frederick Fisher, but told the minister that the whole thing was just a terrible accident. Worrall now claimed that he and Fisher had gone out to the field that night intent on mending a broken fence. It was pitch black and difficult to see, and when Worrall spotted what he thought was a horse approaching the fence he used a rod with “a value of 2 pence” to strike at the animal. But, to Worrall’s horror, what he thought was a horse was actually Fred Fisher who was killed by a blow to the head. Frightened that he would be branded a murderer, Worrall decided to hide the body in the marsh by the creek and claim that the dead man had fled the country.
Even as he was about to die, Worrall refused to come clean and admit that he murdered Frederick Fisher for his money, his horses and his land. It was a simple case of greed, fueled by his envy and exacerbated by the Darling laws that would have eventually led to Worrall’s destitution. He lied to the police, lied to the court, and lied to the priest taking his final confession, and instead concocted a preposterous scenario that cast him as the victim of an unfortunate misunderstanding.
On Monday morning, September 6th, 1827, George Worrall was lead from his cell to the gallows. According to those in attendance, he showed remarkable poise and met his fate “on his feet”. But even as the noose was tightened around his neck, the murderer refused to acknowledge his crime. And when the door beneath his feet opened and George Worrall passed from this life into the next, justice for Frederick Fisher had finally been realized.
So, we know the “where”, the “when” and the “why” George Worrall murdered Frederick Fisher. The only mysteries that remained were how did Worrall entice Fisher out into the frigid night and with what did he use to strike the fatal blow.
Worrall himself stated that he convinced Fisher out to the bridge that night by claiming a fence along the property line needed mending. But mending a fence in sub-freezing temps near midnight with no light makes zero sense. And it’s hard to imagine that Fisher would have ventured out into the night with Worrall if the latter were carrying a bevy of potential murder weapons like a hatchet, hammer and post rammer.
A more likely scenario is that Worrall lured Fisher out of the house on an errand that would be mutually agreeable and beneficial to both and one that would not raise suspicions due to the late hour. And that would be to walk down the road to the Harrow Inn to refill their supply of spirits. No doubt Fisher would have been wary venturing out alone with Worrall on a dark night while the latter were carrying metal tools which could potentially be used as a murder weapon. But what about a bottle? This would make perfect sense in that they would need something in which to carry their purchase from the tavern back to the house. And unlike the flimsy, fragile bottles we know today, handblown glass bottles in the early 19th century were sturdy resilient vessels designed for repeated use that could withstand and few drops and were even strong enough to inflict serious damage on a human skull in the right, or rather the wrong, hands. Imagine a moonshine mug and you’ll get the picture. And such a bottle could easily be discarded, and no one would think twice about it. Likewise, Worrall could have brought the bottle home with him after the crime and none of the workers living there would have suspected that the vessel had been used to murder Fred Fisher.
It might seem odd that we should have such a complete record of a regular Joe like Fred Fisher, a convict farmer who scratched out a living in what was essentially a penal colony in the early days of Australian statehood. It seems that more is known of him than of many of the more notable names in our story. So, what is it about Fisher that has perpetuated his tragic tale and elevated it into bonified legend? Obviously, it’s the whole business of his ghost appearing to John Farley and essentially aiding investigators in solving his own murder.
I’m sure many of you noticed the absence of any mention of the ghost during George Worrall’s trial or in revisiting Fisher’s history on the whole. And that’s not by accident. With respect to the ghost and the trial of George Worrall, this would probably be the opportune time to point out that records of the Worrall murder trial were poorly transcribed and shoddily filed and in some cases were reconstructed from memory years after the fact. Even the official transcript of the trial refers to Judge Francis Forbes as “Sir Francis Forbes”, but Forbes was not bestowed his knighthood until 10 years after the Worrall trial. This alone shows that even the most reliable and credible sources available were written years after the fact a therefore may suffer from serious factual lapses. But be that as it may, we can be certain that there was no mention of the ghost of Frederick Fisher at George Worrall’s murder trial for the simple fact that submitting such evidence was strictly verboten. Under British and therefore Australian colonial law, supernatural entities and experiences were inadmissible in a court of law and therefore neither could have nor would have been entered into evidence. Therefore the tale of Fisher’s ghost would not have been recorded in the trial transcript even if the judge himself had been the purported witness.
And as for why I didn’t include the ghost on the bridge while recounting Fisher’s history, well this boils down to chronology. Almost from the first appearance of the ghost story there have been conflicting accounts as to actually where the legend falls along the Fisher murder timeline. Was it as is popularly believed contemporarily known and widely accepted as fact by those who were alive at the time Fisher was killed? Or was it, as most researchers have put forward, a latter-day addition to the tale to add an aura of mystery to an already fascinating story?
The most widely circulated version of the story has it that Farley saw the ghost of Fred Fisher on the bridge which led authorities to the discovery of the body the following day. And while this makes for great copy and a fantastic ghost story, it does not jibe with the facts surrounding the murder case. In fact, apart from popular opinion on the matter there is only one corroborating bit of evidence to support this claim and even it is shaky to say the least.
If you remember from the story, Fisher’s friend and attorney, James Norton Sr., wrote to then Secretary of State Pax Bannister to urge the government to launch an official investigation into Fisher’s disappearance. This much we know from the communique dated September 11, 1826. This letter makes no mention of the ghost, only the growing suspicions surrounding George Worrall’s behavior with respect to disposing of Fisher’s property.
But according to James Norton Jr., the son of Norton Sr. and an attorney in his own right, his pops told him that he didn’t write to Pax Bannister until “some weeks after” the sighting of the ghost on the bridge. Taking this at face value we can extrapolate a likely timeframe for the ghost’s appearance as early to mid August. “A couple of weeks” would have put the event near the end of August and anything prior to August would have more likely been defined as “more than a month”, and not some weeks. With that in mind, Norton Sr. puts the sighting of the ghost on or about August 15th. This brings up a couple of questions.
For starters if Norton had known of the phantasmal sighting of Fisher’s ghost, why did he wait “some weeks” before urging officials to act. Yeah, in all likelihood he wouldn’t have included the ghost sighting in his official request for action, but one would think that with knowledge of this potentially dam-breaking revelation he wouldn’t have delayed his request for Bannister’s aid.
Secondly, we know from court documents that the body of Frederick Fisher was discovered on October 25th. If the ghost was seen in the middle of August, why wait two months before initiating a search of spot where the Farley saw the dead man’s spirit. We also know from the trial transcript that it was the discovery of blood on the bridge that led Burke and Luland to the creek. There was no mention even in the surviving correspondence around that time to suggest there was any reason other than Rixon’s chance discovery to search the creek in which Fisher’s body was found.
The Norton contention with respect to the timeline is suspicious on a couple of levels. Foremost it is second hand at best. James Jr. claims that his father told him about the ghost / letter congruency, but it appears that Junior didn’t make this assertion until after his father’s passing. The other issue is that Norton Sr. apparently told his son about this episode years later in old age. The passage of time coupled with the elder barrister’s diminishing faculties could have skewed his recollection of the event and thus ascribing it out of order with the true timeline of events.
It wouldn’t take a duo of crack legal minds like the Norton’s to see that this friend of a friend type hearsay would be laughed out of court even if it were allowed in, which of course it would not be.
Another point with respect to Norton 1’s deathbed revelation is that it comes at a point decades after the story of Fisher’s ghost first appeared in print as a narrative poem published in “Hill’s Life in New South Wales” in 1832. Now while it’s true that this periodical was an obscure source from which to glean the story, it was local and therefore would in all likelihood have been familiar to residents of Campbelltown at that time.
But it was in 1836 that the legend garnered wider circulation after a story by William Kerr appeared in Tegg’s Monthly Magazine in that year. At the time of the crime in 1826, Kerr had been working as a private tutor in the household of Police Superintendent William Howe whose lands were close to the Fisher Farm. You may remember that Howe was one of Fisher’s confidants who had advised him to sign over his possessions to George Worrall for safe keeping during the Brooker assault trial. Having lived in the house of the police superintendent and having personal knowledge of the crime and the people involved should have made Kerr’s tale the go-to with respect to Fisher’s ghost. But it is strange that in Kerr’s account, John Farley is mislabeled John “Hurley” and that the frightened man ran back to a private residence and not the Harrow Inn after his ghostly encounter. There were other disparities as well with the initial take on the tale, and this seems to be a recurring problem when tracing the evolution of the tale throughout its long history.
Even Charles Dickens entered the fray in 1856 when he published yet another fictionalized account of the Fisher legend in his own magazine, Household Words. This story under the title The Ghost Upon the Fence was written by a man named John Lang.
While this version has emerged as the cause célèbre for latter contentions that this was a true ghost story, Lang himself stated repeatedly and in the front piece of the story itself that it was a work of fiction based on the criminal case and the legend that arose from it. Worrell’s name was prosaically changed to “Smith” and this time there were 2 witnesses to the ghost, not one. The tracker Gilbert was now known as “Johnny Crook”. The murder weapon was a tomahawk and even the location of the tale is moved from Campbelltown to Penrith. All of these alterations were presumably made to avoid any potential copyright infringments.
The story was told again in “Ghosts of Australia” in 1875, in C.W. Rusden’s 3-volume “History of Australia” in 1883, in W.H. Suttor’s “Australian Stories Retold” in 1887, and the list goes on. And with each successive retelling, names are changed only to be changed back and dates attributed to the crime swung wildly about the spectrum. And while many of the stories include the fascinating aspect of Fisher’s ghost in the narrative, many others omit it all together. Point in fact, of the few contemporary reports of the tale written by those with supposed firsthand knowledge of the murder case and the legend of the ghost, all of them include errors, some glaring, with respect to the facts of the case. This may stem from these so-called personal recollections being transcribed years and in many cases decades later in the writer’s twilight years and always after the publication of the various fictionalized accounts. Because when we judge the outline and syntax of these firsthand accounts against the novelized versions, it appears that a number of the eyewitness testimonials borrowed heavily from the fictionalized stories readily available in print.
Thus, the legend of Fisher’s ghost as a true story appears to owe its perpetuation to a common literary paradigm, truth by association. That being if one part of a narrative is proven to be true, then the narrative on the whole is presumed true. The tenets of entire religions are built on this premise that as long as there is a grain of truth to any part of a story, then the story in its entirety is therefore true. In this case, we know definitively that the life and death of Frederick Fisher is indeed a true story. Therefore, by association, the tale of the ghost of the dead man returning to solve his own murder could by this dictum be construed as true.
The tale of the ghost may also have garnered much of its longevity thanks in large part to what is known as “truth by assertion”. Now if you are listening to this podcast in the United States, then you are all too familiar with this maxim. A certain former politician who shall not be named turned this into a science. Say something often enough and loudly enough and before long it becomes accepted as truth even though facts clearly don’t support the assertion. And before long, whatever else this person in question says, no matter how factually challenged or utterly inane, is in turn automatically accepted as truth. In the case of Fisher’s Ghost, we are fortunate in that unlike virtually every other instance of paranormal activity on record, we only have to look as far as one purported witness. And that’s our old friend, barfly extraordinaire, John Farley.
Farley’s claim that he saw Fisher’s ghost is the only evidence we have that the encounter ever happened. Never mind how many times the story has been repeated and over how many years and in this case centuries the story has been printed and revived. When all is said and done, we have only the word of a known drunk to serve as evidence of this singular occurrence.
With the burden of proof now squarely resting on the unsteady shoulders of John Farley, we can Sherlock Holmes this mess down to three possible scenarios that might cast light on the legend of Fisher’s Ghost.
A) the story was a latter-day literary invention
2) John Farley concocted the yarn himself or
D) John Farley did indeed see Frederick Fisher’s ghost as he claimed.
The first scenario that someone made up the ghost story after the fact is the most likely explanation. Like I’ve said, I’ve only been able to locate one account that puts the appearance of the ghost before the discovery of the body, and that is the second-hand recollection of James Norton Jr. as was supposedly related to him by his Pops, Norton Sr. And even this was years after the fact. Not what one would call iron-clad proof by any stretch. The other thing that had to happen to make this possible was to have John Farley’s complicity. This would work if Farley had died before the ghost story came out and was therefore unable to deny involvement with it, or the writer made Farley a willing accomplice to the whole shooting match. And if that’s the case, we have to ask ourselves why he would do so. We’ll get into Farley’s motives when we talk about the second scenario and that’s that Farley himself invented the tale of Fisher’s Ghost.
This is perhaps the easiest explanation to wrap one’s head around in that Farley was the only person to ever claim to have seen the ghost. And he certainly wouldn’t be the first to fabricate a fantastic tale of otherworldly spirits. But what motive would he have to make up such a strange tale? While some have suggested that Farley did so in order to collect the 20-pound reward, others have stated that he did so in order to incriminate George Worrall. But both of these theories run into the same trio of problems.
For these suggestions to pan out, Farley would A) have had to know that the missing man was dead and had not escaped back to England as was almost universally believed shortly after Fisher went missing. 2) he would have to know that Fisher had been murdered and where the crime had occurred in order to place the ghost at just the right spot to lead the trackers to his makeshift gravesite. And D) he’d have to be one hell of an actor to pull off such a performance. In order to convince his audience that he’d just seen the spirit of a dead man while feigning near apoplexy in a Shakespearian swoon, all the while falling down drunk, would require Gary Johnston-level acting. And he’d have to maintain this feint and convincingly for the rest of his life. Of course, if this were the case, the perpetuation of the legend would have benefitted by Farley’s aforementioned “truth by assertion”.
Another suggestion trying to explain the legend is that Farley had actually witnessed the crime and had concocted the ghost story as a way of bringing Worrall to justice. One caveat in this theory is that it would have been all but impossible for Farley to have witnessed the crime in that it occurred on a moonless night with no ambient or direct light which would have allowed him to do so. Had he been close enough to actually see Worrall commit the murder, the killer would most likely have been able to see Farley as well, and as the lone eyewitness would have then met the same fate as Fred Fisher. But for the sake of argument let’s say he had witnessed the murder. If that were the case, why not just tell the police that he had in fact seen George Worrall murder his friend and be done with it? Why wait 2 months after seeing Fisher bludgeoned to death before claiming to see his ghost pointing to the scene of the crime? If he were angling for the reward, why not wait a day or two and then lead investigators to the blood spatter that was certainly on the railing immediately after the crime. It was there when John Rixon came across it in October four months later. And remember it was the discovery of the blood stains and not the ghost story that spurred the police to finally search the creek.
So, if not for the reward and not to psychically implicate Worrall in the crime, why else might Farley have invented such a yarn?
Notoriety might be one reason. Remember, this was 150 years before the advent of even basic cable and storytelling was the most readily accessible and widely practiced forms of entertainment, particularly in rural areas where theatre and opera had yet to find a foothold. If John Farley claimed convincingly that he had seen Fred Fisher’s ghost and that the ghost had subsequently solved his own murder, he would never have needed to buy his own drinks for the rest of his life. He would need only to suggest that his recollection might flow more fluidly with a pint of gin before regaling listeners with his amazing tale to guarantee that his perpetual buzz would never wear off. This phantasmic tale would also ensure Farley’s inclusion on every New South Wales dinner party guest list for years to come. Never mind that he crafted the tale weeks, months or even years after the fact. The story would have, and in fact did, elevate John Farley to the rank of local folk hero. And regardless of his motive behind the tale, all indications are that Farley leaned into it and didn’t shy away from either taking credit for the tale or for having that credit ascribed to him.
Farley’s claim to have seen a ghost in order to score a few free rounds on the house is certainly as plausible, if not more so, than Frederick Fisher returning from the grave on a single occasion and to a lone drunk in the off-chance people would believe the incredible story and direct searchers to the location of his body.
And then there’s the third possibility in explaining the ghostly legend and that is that John Farley did indeed see Fred Fisher’s ghost. As far-fetched as this option may sound, it would more easily than any other theory explain the whole business. But does entertaining this possibility mean that the spirit of the dead man did in fact return from the grave as the legend suggests? No, it does not.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that yes, John Farley did see the ghost on the bridge that night. But that only means that Farley was convinced that he saw the ghost, not that the ghost actually appeared. And that alcohol was a mitigating factor and a big one, Farley could have easily been induced into seeing a ghost or a leprechaun or a mermaid for that matter. The ghost of Fred Fisher may indeed have appeared to John Farley on the bridge that icy winter night in 1826, but this spectral vision was only in Farley’s mind.
One addendum to the legend of Fisher’s Ghost with respect to John Farley’s involvement is his supposed deathbed affirmation. It has been put forward that Farley swore to his good friend that “I saw Frederick Fisher’s ghost that night just a plain as I’m seeing you right now”. But this affirmation is itself anecdotal at best. Deathbed confessions are a common fixture in paranormal lore and this one attributed to Farley reeks of literary license. In fact you’d be hard pressed to come up with one tale of hidden treasure that does not include this overused devices. We’ve spoken of several instances on various episodes of the podcast about how writers love to attach to provenance to unimpeachable witnesses in order to bolster claims of paranormal events, only to discover later that the witnesses were either not involved in the event or that they never existed in the first place. So, we can’t take this highly-dubious DBC at face value and therefore cannot use it as a reference to aid us in solving the mystery. But hey, if Farley believed he saw the ghost, then in his mind it was real, and no one was going to convince him otherwise. But no matter how adamant and earnest Farley’s assertion may have been, it fails every legal and logical evidentiary test and in the end the deathbed assertion has to relegated to folklore.
Harkening back Hakam’s Razor, it seems the most likely explanation for the ghost story is that it was fabricated by a writer who based the story on the Fisher / Worrall criminal case. We know from the court transcripts that it was the discovery of blood on the bridge rail by John Rixon and not the appearance of a ghost that lead authorities to search the creek where Fisher’s body was discovered. Even if there had been a supernatural facet in the case against George Worrall, it would not have been included in the record as such evidence would have been deemed legally inadmissible. It occurred to me that this might have resulted in a double-edged sword so to speak in that those who promote the ghost story as real could claim that the only reason there was no mention of Farley’s sighting of Fisher’s specter that night was because the court barred such a mention from the record on legal grounds. And apart from court transcripts, the only other surviving written accounts of the ghost we have come from the scant personal recollections of Campbelltownians who were familiar with the case but strangely didn’t mention the ghost legend in contemporary terms, only years later.
The legend of Fisher’s ghost seems to have sprung from the lyric poem “The Sprite of the Creek”, published in the short-lived territorial weekly “Hill’s Life in New South Wales” by an enigmatic author known only as Felix and this was 6 years after Frederick Fisher was murdered. Also of interest with respect to the Sprite poem is that in the opening of the verse, the author quotes both Macbeth and Hamlet; two Shakespearian tragedies that famously deal with the occult and murder. By including this homage, the writer is in essence tipping his hand and showing that his tale of Fisher’s Ghost is little more than a rehashing of the Bard’s classics which he has set in the wilds of colonial Australia.
It is often argued that all legends, no matter how fantastic, contain at least some kernel of truth. In the case of Fisher’s ghost, there is a veritable corn field upon which to base the tale of the spirit. Fred Fisher was a real man, his life and tragic death are well known and equally well documented. He did mysteriously disappear; he was murdered, and his killer was brought to justice. Inserting a ghost into this real-life tragedy has effectively transformed this obscure murder case into a paranormal legend known the world over.
When it comes to the story of Frederick Fisher, no one has done more to uncover the truth and preserve the legend of the tale than researcher James Downing. Downing spent years digging into every aspect of the Fisher case and has unearthed a treasure trove of information on the man, his life, his death and the eponymous ghost story that but for his efforts might have been lost to history. While I was researching this episode I stumbled upon Downing’s 300-page unpublished manuscript on the Fisher case titled Call Not Tomorrow Thine. As George Costanza would equate, it was like discovering Plutonium by accident. Every scrap of information concerning Frederick Fisher, both factual and fictionalized, is included in this massive work that Downing spent decades researching and compiling. Sadly, Downing passed away in 1957, with the publication of the manuscript and his hope of turning it into a documentary mini-series never realized. After reading this incredible work cover to cover – twice – I garnered newfound respect not only for the legend on a whole but for the man who spent the better part of his life preserving it for future generations. I sincerely hope that some enterprising editor will rediscover this labor of love, take it in hand and give James Downing the long-overdue credit he deserves by publishing his manuscript for all to enjoy.
And it is thanks to the indefatigable efforts of researchers like James Downing that we can now see the legend of Fisher’s ghost in its true light. Though based on actual events, it is in fact a literary creation born of the struggle to tame the harsh Australian frontier in the heyday of British colonialism by desperate yet enterprising men and women who sought not only a better life for themselves but for the generations that would follow. The enduring allure of Fisher’s ghost story owes much to the romantic appeal of this wild-west era in Australian history and the macabre fascination of the life and tragic death of the protagonist. Much like the legend of Atlantis, the legend of Fisher’s Ghost grew from humble beginnings as an obscure little poem into an epic that has enthralled readers across the globe and throughout the centuries. But despite its enduring appeal, when all is said and done the legend of Fisher’s Ghost appears to be just that: a legend.
But on the other hand, if you truly believe that the ghost of Fredrick Fisher actually appeared to John Farley on the bridge that icy winter night and did indeed lead authorities to solve his own murder, then you are in good company as well. And if you should happen to find yourself in Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia during the first week of November for the annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost, well then you’ll be in very good company.