Patrick Fahey was a lunatic better known in Ipswich, Queensland, in the 1840s as Paddy the Horse. After a recent story that I posted, a number of people asked to know more about Paddy. I told a version of his tale on West Bremer Radio.

The life and times of Ipswich’s Henry Foley revealed a fascinating story of the man who arrived as a policeman, opened a pub, cavorted with convicts, employed a raving lunatic, charged with murdering his wife, and his daughter even married a massacre survivor. His lunatic employee has a story of his own.

In 1849, Foley employed Paddy as a cook at the Travellers Home hotel on Nicholas Street in Ipswich. Paddy proved absolutely useless and so wasn’t paid his wages. He complained, bolted, and was gaoled for seven days for breaching the hired servants act.

Paddy came under the careful watch of Ipswich’s Doctor William Von Lossberg. Dr Von Lossberg was the same doctor who was later the first medical practitioner on the scene at the St Mary’s School Tragedy, caused controversy with his autopsies for the Gatton Murders, and testified to the low intellect of the last woman sentenced to hang in Queensland. Dr Von Lossberg suspected Paddy the Horse of insanity, and so sent him to Brisbane gaol for treatment.

Later when Paddy was living at the Goodna lunatic asylum (pictured at the top of the page), he escaped a working gang in the bush probably while under the watch of the warder William Brushe. Brushe had previously been the first policeman in Wales, guarded Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace in England, and would later become Ipswich’s oldest warder.

At the time that Paddy escaped Brushe’s gang, escapes by lunatics from the asylum were rather frequent, and in Paddy’s case he was particularly keen to remain escaped. Having made his getaway, Paddy determinedly threw large boulders down at warder Brushe. Paddy never was taken back into confinement – that’s because tragically that day in 1874, Paddy the Horse lost his life when he drowned during his bid for freedom.

But that’s not where Paddy’s story ends.

While the warder William Brushe escaped with not having his brains knocked out by Paddy’s boulders, his children grew up listening to stories of the Goodna adventures.

One daughter was particularly enamoured by amazing tales of Paddy the Horse and others, that in 1913 she herself became a warder with the Queensland prison service.

She was Ipswich-born Gertrude Brushe. Her first posting in 1913 was to the Brisbane prison. And that’s where she met and fell in love with the chief warder John Murphy. Gertrude and John got married that same year, and together the Murphys became Australia’s first power couple of the prison system.

For the early part of the twentieth century, the Murphys served together as a couple as superintendent and chief matron in prisons across the state, including Townsville, Rockhampton, and Brisbane.

The Murphy love affair and Australia’s first prison power couple would never have happened if it wasn’t for Patrick Fahey – better known as Paddy the Horse – the lunatic who rose to fame in the 1840s.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD LIVE ON RADIO.

Photo credits:
Goodna Hospital for the Insane 1919 – State Library of Queensland.
Dr William Henry Von Lossberg – Queensland Times, Ipswich, 1st November 1913, page 10.
Brushe family, Gertrude on the right – Ancestry uploaded by Annette Gregory 2013.
Main gates of the Boggo Road Gaol, Brisbane – State Library of Queensland.