Arthur played only a peripheral role in the tale of the Murder on Mitchell Downs but his subsequent slow and painful death is another ripper yarn. I told a version of the story live on West Bremer Radio.

His name was Arthur Percy Gosset. He was related to Colonel Ralph Gosset who was Sergeant-at-Arms in the British House of Commons, whose job was to drag out unruly members and to keep them locked up in the Clock Tower.

Our Gosset back in Ipswich was also an upstanding member of society. In 1859, he was charged by a policeman with using obscene language. Gosset conducted he own defence. He not only beat the charge, but also managed to have the constable rightly dismissed from the force.

Later that same year when Ipswich was still part of New South Wales, Gosset was one of ninety people who petitioned the New South Wales government for Ipswich to become the first municipality in Queensland. Gosset was therefore effectively one of Ipswich’s founding fathers.

At the same time, Gosset founded the Ipswich Collegiate School which at the time was quite possibly the finest school in the colony. Many wealthy squatters sent their sons there. One notable scholar was Charles Edward Chubb who was the son of the Ipswich mayor Charles Frederick Chubb.

After attending Gosset’s school, Chubb Junior was accepted into the illustrious “City of London School” in England. Pupils there have included one British prime minister, two Nobel Prize-winners, one England cricket captain, and even one Harry Potter – Daniel Radcliffe. Chubb himself became a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, Attorney General, and a judge of the Supreme Court.

Gosset’s school in Ipswich was first opened in a slab cottage on the corner of South and East streets. The site later become a butcher shop, hotel, and today it’s the big brick building of the Ipswich Global Information Centre. The school expanded and moved into bigger premises on the corner of Gordon and Limestone streets. Gosset was gaining the reputation as one of the best educators in the colony.

But then in 1863 something terrible happened, and the school was then forced to close and Gosset’s life went on a downward spiral with a series of miseries that would beat any man. He was forced to take a job in the colonial civil service in Rockhampton.

Luck seemed to change when Champoo the Chinaman tried to murder the manager at Yandilla station, and in 1864 someone else was successful. Champoo was later sentenced to death for another murder, and committed his second murder when he killed the murderer of Mitchell Downs. But it was the death of the Yandilla station manager that cleared the way for Gosset to return to Ipswich to marry the widow at St Paul’s Church in 1867.

Gosset’s father-in-law therefore became John “Tinker” Campbell. He was a shrewd Scotsman then living at Redbank, Ipswich, whose legend includes an endless list of enterprising business failures.

Gosset and his wife went to live in Rockhampton. That’s where his wife suddenly died in 1872. Five months later Gosset’s “Lion Creole Hotel” was mysteriously burned to the ground. Despite a sizeable reward of £100 offered by the government, the crime was never solved.

Gosset married for a second time in 1874, but that again ended fairly quickly. In three remarkable days of evidence, the divorce court heard about his wife’s intemperate habits, and her liaisons with two identified men and at least one other described only as “an unknown fair man”.

In 1886 the end came for Gossett himself when he died following a very long and painful illness. He was just forty-eight years old.

That terrible event was in 1863 that started all of Gosset’s misery – it was the opening of Ipswich Grammar School which was the first grammar school in Queensland.

Gosset was at the peak of his career, having founded the leading school and was educating the sons of some of the colony’s richest families.

But the opening of Ipswich Grammar forced Gosset’s Ipswich Collegiate School out of business, and started the deadly, downward spiral that continued to his miserable final days.

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

Photo credits:
Rebecca Elizabeth Gosset headstone South Rockhampton cemetery – uploaded to Find a Grave by Julie 2023.
Ralph Gosset, Vanity Fayres man of the day – March 1874.
Charles Edward Chubb 1883 – State Library of Queensland.
John Campbell – Brisbane City Council BCC-MB-0008.
Ipswich Grammar School, 1864 – State Library of Queensland.