Last month was the centenary of Ipswich’s great one-armed robbery when the hero had only one arm. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

A sensational hold-up by a man wearing a leather mask happened at about 11am on Saturday the fifteenth of November 1924. This was at the office of F. Barbat and Son foundry on Lowry Street in North Ipswich, Queensland.

He was partly masked and pointed a revolver at an office clerk Samuel Bewsey, and a typist Miss Annie McDowall. They were the only ones in the office at the time.

A bag containing over £600 to pay for the employees had just been taken into a small room out the back. That’s when a gruff voice from the doorway demanded that he wanted some of it.

Both Bewsey and Miss McDowall turned to see a masked man covering them with a loaded revolver. Bewsey, realising the seriousness of the situation, handed the intruder £2. But the man said he wanted more than that, he wanted the lot.

Noticing the hand of the robber was shaking, Bewsey said that he would not hand it over and that the bandit had to come and get it. Again Bewsey was menaced with the revolver and the demand repeated. Bewsey gave him £20.

I’ll divert a little bit because Bewsey had quite a backstory. A few years earlier, his brother suffered three deaths in eighteen days when two in-laws died and then his wife died in childbirth.

Bewsey himself lived with his parents at Ipswich in Burnett Street, Ipswich. He had worked at Barbats foundry since leaving school. He was seventeen years old when his right arm got caught in a tapping machine and was completely torn off. He would go on to be a promising golfer.

The one-armed Bewsey was fated to die in a very strange way not long after the foundry robbery. He would be travelling home near Oxley when a horse jumped in through his car window, crushed his head and killed him.

Back to the robbery when Bewsey handed over the £20, the bandit was apparently satisfied with the amount. That’s because he left the remainder of the £600 behind, backed out of the office while still covering the two clerks with the revolver, slammed the door and made a rapid escape.

The Ipswich police were promptly notified and that night detectives arrested a man at his home in Gustavson Street at Annerley or back then South Brisbane. They found a loaded revolver and practically the identical money that was stolen. Bewsey and Miss McDowell identified the man as an employee from the foundry who earlier in the week had notified the office that he wanted his money at 11.30 o’clock on Saturday morning. And that’s pretty much when the bandit turned up wearing a leather mask.

The bandit’s name was George William Nicholson. He was found guilty in the Supreme Court and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. That was despite the jury recommending leniency. And it’s that recommendation where the story gets really interesting.

Nicholson was a returned solider from the First World War. He first enlisted in 1915 as a nineteen-year-old, serving with the Australian 9th battalion in Egypt. But was invalided home with rheumatic fever.

He enlisted again as a twenty-year-old, this time making it to the Western Front with the 42nd battalion. It was in 1918 that Nicholson was gassed and shot in the arm shortly after the First Battle of Morlancourt in France. He spent the next twelve months recuperating in hospital, but not from those injuries. You see, he suffered shell shock and his nerves were shot. He’d lost a full stone in weight and couldn’t sleep. His mother didn’t welcome him home from the war until late 1919 which was a full year after many others.

Nicholson died in 1938 at the age of forty-one, single and still not right. He is buried at Toowong cemetery where his grave is marked by an Australian Imperial Force headstone (pictured top of page) with his original service number and battalion. But it really should be his final number with the 42nd battalion because that’s when his life changed.

So even though the one-armed Samuel Bewsey was the hero of the great Ipswich robbery one hundred years ago, maybe for once we should be remembering the bandit, the unfortunate George Nicholson.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
George William Nicholson, AIF headstone, Toowong cemetery, 2024 – Harold Peacock 20241206_134800.
Barbat’s foundry, North Ipswich, c1910 – Picture Ipswich.
Australian soldiers resting near Morlancourt, 1918 – Australian War Memorial E02834.