The Toowoomba constable’s wife who let three prisoners escape was then implicated in Dalby’s fowl affair of 1866. I told a version of this story live on Darling Downs radio 4AK.

When Constable Allan McDonald was stationed in Toowoomba he refused a bribe to let a prisoner escape, then three prisoners escaped when he left his wife in charge of the lock-up. The couple were banished to manage the Dalby lock-up, and in 1866 the constable’s wife was a key witness in Dalby’s great fowl affair. This year is the 160th anniversary.

At about eight o’clock at night on Wednesday the 27th of August 1866, William Farraher and his wife Margaret were sitting in their hut when they were disturbed by their dog’s bark and a goat bleating, they heard footsteps outside, and one of their fowls screeched. On going outside Farrahar saw a very strange thing in the night – it was a woman, about thirty yards away, running along with a goat tied by a long string.

The woman was Mrs Henrietta Marles. She was a native of Dartmouth, England, and just a year earlier in 1865 had arrived in Queensland with her husband on the ship Young Australia.

The Young Australia was a popular immigrant clipper ship that would make nine voyages from England to Moreton Bay from 1862 to 1870. The last voyage was most definitely cursed.

One passenger was running from debts of £10,000 which is $15 million today. Others broke a leg during the voyage, arrived and fell off the wall at the Commissariat Store, broke an elbow, shot themselves in the foot, cleared of embezzlement but committed to an asylum, took their fiancé to court for breach of promise, and two died the same year that the Young Australia ran onto rocks off Cape Moreton and sank. Five more promptly died from one family, from paralysis of the heart, congestion of the brain, sunstroke, and two drowned in the Mary River at Gympie. This was the ship that brought our Mrs Marles who was the woman with the goat.

When Farraher saw Mrs Marles, he called out, she dropped the fowl, the pair began having words and came to blows. Mrs Marles was knocked to the ground.

The neighbour Edward Johnson came out and saw Farraher and Mrs Marles scolding each other. Johnson would later be charged with illegal possession of a sheep. When he gave evidence about the fowl affair, he refused to kiss the bible, as was the custom, but he licked it instead.

On the night of the fowl affair, Mrs Marles and her goat finally retired to their hut which was about 200 yards away. She then returned with a Mrs Edgar who was living with her and whose husband was a drunk and perversely the suspected molester of Farraher’s daughter. After having more words, Farraher allegedly kicked Mrs Marles a number of times. Mrs Johanna McDonald, the wife of the constable in charge of the lock-up, was shown the injuries, and she would later provide this critical evidence in court.

The upshot of it all was that the judge decided that it was highly unlikely that a thief looking for fowls would go out on a bright moonlight night and take a goat with her, and so dismissed the case against Mrs Marles.

The judge then admonished the six-foot-tall Farraher for striking and kicking a little woman with a goat, convicted him of assault, and fined him £10.

Mrs Henrietta Marles and her husband William moved to Bundaberg where the drama of the Dalby fowl affair haunted them. Mrs Marles in consequence of her excessive use of liquor, and injuries endangering her health, and her husband for also misspending and wasting his estate, were both banned from being anywhere near alcohol for twelve months.

Meanwhile the prime witness in the fowl affair, the lock-up keeper’s wife Mrs McDonald, lived out a long life in Dalby.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON 4AK.

Photo credits:
The Dalby Fowl Affair – Copilot image.
Young Australia wrecked 1872 – State Library of South Australia.
Henrietta Marles Maryborough Cemetery – Michelle 2019 via Find a Grave website.