Jessie Hickman was a rough-riding woman who threw away social norms to lead a cattle rustling gang the Hunter's hard terrain - and got away with it.
When Elizabeth Jessie Hunt was born in 1890 the golden age of the Bushranger was already waning. Increased settlement and more efficient communications had improved policing and left few opportunities for Australia’s classical bushrangers.
The ‘Wild Colonial Boys’ who painted a romantic picture of the bail-up, those young men who roamed the rugged landscape with their good horsemanship and iconic names like Bluecap, Mad Dog Morgan, Captain Moonlight and Thunderbolt, had all been dispatched to history. Even Australia’s most infamous bad boy, Ned Kelly, had been hanged 10 years earlier.
During that heyday, much of the bushranging activity in NSW was located in the Central West and Upper Hunter where goldfields, farming and heavily frequented transport routes made for good pickings. And it was here, near Carcoar, where Ben Hall and Fred Gardiner’s notorious gang once roamed, that Australia’s last bushranger, Jessie Hickman was born.
From Circus Performer to Cattle Rustler
Not a lot is known about Jessie’s early life, but purportedly, at the age of 8, her parents gave her to a travelling circus. “Martini’s” was famous for its buck-riding shows and Jessie travelled with them throughout Eastern Australia giving breathtaking displays of horsemanship. Jessie formed a close relationship with owner, Martin Breheney, and for the next decade remained with the circus where she performed in shows and held the position of circus’ ring-mistress.
If Breheney hadn’t died, Jessie’s life as a performer might have continued. But after his death in 1907, the circus was wound up leaving young Jessie jobless. She moved to Sydney to live with relatives and quickly embarked on her new ‘career’: gambling and petty crime.
Going by her mother’s maiden name, “McIntyre”, Jessie was frequently brought before the courts for various offences including stealing chooks, horses and cows; assaulting a man with a tomahawk; and negligently driving a wagon. By her early 20's she had done two stints in prison.
During those years in the city, the energetic Jesse met navy seaman Ben Hickman and, in 1913, they had a child. Not ready to be a mother, she gave their son to a friend to raise and he grew up not knowing Jessie Hickman was his birth mother.
By 1916, on parol and separated from Ben by the Great War, Jessie began work as a housekeeper for John Fitzgerald, a Sydney cattle dealer. Although she may have learned the art of cattle sales from him their relationship was fraught. In 1918, he accused her of stealing one of his cows. After a drawn-out court case where accusations were exchanged, Jessie was acquitted.
“Fitz” was prone to violent rages and Jessie, not shy of confrontation, fought back. It’s rumoured Jessie killed “Fitz” during one of these fights, though his body was never found and she was never charged, so we will never know for sure.
After the war, Jessie and Ben rekindled their romance and married in 1920. But it was short-lived. Unsurprisingly, Jessie wasn’t one for the conventional life. The free-spirited woman left her husband in Sydney and moved to the country. Ben Hickman eventually commenced divorce proceedings against Jessie arguing that she had no intention of returning to Sydney or their marriage. Jessie, he told the court, preferred horses and cows to marriage.
"My wife told me she would sooner live under a sheet of bark, in the country, than live in the city."
This was the 1920s, the age of the independent woman and Jessie, who had been working since the age of 8, clearly didn’t need a man for support. Though the thought of legitimate work didn’t seem to cross her mind either and her idyllic life in the country with ‘horses and cattle’ was actually far more devious.
The Lady Bushranger
There are few female bushrangers in Australia’s colonial history and even amongst those Jessie stands out as unique. Jessie didn’t ride in the shadow of a man, rather she ran her own cattle rustling gang. And it was this romantic notion of a female bushranger that drew the interest of local men who joined her and were known as Jessie’s “young bucks”.
Jessie’s gang straddled the Upper Hunter and Central Tablelands, operating out of the area that’s now Wollemi National Park. From this rugged position, they drove off small numbers of livestock to mix with Jessie’s herd, before selling them at markets in country towns to persons who were not too worried where the cut-price cattle really came from.
Needless to say, cattle duffing was a serious crime. If caught, Jessie faced a harsh prison term. But stealing stock from large, unfenced properties in rough terrain was fairly easy, especially if done in small numbers. For a time, her clandestine operation appeared to go relatively unnoticed. Then, in 1926, the law began to close in on her. Jessie was wanted for stealing 6 head of cattle from Mr James Frederick Mills of Gulgong.
With a warrant out for her arrest, Hickman went on the run. Her rough-riding skills made short work of the steep and rugged terrain that she knew well. By escaping to her hideout on Burro Mountain she evaded capture. Jessie managed to elude police for the next two years. The few times the police had her in custody she gave them the slip via the privacy of the ladies loo, once while on a moving train.
In 1928 Hickman was finally arrested and charged with the offence of cattle duffing. By this time the theft of stock from two other parties was added to the charge sheet. As she stood trial in Mudgee Court, Jessie audaciously argued that she had no knowledge of the stolen livestock and that she would have assumed, if she noticed the additional cattle in her herd at all, that they were strays. She brushed off the question of how those strays had managed to wander 50 miles to her property. But perhaps unwilling to find a woman guilty, or with the help of a friend, she was let off.
Hickman, who went by numerous other aliases including Martini, Macintyre, Payne, Bell and Murray, was, once again, a free woman.
After the court case, Jessie took up residence at her “Red Bank” property on Emu Creek near Denman in the Upper Hunter. Whether she continued her cattle rustling on a more careful and clandestine basis or gave it away and settled down, we don’t really know.
In September 1936, Jessie fell ill with chronic head pains and was taken to a hospital in Mussellbrook. Uncertain of the problem, doctors moved her to Newcastle’s mental hospital where she tragically died of a brain tumour a few days later, aged 46. Despite her notoriety during life, Jessie was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave at Newcastle’s Sandgate Cemetery.
Like so many bush legends, much of what we know of Jessie is embellished by myth and rumour. Some of it from stories told by Jessie herself, who was prone to exaggeration. We do know that despite the bureaucratic bungle of her burial, Jessie didn’t die a pauper. Her estate held a few hundred of pounds worth of assets, land and stock. In Jessie Hickman’s case, crime had paid rather well.
