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Kelly Gang / Fitzpatrick Double Scrimshaw: Two buffalo horns,…
Sale Title:
Auction House:
Auction Location:
Melbourne
Date:
6-Nov-2008
Lot No.
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Description:
Kelly Gang / Fitzpatrick Double Scrimshaw: Two buffalo horns, each about 46 cm long, with each horn incised with symbols of lost love, adventure, horses, troopers, and threatening gestures - relating to the Kelly Gang. The left horn shows a larrikin (with chinstrap in the Greta mob fashion & wearing a spotted shirt) being chased by a mounted trooper; a woman wielding a dagger (similar to Isley's portrait of Maggie Skillion - Ned Kelly's sister); a unicorn; and an extraordinary Australian Coat-of-Arms with an emu and kangaroo with miner's pick and plough-shares. The other horn, with similar top and tailed decoration; a finely cut young woman pointing at a scroll clearly incised 'Am Fitzpatrick'; a sailing ship; an American Eagle with flag; dogs chasing deer & rabbits; a cornstalker popping out from the other-side-of-the-world; more arrowed hearts of lost love. Provenance: This double scrimshaw was owned by James Dawson, a member of the Queensland Police Force from 1870, being number 164. Records for him from 1870-79 are scant, but he appears as an undercover agent in the trapping of Aaron Sherritt into betraying the Kelly Gang. James Dawson moved to Beechworth in 1879, becoming friends with John James Sherritt Jr, who helped his brother Aaron Sherritt as a police-agent. (Sherritt's father was an ex-Ulster Royal Constabulary). Dawson was noted as 'a stranger to the locality' in Magistrate's proceedings July 26th & 29th 1879 when Aaron Sherritt is charged with horse-stealing, claiming he had only been in the area since March (the same time as the Queensland black-trackers arrived with Snr Constable Tom King and Stanhope O'Connor, also from the Queensland Police force). In John Sherrett Jr's own deposition in the Royal Commission into the Kelly Gang (1881 Rc 13165), Sherritt claims that Dawson was with him at Aaron's selection when Joe Byrne's mother threatened to get the Kelly Gang to shoot Aaron, before charging him with stealing horses (for which he was aquitted, on his brother's and Dawson's evidence). Dawson returned to Queensland with this set of horns after Glenrowan, and married in Brisbane in July 1880. The horns were given to his daughter, then to our vendor by descent.
Estimate:
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Price:
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Category:
Unclassified