True Crime in 2041 (Birchgrove)

The Inhumane Murder of Samuel and Esther Bradley in Birchgrove 1822

More on Balmain

The Devonshire Street cemetery was established along an ancient sandhill on the outskirts of old Sydney. Over the following decades, urbanisation spread out from the town centre, encircling the grounds. 

By 1901, the decrepit burial ground was considered an out-of-place anachronism from the bygone colonial age. The government had announced that 38,500 burials were to be exhumed and reinterred in various cemeteries across the state, and the grounds were to be cleared, levelled, and re-developed as the site of the new Central Railway Station. 

Approximately where the Eddy Avenue (originally known as Old Burial Ground Road) entrance to Central is today was the Church of England ground, the first to be established, all the way back in 1819. In this section of the six-acre compound, amateur historians Arthur and Ethal Foster commenced an exhausting task of photographing and documenting as many of the most important monuments as they could before the workmen started digging. 

It was here that the Fosters photographed one of the most fascinating headstones: for Samuel and Esther Bradley, who were both buried in 1822, making them two of the earliest burials in the cemetery. However, it was the inscription on the stone that was most intriguing. 

SACRED 

to the MEMORY of

SAMUEL and ESTHER BRADLEY

who where Inhumanely Murder’d

by their own Servant

on the 15th of August 1822.

S.B Aged 59 Years

E.B Aged 65 Years

Nestled among dozens of equally ancient headstones, positioned higgledy-piggledy and covered in weeds and overgrown ferns, the Bradleys lay undisturbed and forgotten for seventy-nine years. The inscription was unusual and noticeably out of place in the Victorian era, with its sombre decorum around funerary rites differing starkly from the Georgian era that preceded it. 

What happened to Samuel and Esther on that fateful day in August 1822? 

In the early days of New South Wales, a seemingly innocent excursion to visit a business partner took a dark turn for Alexander Berry, a prominent free settler. On his way from Sydney to the estate of Edward Wollstonecraft on the North Shore, Berry and his party decided to stop at Birchgrove to visit Samuel Bradley, an old friend who had moved from Wollstonecraft’s estate only three weeks prior.

Upon arrival, the party was met with an unsettling scene. Bradley’s cottage, typically a welcoming site, was now eerily deserted. The doors were ajar, and the interior showed signs of chaos—trunks overturned, clothing strewn about, and an unsettling bone half-buried in the garden. 

Mistaking it for an animal’s, Berry and his companions continued to Wollstonecraft’s villa, unaware of the grim reality awaiting discovery.

Later that day, Edward Wollstonecraft, troubled by Berry’s account, sent two servants to investigate. Their findings were horrifying: the bone was identified as a decaying human arm. 

Chief Constable Dunn of Sydney was summoned to launch a thorough investigation on September 2, 1822. Dunn’s search led him to a nearby felled tree, beneath which the mutilated body of Samuel Bradley was found, concealed between sandstone rocks. The corpse, partially consumed by dogs and with signs of burning, told a grim tale. Despite extensive searches, Esther Bradley, Samuel’s wife, remained missing.

The news of the murder shocked the colony. As fear and curiosity gripped Sydney, individuals began coming forward with potential leads. Margaret Hodges, who had seen Esther alive on August 15, reported Esther’s anxiety upon meeting her servant, Thomas Barry after she was dropped off at a pier in Snail Bay. 

Thomas, a convict, had been arrested for drunkenness in the days following and was detained in a chain gang on South Head Road with several items in his possession that raised suspicion.

Among these items were keys, a silver thimble, and a sewing needle, which Thomas claimed were either gifts from the Bradleys or objects he found at the Hyde Park Horse Racing Track. His scratched face and erratic behaviour drew further scrutiny. 

The discovery that Thomas had been involved in moving the Bradleys’ belongings added to the suspicion against him. A watchmaker also reported that Thomas had given him a watch for cleaning, which was suspected to have been stolen from Samuel Bradley.

As evidence mounted, Thomas Barry changed his story. He initially denied involvement but later claimed to have witnessed the murders. According to his revised testimony, Samuel Bradley was murdered by associates of his, William Barry and Dennis Lamb, who then attacked Esther. 

Thomas admitted to helping conceal the bodies and move stolen goods, though he claimed ignorance of the murder’s full extent.

On September 6, a coroner’s inquest led by George Milner Slade was held at Birchgrove. The search for Esther’s remains led to a shallow grave in a garden where her body was found wrapped in a carpet. Thomas Barry revealed the location. 

Her corpse bore severe injuries - a fractured skull and deep facial lacerations, indicating brutal violence. An axe and a pistol, believed to be the murder weapons, were also discovered. The axe bore a notch matching markings on the tree used to obscure Samuel’s body.

Thomas’ testimony implicated William Barry and Dennis Lamb in the murder, but the evidence against them was circumstantial. It appeared more likely that Thomas Barry had committed the crimes on his own and that when Mrs Hodges dropped Esther Bradley off on August 15, Thomas Barry had already murdered Samuel and then finished Esther soon after Hodges left. 

The jury found Thomas Barry guilty of murder, while acquitting the others. The trial, held on October 11, 1822, sentenced Thomas to death by hanging and dissection, as mandated by the Murder Act of 1751.

Thomas Barry was executed on October 14. He took sole responsibility for the crime while standing before the gallows with the rope around his neck. His body was delivered to surgeons for dissection at the Rum Hospital on Macquarie Street, highlighting the harsh justice meted out in the fledgling colony where surgical cadavers were in short supply.

The remains of Samuel and Esther Bradley were eventually relocated from Devonshire Street Cemetery in 1901, though their exact resting place remains uncertain. The headstone marking their grave has long been lost, with the only record of its existence captured in a historical photograph by the Fosters today found in the archives of the City of Sydney.

The case of Samuel and Esther Bradley, shrouded in murder and deceit, remains a chilling chapter in Sydney’s early history, a stark reminder of the dangers that lurked in the colonial frontier.

By Elliot Lindsay