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<\/a>‘Five-fingered Tom’ Jeffries, photographed at the Hobart Penitentiary in 1873 by Thomas J Nevin. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018Five-fingered Tom\u2019 was Thomas Jeffries. He was born as the second of three children to ex-convicts Thomas Jeffries and Ann Jeffries, n\u00e9e Willis, at Patersons Plains near Launceston in 1841.[1]<\/a> His father was an illiterate labourer. Thomas Jeffries junior was born with an extra digit on his right hand (that is, five fingers and a thumb), hence \u2018Five-fingered Tom\u2019. This made him easily identifiable\u2014good news for the cops! Jeffries regarded Evandale as his native place, but he was living and working on farms in the Sassafras area when in 1873 a warrant was issued for his arrest. The wanted man was described as about 35 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall, with sandy hair, beard and moustache and a stout build, being \u2018a good bushman [who] has spent much of his time hunting\u2019.[2]<\/a> First offender Jeffries was sentenced to eight years\u2019 gaol for horse stealing. He spent four months making shoes in the Launceston Gaol, from which he vowed that he would abscond at the first opportunity\u2014earning him a transfer to the Hobart Penitentiary.[3]<\/a> What luck! Since Hobart prisoners were routinely photographed by Thomas J Nevin, we have the image of Jeffries attached to this article. He must have shucked off his bad attitude, since he served only five of his eight years.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Like Jerry Aylett of Parkham, \u2018Five-Finger Tom the Hunter\u2019 moved into the high country by the 1880s, a time when Tasmanian brush possum had gained an export market.[5]<\/a> Possum-skin rugs had been a useful earner for bushmen for decades but now the thicker highland furs had a reputation in the British Isles. In 1883 the \u2018Tasmanian Opossum Tail Rug\u2019 could be found alongside the \u2018Grey Wolf Rug\u2019, the \u2018Silver Bear Rug\u2019, the \u2018Leopard, on Bear\u2019 and the \u2018Raccoon Tail Rug\u2019 in the catalogue of Liverpool enterprise Frisby, Dyke and Co.[6]<\/a> Lewis\u2019s in Sheffield, Nottinghamshire, offered \u2018real Tasmanian opossum capes\u2019.[7]<\/a> An 1887 \u2018Rich winter fur\u2019 auction in Dundee, Scotland, placed \u2018Australian and Tasmanian Opossum\u2019 alongside sealskin, sable, skunk, brown and polar bear, llama, leopard, puma, tiger and raccoon furs.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n The Hampshire and Surrey Hills, Tasmania, map from the LIST database, courtesy of DPIPWE.<\/p><\/div>\n Waratah, a town born in the early 1870s at the Mount Bischoff tin mine, was a staging-post for both prospectors and hunters. We can follow Jeffries there in 1886 through the digitised pages of the Tasmania Police Gazette<\/em>. He seems to have found it hard to stay out of trouble, allegedly committing an assault at Waratah before making for the hunting grounds of the Middlesex Plains.[9]<\/a> Guildford Junction, a village created by the extension of the Emu Bay Railway to Zeehan in the late 1890s, was another hub for bushmen such as Van Diemen\u2019s Land Company (VDL Co) timber splitters, hunters and prospectors. Jeffries and his mate Bill Todd were both based there in the period 1903\u201305, joining fellow hunters \u2018Black Harry\u2019 Williams, Tom Allen, the \u2018Squire of Guildford\u2019 Edward Brown and, from 1904, Luke Etchell.[10]<\/a> They had a wide orbit. Todd, for example, was prospecting with George Sloane on the February Plains in 1901 when the latter discovered the body of lost Rosebery hotelier Thomas (TJ) Connolly.[11]<\/a> Shopkeeper Allen packed stores into the Mayday gold mine under the Black Bluff Range in 1902.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n In the years 1888\u20131909 most of these men supplemented their income by claiming the \u00a31 bounty on the head of the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. Tom Allen appears to have received fifteen bounty payments\u2014although, as a storekeeper and skins dealer, he may have submitted some applications on behalf of other hunters.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n Not so \u2018Black Harry\u2019 Williams, the so-called \u2018colored king of the forest\u2019, who probably claimed four tiger bounties.[14]<\/a> He was a short, black-haired Afro-American bush farmer and hunter who arrived in Wynyard in 1887 aged about 24. After serving a month’s gaol for poaching neighbourhood ducks, Williams (‘A black man’!) started operating south of Wynyard (pre-1900), and later at Natone, Hampshire, Guildford and the Hatfield Plains (1900\u201308).[15]<\/a> He caught two tigers at the Hampshire Hills in 1900, exhibiting a living one in Burnie. His intention was to sell it to Wirth\u2019s Circus.[16]<\/a> \u2018Black Harry\u2019 was reported to be submitting the other specimen, a very large dead one, for the thylacine bounty, although there is no record of this application.[17]<\/a> Just enough details of his life survive with which to tell a story. In 1901 he was sued by Chinese storekeeper Jim Sing for failing to pay for a bag of carrots delivered to the Hampshire Hills; Williams counter-sued over Sing\u2019s failure to pay for 100 wallaby skins delivered to Waratah by the hunter.[18]<\/a> Three years later he was accused of breaking down a VDL Co stockyard at Romney Marsh near the Hatfield River in order to use the timber in a drying shed\u2014making him an early adaptor of this technology (today Black Harry Road recalls his presence in this area). In 1905 Williams was described as the \u2018champion trapper and bushman of the State\u2019, the ideal man to lead a search for hunter Bert Hanson who went missing near Cradle Mountain.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n Wallaby hunter Henry Grave demonstrating his reliance on his horse as a pack animal, King Island, 1887. Photo by Archibald J Campbell, courtesy of Museums Victoria.<\/p><\/div>\n Jeffries may have been a contender for those honours. Knowledge of his hunting around Cradle Mountain with Todd\u2014another man who flits across the public record\u2014was passed down through generations of bushmen. Drawing on this oral record in 1936, Cradle Mountain Reserve Secretary Ronald Smith unwittingly fused the characters into Tom Todd, aka \u2018Five-fingered Tom\u2019. It was on the edge of the high plain they hunted, known as Todds Country, that Hanson died in a blizzard.[20]<\/a> Correcting Smith\u2019s article, another writer recalled that \u2018Tom Jeffrey\u2019 and his Arab pony Dolly were known for many years between Middlesex and Waratah, his mount being \u2018the most faithful and gamest bit of horseflesh that ever packed a load over the Black Bluff\u2019.[21]<\/a> The winter haunts of the highland snarer were very cold, very wet and poorly charted, his comforts simple and meagre, his rewards contingent upon government regulation and global demand. Often he was unseen for months at a time. No newspaper trumpeted his story. Perhaps an extra digit and a different pigment were all that kept Jeffries and Williams from historical anonymity\u2014but I hope there is a lot more to their stories that hasn\u2019t yet been teased out.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Thomas Jeffries senior, transported on the Georgiana<\/em>, was granted permission to marry Ann Willis, transported on the New Grove<\/em>, on 3 October 1838, p.88, CON52\/1\/1; Thomas Jeffries junior was born to Thomas and Ann Jeffries on 1 November 1841, birth record no.1848\/1842, registered at Launceston, RGD32\/1\/3 (TAHO). He had elder and younger sisters: Mary Ann Jeffries, born 24 October 1839, birth record no.1021\/1840, registered at Launceston, RGD32\/1\/3, address was given as Watery Plains; Maria Jeffries, born 11 June 1844, no.271\/1844, registered at Launceston, RGD33\/1\/23 (TAHO).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> \u2018Warrants issued, and now in this office\u2019, Reports of Crime<\/em>, 23 May 1873, vol.12, no.723, p.86.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Prison record for Thomas Jeffries, image 25, p.11, CON94\/1\/2 (TAHO).<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> \u2018Prisoners discharged from Her Majesty\u2019s gaols \u2026\u2019, Reports of Crime<\/em>, 27 September 1878, vol.17, no.1001, p.157.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> See, for example, \u2018Commercial\u2019, Launceston Examiner<\/em>, 24 November 1886, p.2; 19 April 1890, p.2. While William Turner failed to attract a reasonable price for Tasmanian brush possum from English buyers in 1871 (William Turner to the Colonial Treasurer, 27 September and 17 December 1872, TRE1\/1\/462 [TAHO]), in 1883 HE Button of Launceston began to ship furs to London: \u2018Open fur season\u2019, Mercury<\/em>, 30 July 1926, p.3. For William \u2018Jerry\u2019 Aylett, see Nic Haygarth, \u2018William Aylett: career bushman\u2019, in Simon Cubit and Nic Haygarth, Mountain men: stories from the Tasmanian high country<\/em>, Forty South Publishing, Hobart, 2015, pp.28\u201355.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Frisby, Dyke and Co advert, Liverpool Mercury<\/em>, 12 November 1883, p.3.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> \u2018Lewis\u2019s great sale of mantels and furs\u2019, Sheffield Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 5 February 1886, p.1.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> \u2018Sales by auction\u2019, Dundee Courier and Argus<\/em>, 19 November 1887, p.1.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> \u2018Waratah\u2019, Tasmania Police Gazette<\/em>, 19 November 1886, vol.25, no.1426, p.187.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> Wise\u2019s Tasmanian Post Office directory<\/em>, 1903, p.56; 1904, p.412; 1905, p.61.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> \u2018\u201dLost and perished in the snow\u201d: another Cradle Mountain tragedy\u2019, Advocate<\/em>, 27 March 1936, p.11.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Thomas Allen to James Norton Smith, Van Diemen\u2019s Land Company, 28 January 1902, VDL22\/1\/33 (TAHO).<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> Bounty no.374, 12 January 1899 (3 adults, \u20183 December\u2019); no.401, 15 November 1900 (3 adults, \u201915 June\u2019); no.482, 21 January 1901 (3 adults, \u201917 December\u2019); no.22, 4 February 1901 (3 adults, \u20184 January\u2019); no.985, 25 July 1902 (\u2018July\u2019); no.1057, 27 August 1902 (\u201915 August\u2019); no.1091, 17 September 1902 (\u20184 September 1902\u2019); no.462, 6 August 1903, (1 juvenile, \u201924 July\u2019), LSD247\/1\/ 2 (TAHO). See \u2018Burnie\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times,<\/em> 15 December 1900, p.2.<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> \u2018Veritas\u2019, \u2018The lost youth Bert Hanson\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times,<\/em> 11 August 1905, p.2. The bounties were all under the name \u2018H Williams\u2019: no.344, 17 November 1899 (\u201910 October\u2019); no.1078, 11 September 1902 (\u201931 July 1902\u2019); no.1280, 2 December 1902; no.76, 20 February 1903 (\u201914 February 1903\u2019), LSD247\/1\/2 (TAHO).<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> Williams’ activities at Wynyard in 1887 and 1889 were recorded in the diaries of George Easton, held by Libby Mercer (Hobart). For his conviction on a larceny charge, see ‘Wynyard’, Colonist<\/em>, 12 October 1889, p.2; and ‘Prisoners discharged …’, Tasmania Police Gazette<\/em>, 8 November 1889, vol.28, no.1581, p.180. Wise\u2019s Tasmanian Post Office directory<\/em> listed H Williams as a hunter living at Wynyard in 1900 (p.223), 1901 (p.239) and 1902 (p.255). Yet he caught two tigers at the Hampshire Hills (Hampshire) in 1900. In June 1903 he advertised for sale a 50-acre farm on Moores Plain Road south of Wynyard (\u2018For sale\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times<\/em>, 1 June 1903, p.3), and in the period 1903\u201308 he had a mortgage on a 98-acre block at Natone near Hampshire, which would have been a handy base for his hunting activities (Assessment rolls, Hobart Gazette<\/em>, 8 December 1903, p.2080; 5 December 1905, p.1847; Tasmanian Government Gazette<\/em>, 12 November 1907, p.1951; and 30 June 1908, p.739). Wise\u2019s Tasmanian Post Office directory<\/em> placed him at Guildford Junction in 1905 (p.61) and 1906 (p.61). \u2018Veritas\u2019 placed him at the Hatfield Plains south-east of Waratah in 1905 (\u2018Veritas\u2019, \u2018The lost youth Bert Hanson\u2019).<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> \u2018Burnie\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times,<\/em> 21 November 1900, p.2.<\/p>\n [17]<\/a> \u2018Inland wires\u2019, Examiner,<\/em> 14 December 1900, p.7.<\/p>\n [18]<\/a> \u2018Burnie\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times<\/em>, 18 October 1901, p.2.<\/p>\n [19]<\/a> \u2018Veritas\u2019, \u2018The lost youth Bert Hanson\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>