JAMES DUNCAN

James Duncan was born in London in 1824, and claimed to have arrived in Australia a free man, per the ship Lord Lyndoch in 1840.

By the early 1850's he was living in the Keilor Plains - Black Forest region of Victoria where he apparently received some training in bushranging with his accomplices, James Morgan and John James. As a consequence of this association he was involved in the gold robbery from the ship 'Nelson' in 1852, described in the story on John James.

Duncan was arrested at the Ocean Child Inn, in Williamstown while still in his bed, and on the 28 May 1852, sentenced to fifteen years on the roads, the first three in irons. His prison record shows that he was anything but a model prisoner and contains a continuous account of offences and punishments. By late 1858 he must have decided he'd had enough of prison and keeping his nose clean was released on 27 March 1860 on a ticket-of-leave to the Keilor district.

For the next five years he either kept out of trouble or had not been caught. On the 15 September 1865, he was charged with 'burglary and stealing', in the Supreme Court, Melbourne, and sentenced to four years hard labour, with a minimum of three years and ten months to be served.

Duncan did not enjoy his stay in gaol once more and in June 1866 was given six months in irons for attempting to escape. Despite more misbehaviour, he was finally released on 3 February 1870.

But once more he could not stay out of trouble and after burgling a jeweller's shop in Bourke Street, Melbourne, was sentenced on 16 May 1870 to ten years on the roads. On the 7 June 1870 he was sent to Pentridge to serve out his sentence. He was now forty-six years of age and appears to have behaved himself during this time having only two offences recorded against him. But fate struck and on the last recorded entry it states that at the inquest into his death on 16 December 1875, he had died from an 'Abscess on the liver'.