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solitary confinement. Marks, who claimed he was of previous good character, received two years. Carrah got the stolen tobacco back.
    For a time, it did not seem that dobbing in his mates had done Colquhoun any good at all. Sentencing him to five years’ hard labour, also with periods of solitary confinement, far harsher than a decent dobber could expect, the chief justice was particularly severe:
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    Your conduct has aggravated this offence since it shows you are a treacherous and disloyal person. Your conduct has been that of a man who finding himself in a trap desired to get out as easily as possible.
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    Of course, this did not do much to encourage men to dob in their mates but, in the end, it turned out all right for Colquhoun if not for the citizens of South and Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. The authorities, grateful that he had helped put away O’Neill, released him after a matter of months, gave him a reward and exiled him to Western Australia.
    On 30 December 1896, along with Jens Christian Jansen, he escaped from Yatala Prison, where he was serving six years for burglary. Two years later he was recaptured. In February 1906 he and a George Mahoney were found with dynamite and revolvers in Brisbane, and sentenced to fifteen years apiece. Colquhoun was still wanted in Melbourne for the attempted murder of a greengrocer, Robert King, whom he shot in the shoulder during an attempted robbery when King had found him coming down the stairs with a cashbox. It was thought that when Colquhoun was eventually released, the authorities might have him extradited. It never came to that because King was deemed too ill from his injuries to give evidence.
    In November 1911, along with a John Jones—also known as McIntyre, who was serving a seven-year sentence for robbery and breaking—Colquhoun escaped again, this time from St Helena, an honour prison in Moreton Bay. Apparently suffering from cramps, Jones had been taken to the prison hospital, where Colquhoun worked. The next morning they were discovered to be gone and an officer in charge of the lighthouse reported seeing a small motor boat towing a dinghy. That was a red herring because the pair had failed to get off the island and were captured a fortnight later.
    The best or worst (depending upon one’s viewpoint) of Western Australia’s criminals tended to gravitate east. In 1901 Edward Sutcliffe was sentenced to three years for a robbery under arms when he, along with William James and Angus Taylor, stole a safe containing more than £200 from the Abbotts Hotel, in Murchison, Western Australia. A crowd gathered to watch as they loaded it on to a buggy, and Sutcliffe threatened to shoot anyone who intervened. The three of them later forced the landlord to have a drink with them in the hotel bar before they made off with the money.
    After being apprehended and tried, Sutcliffe, who had seven previous convictions, was not pleased with the verdict or the sentence, telling the judge, ‘You are sentencing us because we‘ve been in gaol before. This is British Justice I suppose.’ William James, who had previous sentences totalling twenty years, received another five, and Taylor three. James and Taylor remained in Western Australia, committing petty thefts, for the next few years, while, in 1902, Sutcliffe led a short-lived riot in a protest over conditions in Fremantle Gaol.
    On his release, in May 1904, he immediately made his way to the goldfields, where he was arrested after trying to rob a camp in Brookman Street, Kalgoorlie. He was caught red-handed, and fractured the skull of butcher Henry Boyt as he tried to escape. He ran an alibi defence, saying he had been in the Home from Home Hotel that night, but in June was sentenced to seven years and twenty-five lashes. He promptly escaped from the Kalgoorlie lockup and, although it was known he had gone east, was never seen again.
    The Kalgoorlie lockup was by no means as secure