This is the second of two pieces to be published by Dr Robyn Smith that draw on her research of massacres and the enslavement of women in the Northern Territory.

In 1884, Northern Territory government resident, John Langdon Parsons, had the melancholy duty of relaying to Adelaide details of what became known as the Daly River Copper Mine outrage in which four white men were attacked by Woolwonga people on whose land they were mining.

Revenge reprisals — which were ordered and armed by the South Australian government — were arranged and dispatched with alacrity.

We will never know the exact number of men, women and children murdered by state-sanctioned vigilantes.

Inspector Paul Foelsche travelled to the Daly River in the police launch and just happened to be in the company of vice regal personage.

None other than the Duke of Manchester was present and, we can safely assume, took part in picking off the fleeing human quarry.

The usually discreet Foelsche was good enough to provide proof of the Duke’s presence.

The Duke of Manchester at Glencoe Station, 1884. LANT Collection.

Speaking later from the comfort of the Government Residence in Darwin after a toast to his health, His Grace said the following.

“…thought that, if it was possible, his words should go out to the world; but at any rate England should hear how her sons in this distant portion of Her Majesty’s dominions received calmly — but at the same time with deep feeling — the news of the deaths of well-known men, who had perished while endeavouring to establish a new industry. No rage of revenge has been shown, but simply the desire to teach the natives that they cannot perpetrate outrages of that kind on the whites with impunity.”

This is a perfect example of fanciful euphemistic language used to disguise the truth of frontier massacres and other atrocities routinely perpetrated throughout the British empire.

A “rage of revenge” is exactly what was practised.

This was the 7th Duke of Manchester, the title having been created by King George 1 in 1719.

His name was William Drogo Montagu and in addition to his fancy title, he represented the divisions of Bewdley (1848-1852) and Huntingdonshire (1852-1855) for the Conservatives in the Houses of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster.

His final speech was made in 1883 in the House of Lords.

Presence in the Lords is by appointment for life rather than election, as one would expect. How else would aristocratic dominance be maintained in one of the greatest so-called democracies on the planet?

The family estate was Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire.

In these respects, the duke was no different from (m)any of his peers.

After all, fathering illegitimate children was a national sport for the British aristocracy and, in that pursuit, His Grace was no exception.

His enduring global legacy, however, appears to have been a descent line of men with a genetic predisposition to criminality.

Take the present incumbent.

Alexander Charles David Drogo Montagu is the 13th Duke of Manchester who never got to reside in Kimbolton Castle because it was sold in 1951.

Born in 1962, he is a dual Australian and British citizen who was banged up in Nevada USA for five years on a conviction for attempted burglary.

Young Alexander ascended to the dizzying heights of Dukedom in 2002.

His name, however, has not appeared on the Roll of the Peerage since July 2022, which indicates that he perhaps soiled his nest or, in the alternative, is required to convince the keepers of the Roll that he is, indeed, who he claims to be.

According to Virginia Blackburn of the UK Express, Montagu’s father, great grandfather and great uncle were also incarcerated for various criminal indiscretions.

Of the present duke, she wrote: “He last made the headlines [in 2015]…when his first wife claimed his signature on their divorce papers was forged, which would have made him a bigamist twice over.

“Before this case he had been jailed twice (for fraud in Australia) and deported once (from Canada).

“The British aristocracy is full of ‘colourful’ characters and you don’t get more colourful than this.”

‘Colourful’ isn’t quite the word that comes to mind.

And it would seem that ties to northern Australia did not die with the vigilante 7th Duke of Manchester in 1890 because, as Blackburn continued:

“He [Alexander] was born and brought up in Australia, where his father Angus, who later became the 12th duke, was married to Mary McClure, known as Madcap Mary, the first of his four wives.

“Angus was a piece of work himself: he wrestled crocodiles and worked in a bar to make some money and after Alex was born in 1962 two more children came along.“

Hardly the Timbertop experience of King Charles, but never mind.

In any event, it seems that family ties to sex, crime, slavery (the 5th Duke was Governor of Jamaica 1808-1827) and murder form part of the DNA of their collective Graces who paint a self-portrait that becomes uglier the longer one gazes upon its voraciously deviant subject matter.

Such was the nature of Australia’s frontiersmen.

Their Graces leave us with a quandary: was Corporal George Montagu of South Australia’s Northern Territory Mounted Police part of this august collection of colonials? He engaged in multiple reprisal massacres.

Perhaps it did run in the family.

Dr Robyn Smith is the author of Licence to Kill: massacre men of Australia’s north, which will feature at the NT Writer’s Festival on Sunday June 30. It is the culmination of Dr Smith’s years of research on colonial frontier massacres across the north of Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory, as part of the University of Newcastle’s Colonial Frontier Massacres mapping team led by the late Professor Lyndall Ryan.

Licence to Kill: massacre men of Australia’s north is available from the Historical Society of the Northern Territory website.

Dr Smith is also a Conjoint Fellow at the University of Newcastle, a PhD (Political History), Master of Cultural Heritage and Bachelor of Arts (Journalism & Anthropology) from Darwin. She is well written on the history, heritage and politics of the Northern Territory and is presently researching frontier massacre sites.