The Last Outlaw: Making a Nation from the Crimes of Jimmy Governor

Funding: 2017: $77,000
2018: $83,000
2019: $79,000

Project Member(s): Biber, K.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Australian Research Council (ARC Discovery Projects)

Start year: 2017

Summary: Australian Federation laid the foundations for the nation’s legal institutions under the rule of law. Drawing upon previously unexamined sources, this project provides new knowledge about practices of punishment, surveillance and imprisonment in the emerging nation, and an important history of the rules of evidence and criminal procedure. The project examines the case of the Aboriginal serial killer, Jimmy Governor, who was outlawed and later convicted of multiple murders on the threshold of Federation, in 1900. Through Governor’s legal history, the project produces an authoritative account of the law, and law’s outsiders, at a crucial historical moment.

FOR Codes: Legal Institutions (incl. Courts and Justice Systems), Law and Society, History and Philosophy of Law and Justice, Legal Processes, Criminal Justice, Understanding Australia's Past, Law and society and socio-legal research, Understanding Australia¿¿¿s past

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.