'Liberty or Life!': The Convict Pirates of the Wellington

'We very seldom attend the public executions of criminals, wrote Edward Smith Hall of the 'Monitor' newspaper in Sydney, New South Wales, in March 1827, 'because we have found that we experience on such occasions more of the feelings of horror than of sympathy'. But this time, he continued, when 'we raised our eyes to view the five men who suffered on Monday last … we could not look up at the victims trembling on the fatal scaffold without weeping. The crowd, too, were murmuring, said Hall, 'some asking "what are they hanged for – do they suffer for sparing men's lives?" and others, "is this the way to reward humanity?"