Captain Thomas Edward Wright, soldier and penal administrator, of the 39th Regiment was the third commandant of the second

convict settlement A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer t ...

at Norfolk Island, from August 1827 to 1828. He is reported, by Aaron Price, a

convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as " prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former conv ...

turned Constable and Overseer, to have replaced the

chain-gang A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was no ...

's heavy irons with light irons, and encouraged the breaking of land for agriculture. In October 1827, while walking home from a farm unarmed, Wright was assaulted with a club by an absconded convict, Patrick Clynch, but was able to fend off the blow. Clynch made several more attacks in the following days on overseers and guards, and was eventually shot dead. Although the matter was investigated at the time, it flared up more than a year later, when Wright was accused of ordering Clynch to be shot although he knew he was already in custody. He was tried for murder but the prosecution case (led by W. C. Wentworth) collapsed as it had been, according to Governor Darling, "supported by the most palpable perjury on the part of one witness". The affair led to Wright's recall, and his actions and those of Governor Darling were vilified by local newspaper editor E. S. Hall.

References

* Hazzard, Margaret, ''Punishment Short of Death: a history of the penal settlement at Norfolk Island'', Melbourne, Hyland, 1984. ()

External links

Colonial Secretary's papers 1822-1877
State Library of Queensland- includes digitised correspondence and letters written by Wright to the

Colonial Secretary of New South Wales Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 ...

Norfolk Island penal colony administrators {{NorfolkIsland-bio-stub