Charles Hotham

Captain Sir Charles Hotham KCB (14 January 180631 December 1855) was Lieutenant-Governor and, later, Governor of Victoria, Australia from 22 June 1854 to 10 November 1855.

Early life

Hotham was born at Dennington, Suffolk, England. His father was Rev. Frederick Hotham, prebendary of Rochester, and his mother was Anne Elizabeth (née Hodges).

One of the lieutenants on board was the future Admiral Sir Astley Cooper Key. of the Massacre at the Eureka Stockade in December 1854 was published just a year after the event, by Raffaello Carboni. He was a principal Rebel, multilingual and better educated than most. He was in no doubt that the man most responsible for the massacre was Lieutenant-Governor Charles Hotham.

On 30 November 1854, Carboni, Father Smyth and George Black (newspaper editor), from the Central Council of the Eureka Rebels, asked Ballarat Goldfields Commissioner Rede to call off the licence hunts which had intensified on Hotham's secret orders and which were enraging miners. Rede said that 'the licence is a mere cloak to cover a democratic revolution'. Carboni wrote that Rede was 'only a marionette ... before us. Each of his words, each of his movements, was the vibration of the telegraph wires directed from Toorak' (p. xiii). H. V. Evatt, an esteemed legal mind of mid 20th century puts the blame for the massacre on Hotham's deliberate duplicity (p.xvi).

Carboni left the Stockade about midnight. He wrote that at that stage there was confidence about a resolution of the matter without bloodshed, but that was only because Hotham had told the miners and police and military, different things. No one was expecting an assault from the military and police Camp. He also wrote 'It was perfectly understood, and openly declared ... that we meant to organise for defence, and that we had taken up arms for no other purpose'. (p. 67). And 'the spies being sent from the Camp to enrol themselves amongst the insurgents, and who, report says, urged them to attack the Camp, which was repudiated by the diggers - they saying they would act upon the defensive'. (p. 132).

Carboni, with 18 others, was put on trial for his life. Hotham directed that American Rebels, some of whom were very prominent, not be prosecuted. He gave them an amnesty; but not quite all, the African American John Joseph was abandoned by Hotham and American officials. The prisoners appealed to Hotham, 'There is a paragraph in our petition to the effect, that if 'His Excellency had found sufficient extenuation in the conduct of American citizens', we thought there were equally good grounds for extending similar clemency to all, irrespective of nationality .... it is a violation of the very principle enunciated by His Excellency in his report, viz.'That it is the duty of a Government to administer equal justice to all' (p. 134). There was a Royal Commission into the Massacre and Hotham wasn't blamed, probably because Hotham's critics were not heard. Hotham's post was raised to a full governorship on 3 February 1855.

Later life

Hotham, whose health was failing, caught a chill on 17 December 1855 while opening the Melbourne Gasworks. He died two weeks later on 31 December,