In the Name of the Law

In 1891 Mounted Constable William Willshire, the Officer in Charge of the Native Police, was arrested for the murder of two Aboriginal men. His career was centred in the Northern Territory during the 1880s and 1890s then administered by South Australia. He commanded the Central Australian corps of Native Police, initially under South Australian and later under the Northern Territory administration, from its establishment in November 1884 until his arrest for murder in April 1891. With Aboriginal resistance to European incursions upon their land was at its height, it escalated the hardening of racial attitudes and national sentiment. The authors examine the qualities, strengths and weaknesses of this man against the changing times he was living through.