Owen Suffolk

Who is Owen Suffolk?

Owen Suffolk an Australian bushranger, poet, confidence-man and author of Days of Crime and Years of Suffering.

Born in comfortable circumstances in Finchley, Middlesex, Suffolk was sent to sea as a youth when his father was ruined, and on return found himself homeless and fell into a life of crime. Charged with stealing in 1844 and sentenced to a year’s detention he was then convicted of forgery in 1846 serving time in Newgate, Millbank and Coldbath Fields prisons before being transported in 1847. In Victoria, Australia by his own account he led a colorful life as a bushman, bushranger thief, prison identity and repeat offender. In his third period of incarceration commencing in 1858 he began his autobiography.

In July, 1866, Suffolk received a ticket of leave, his third in Victoria, and a full pardon on board the Norfolk bound for London on 20 September 1866. This pardon was conditional on his not returning to Australia. Suffolk thus obtained the neat distinction of having twice been made an exile. His story published in the Australasian newspaper in 1867 was well-written, racy and a powerful account of criminal and prison life by an insider, one that squared well with the popular fiction of the day. His account of family misfortune, ill-treatment at school and at sea, subsequent misadventures, romantic interludes and descent into vagrancy and crime in London, reads like a misplaced Charles Dickens plot. In Australia he tells of his youthful infatuation with crime, bush ranging and difficulties in finding honest work, and the hardships, injustices and folklore of prison life.