Over the next few weeks, The Daily Advertiser will be taking a look back at some of Wagga's most notorious criminals from days gone by.
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Today, we bring you the story of John Buckley, who was charged with stealing a two gallon jar of whiskey on October 8, 1898.
Born in 1864, Buckley worked as a labourer on a station in Wagga prior to being arrested for stealing.
The whiskey in question belonged to a man known only as P Moran, and mysteriously went missing from his delivery cart while it was parked in front of the Squatters’ Hotel.
After receiving a tip-off about the missing whiskey, plain-clothes police officer Constable Hansen went looking for clues in a North Wagga paddock, where he found several men “in a more or less helpless state of intoxication”, according to an 1898 edition of The Daily Advertiser.
Disguised as a civilian, Constable Hansen asked Buckley for a drink; however, Buckley must have guessed who the man was and, after some whispering to his friends, denied his request.
Later on, Constable Hansen returned to investigate and found Buckley and his friends in possession of a billy and a pannikin – a small metal drinking cup.
Not far from Buckley, Constable Hansen also found the stolen jar of whiskey planted in a hollow log of a tree; however, by that point, the jar had been all but emptied of its contents.
Buckley faced Wagga Police Court and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and hard labour in Goulburn Jail.
Buckley received quite a bit of media attention after the incident, with his drunken antics making it into the local paper the next day.