Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 – 1899), Saturday 8 October 1853, page 2

MELBOURNE.

The two prisoners, Patrick O’Connor and Henry Bradley, are both finally committed for trial. They are both committed on two distinct charges of attempt to murder. From what we have heard, there is every probability that they will plead guilty. O’Connor came to Australia in the year 1850, in the ship Deslandes. He is a native of Galway, and was transported to Van Diemen’s Land, but escaped to Adelaide. There he was apprehended on two or three several charges of murdering a shepherd and robbery with violence. The evidence of the murder was pretty clear, but he was acquitted. He was convicted, however, of robbery with violence, and transported to Van Diemen’s Land for life. Bradley arrived in Australia in 1840, in the ship Joseph Soames. He came here as an exile. By an exile is meant one who has been in one of the English model prisons, and who is considered to be reformed. As a specimen of his reformation we give his own words— “In about two weeks after I arrived in Australia, I committed a robbery and got caught. For that they sent me for twelve months to Van Diemen’s Land. I escaped from that and they caught me again, and then they sentenced me for life.”