The Gentleman Bushranger

In the summer of 1840, the colony of New South Wales was at a crossroads. Convict misery and squatter wealth sat side by side and nowhere was this more evident than in the Hunter Valley. Out of the brutal iron gangs emerged an unlikely hero. A Jewish stableboy from Gravesend, Teddy Davis was not your typical bushranger. He was a gentleman of the road - a charismatic leader who staged mock trials to punish cruel overseers, dined with his victims, and adorned his gang and their horses with stolen pink ribbons. Davis and his fellow outlaws waged a psychological war against the colonial establishment: rob the master, feed the servant, and spill no blood.

But in the heat of a December morning at Scone, the gentleman's code was shattered by a single bullet. What followed was one of the most dramatic manhunts in Australian history. A gruelling fifty-mile pursuit by the relentless police magistrate Edward Denny Day ended in a fierce firefight in the mud of Doughboy Hollow.

Former Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi AM KC tells the gripping, tragically true story of a man who tried to be a Robin Hood in a world that only wanted a hanging.

Mark Tedeschi AM KC is the former Senior Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales. He prosecuted some of the most high-profile criminal trials over a period of more than 30 years. He has also worked as a defence counsel and participated in major public inquiries. He is the author of four true crime books: Eugenia, Kidnapped, Murder at Myall Creek, and Missing, Presumed Dead.

Mark Tedeschi
Published February 2027
Paperback
352 pages 
234mm x 153mm
ISBN: 9781761474576