Edward George Back

Peter Conole 2010, 'Edward Back and Son', Fremantle History Society newsletter, Spring (January) - entire article follows ...

The father was Edward Back, born at Folkestone, County Kent, in 1815. The son was Edward George Back, who in colonial times became the quintessential ‘Freo’ police officer. He was born there, served as a constable there, was in charge of the Fremantle district twice and died there. Considerable attention has been given to the family lineage. The Backs appear to have been a labouring family in origin, from the village of Kennington, in County Kent. As immigrants they prospered to a considerable degree in Western Australia. Inspector Edward George Back, the son of Edward Back and his wife Paula (‘Poll’) Susanna Curtis (1807-1885), was sixth in descent in the direct male line from Thomas Back of Kennington. Edward Back arrived in Western Australia in the 1830s as a crew member on the Fanny, a vessel owned and skippered by Anthony Barnabas Curtis. Anthony was also an Englishman, the son of William and Mary Curtis. He had first arrived in WA in 1830 and, after father William passed away in 1835, brought some of his relatives out to the colony on the Fanny, including his mother and sister. Edward Back became acquainted with Anthony’s sister Paula Curtis, later to be known to family and friends alike as Poll Back. Edward married her at Fremantle in September 1837. They had a very large family, ten children in all, the last of whom was born in the year Poll turned 48.
Edward was a skilled seaman and sailing master and had no trouble earning a living. He held the position of Acting Harbour Master at Fremantle in 1842 and 1844 and acquired the courtesy title of ‘captain’. He obtained an appointment as Port Pilot of Rottnest Island in 1846. The stern and rough-edged Henry Vincent, Superintendent of the Native Establishment on Rottnest, built a cottage for the Backs in Thompson Bay. At this time in the colony’s history there was not much in the way of incoming or outgoing vessels to deal with, so Edward Back was required to do other work. He became a fisherman in order to provide additional food for the prisoners on the island.
Edward George Back was born in Fremantle on February 2, 1839. He acquired trade skills as a carpenter, associated himself with the Congregational Church established at Fremantle in 1853 and married at a fairly early age in 1861. His bride was Mary Ann Tourner (died 1899), the daughter of master tailor William Tourner, who had a rather colourful career while working for the Convict Establishment from 1854-1872. They had two sons, Edward William Thomas Back (1862-1945) and Ernest George Back (1868-1942), and one tragically short-lived daughter, Eliza Catherine Back (1864-1867). Edward George acquired property in Fremantle in 1865, but then decided to move sideways into steady employment as a colonial police officer. He was sworn in as a Constable in January, 1867. An interesting sidelight on the event is the identity and standing of the man who recommended him, Charles Symmons (1804-1887), at the time Resident Magistrate in Fremantle, a former Chief of Police in WA and one of the most noteworthy men in the colony, with family and personal connections in Britain reaching up into the highest echelons of the Victorian Age power elite. Over the next seven years Officer Back served at Perth, Newcastle (Toodyay), Northam, Fremantle and in the Vasse District in turn, mostly as a mounted trooper, but also as a foot patrol man or lock-up keeper. He acquired a reputation as a policeman of unflinching moral and physical courage. In 1867 Edward George, another constable and five prisoners took serious risks while putting out a bush fire near Toodyay. On another occasion, this time at Northam in 1872, Back distinguished himself during a major flood and was commended for ‘praiseworthy conduct in assisting to save lives’. In 1869 he had the pluck to arrest a wealthy and influential citizen, C.I.Monger, for offences related to irresponsible distribution of alcohol. The charges were dismissed, but the presiding magistrates criticised Monger and praised the police for doing the right thing. In passing, it is worth noting that Officer Back was commended or rewarded several times in his career for taking action against sly grog sellers and the like. Puritanism on his part was not at issue – some ‘spiritous liquors’ were real rot-gut and alcohol abuse in the colony caused anxiety in medical and governmental circles. Edward George was promoted rather speedily and seems to have been identified as a an intelligent organiser: he was placed in charge of the Vasse District as a Lance Sergeant in 1874 and moved to York with the same rank in 1879. There was an unpleasant incident there when a Constable Andrews, a notorious ‘tippler’, made a violent attack on Back and bit off part of his lower lip. The constable was dismissed and sentenced to a term in prison for the business, but Back suffered some disfigurement and took to wearing a small beard to cover the scars. Substantive promotion to Sergeant came in 1881 and then, in April 1884, he received the commissioned rank of Sub-Inspector and command of the police sub-district based on his home town, Fremantle. Edward George Back had ‘arrived’ – he now stood among the handful of very senior police officers in WA, one of the earliest locally born men to achieve such exalted status. The remainder of his fine career clearly demonstrated that in his case merit had triumphed.

References and Links

Peter Conole 2010, 'Policing the port in early colonial times', Fremantle Studies, 6: 12-28. The paper mentions (with a photo): 'Constable Edward Back of Fremantle - later Officer in Charge of the Port in the 1880s and 1890s. (WA Police)'. It's been confirmed by Dianne Dench, his g-g-granddaughter that he was the the son of the pilot Captain Edward Back.

Peter Conole 2010, 'Edward Back and Son', Fremantle History Society newsletter, January.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 8 February, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/backedwardgeorge.html (it was last updated on 15 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.