Gottlieb Eichhorn

A Sixteen Year Old Boy. A Colony's First. A Walk to the Gallows Alone.
On Sunday 8 March 1874, an elderly widow named Charlotte Chapman was attacked near her home at Saumarez. She was seventy-two years old. The man who attacked her was barely a man at all — Gottlieb Eichhorn was sixteen years old, illiterate, and had spent his entire short life isolated on a farm, unable to mix with other children, wandering the district unsupervised while his peers went to school.
Charlotte Chapman fought for her life for nearly two months. She died at her residence on 2 May 1874. And with her death, Gottlieb Eichhorn's fate was sealed.
Seven weeks later, on 23 June 1874, Gottlieb Eichhorn walked to the gallows of Armidale Gaol — making history as the first person ever executed behind its walls. He was still sixteen years old. His family, having turned their backs on him the moment he was convicted, did not come to say goodbye. He faced Nosey Bob, New South Wales' infamous state executioner, completely and utterly alone.
The Life & Death of Gottlieb Eichhorn tells the complete true story of one of colonial Australia's most haunting executions — a boy who was the first generation of German-Australian, the bridge between the old world and the new, who never had the chance to find his place in either. Author Helen Cottee traces every chapter of both Gottlieb's short life and Charlotte Chapman's long one — from their very different beginnings to their devastating collision at Saumarez in the autumn of 1874.
Drawing on court transcripts, police files, inquest records and newspaper reports, this meticulously researched account reconstructs the attack, the inquest, the trial and the execution with unflinching honesty and deep humanity. Richly illustrated with historical photographs, maps and documents sourced directly from colonial records, the book concludes with the complete family trees of both Gottlieb Eichhorn and Charlotte Chapman — honouring the memory of a woman who deserved better, and telling the full story of a boy whom history has all but forgotten.
Part of the Life & Death series — preserving the untold stories of colonial Australia, one execution at a time.
For readers who believe that even the most forgotten lives — however brief, however troubled — deserve to be remembered.