John Gavin (convict)

John Gavin was the first European settler – and child – to be legally executed in colonial Western Australia. He was executed for murder at the age of fifteen.

Life

Born in 1829, Gavin was convicted of an offence while still a juvenile, and was transported to Western Australia as a Parkhurst apprentice, arriving on board Shepherd in October 1843.
On 3 April 1844, he was tried for the murder of his employer's son, 15-year-old George Pollard. He confessed to killing the sleeping victim with an adze, but he seemed unaware of a rational motive. Three days later he was publicly hanged outside the Round House in Fremantle "on a gallows erected north of the Round House entrance." After a death mask had been taken and his brain studied for "scientific purposes" he was buried in the sand hills to the south without a ceremony.