Obituaries Australia

Arthur Manning, n.d.

State Library of Queensland, 117288

News was received a day or two ago of the death, in Sydney, of Mr Arthur Wilcox Manning, formerly Under Colonial Secretary of Queensland. Since the year 1869, when Mr Manning retired from office, he has drawn by way of pension from the taxpayers of Queensland no less a sum than £18,000, the whole of which he spent in the mother colony. The pension was paid under the authority of a special Act passed by the Parliament of 1869. In that year Manning was Under Colonial Secretary. One day there entered his office another Civil servant named Frank Sydney Bowerman, who for some time had been Police Magistrate and Clerk of Petty Sessions at Leyburn. Bowerman had some real or fancied grievance against his official superior, and he wished to discuss his trouble with Manning, but the latter refused to listen to him, and, turning to his desk, resumed his work. Thereupon Bowerman produced a tomahawk, with which he attacked Manning, inflicting terrible wounds. Parliament in a fit of generosity voted Manning a pension of £600 a year for life, and further ordered that a pension of £300 a year for life should be paid to his wife should she survive him.