Captain Sir Charles Hotham KCB (14 January 1806 – 31 December 1855)[1] was Lieutenant-Governor and, later, Governor of Victoria, Australia from 22 June 1854 to 10 November 1855.

He was in command of the steam sloop HMS Gorgon which ran aground in Montevideo Bay in May 1844 and showed skill and determination in getting her refloated by November.

Hotham found that the finances of the colony were in great disorder, there was a prospective deficiency of over £1,000,000, and a bad system had grown up of advances being made to the various departments under the title of "imprests".

His efforts at retrenchment brought Hotham much unpopularity, but on questions of finance he was always sound and great improvements in this regard were made during his short term of office.

According to historian Geoffrey Blainey "It was perhaps the most generous concession offered by a governor to a major opponent in the history of Australia up to that time.

Hotham was a naval officer who had been used to strict discipline, and though he eventually realised that the arrogance of the officials who were administering the law was largely responsible for the trouble, when, on 25 November 1854, a deputation waited on him to demand the release of some diggers who had been arrested, he took the firm stand that a properly worded memorial would receive consideration, but none could be given to "demands".

It was a time of great excitement in Melbourne, and the governor was convinced that designing men were behind the movement who hoped to bring about a state of anarchy.

The first eye witness account[4] of the Massacre at the Eureka Stockade in December 1854 was published just a year after the event, by Raffaello Carboni.

On 30 November 1854, Carboni, Father Smyth and George Black (newspaper editor), from the Central Council of the Eureka Rebels, asked Ballarat Goldfields Commissioner Rede to call off the licence hunts which had intensified on Hotham's secret orders and which were enraging miners.

H. V. Evatt, an esteemed legal mind of mid 20th century puts the blame for the massacre on Hotham's deliberate duplicity (p.xvi).

He wrote that at that stage there was confidence about a resolution of the matter without bloodshed, but that was only because Hotham had told the miners and police and military, different things.

The prisoners appealed to Hotham, 'There is a paragraph in our petition to the effect, that if 'His Excellency had found sufficient extenuation in the conduct of American citizens', we thought there were equally good grounds for extending similar clemency to all, irrespective of nationality ….