Henry Inman (police officer)

His father, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, sailed in Australian waters in 1803 as astronomer for Matthew Flinders.

In 1833, at age 17, Inman enlisted for the Portuguese Liberal Wars, in which England was formally neutral, first serving at the court of Empress Dona Maria II of Portugal, and then as a cadet lancer.

Returning to England in 1834, in 1835 he joined the British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War in Spain as a lieutenant in 1st (Queen Isabella's) Lancers, commanded by William Wakefield.

For individual gallantry in action Inman was awarded the Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand, then later promoted to captain and adjutant of the 8th Regiment.

[2] Arriving in January 1838, for the next four months Inman entered a short-lived partnership as a commission agent with two former Royal Admiral shipmates, Porter Helmore and Charles Calton.

Hack knew that the first Governor of South Australia, John Hindmarsh, had already sought permission from Lord Glenelg to form a police force, and was preparing a cost estimate.

[4] The Colonization Commissioners had originally postponed forming a regular police force, due to expense and lack of expected criminality from the initial cohort of free settlers; so there were only a few part-time special constables, plus a small guard of disgruntled Royal Marines attached to the Governor.

Unbeknown to those in Adelaide, in June 1838 the Colonization Commissioners recruited from the London police two experienced sub-inspectors, James Stuart and William Baker Ashton, who were intended to create the force.

[9] Tall and lanky, the strong and courageous Inman was an active and effective field commander, personally leading many investigations in the pursuit of bushrangers and other offenders.

However, he was such a disappointment as an administrator and financial manager that Gawler appointed a four-man Board of Police Commissioners in December 1839 to ensure oversight of the force.

Mary was the daughter of Captain Thomas Lipson RN (1783–1863) and Elizabeth Emma Fooks (1790–1880), and was born at Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, Bretagne (Brittany), France, on 27 March 1820, while her father was on half-pay from the British Royal Navy.

Seven weeks later, on 16 April 1841, at Chowilla near the NSW-SA border, about 300–400 Aboriginals, enraged by earlier clashes with violent overlanders, attacked the weak party.

In June 1841, Inman was appointed by Governor George Grey as one of the four captains of the special constable volunteers in a 68-man police expedition, led by O’Halloran, that returned to the attack site to recover the sheep and protect other overlanders then due, in particular the party of Charles Langhorne (1812–1855).

Upon arrival they found that Langhorne's party had been attacked at the Rufus River two days earlier, on 20 June 1841, resulting in the deaths of five Aboriginals and four Europeans.

Their third son, Edward Master Lipson Inman, a Lieutenant in the 60th King's Royal Rifles, was killed in action, aged 27, on 28 January 1881 in the heroic charge at the Battle of Laing's Nek, Natal, South Africa, during the First Boer War.