Growing up in a poor household with an abusive father, Nesbitt turned to crime at a young age and had been in and out of jail for petty theft since he was a teenager.

Little is known about their relationship in Pentridge except that a day was added to Nesbitt’s sentence for ‘taking tea to Prisoner Scott’.

[1] In late October 1879, Andrew George Scott led a group of men out of Melbourne looking for work.

This group included Nesbitt, 19-year-old Frank Johns, 22-year-old ex-con Thomas Rogan and young 15-year-old Augustus Warnecke.

[1] One police officer, Constable Bowen, was mortally wounded in the gunfight; it is unknown who shot him but forensic evidence suggests it was not Scott or Nesbitt.