John Henry Fleming (27 March 1816 – 20 August 1894) was an Australian-born squatter and stockman, who is best known as being the ringleader of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre which resulted in the murder of at least twenty-eight unarmed members of the Wirraayaraay people, Indigenous Australians who spoke a Gamilaraay language.
[3][2] In the mid-1830s, Hall with the help of the Fleming brothers, expanded his family's pastoral assets by appropriating large segments of land along the upper Namoi River at Cuerindi and Mundowey, near the modern day town of Manilla.
[2][1] Fleming's gang arrived at the Myall Creek property held by Henry Dangar, where they heard that a large number of Aboriginal people were camped.
[1] Fleming, being the only free man of the group, was clearly identified as the leader of the gang and, with the help of John Russell, he tied the Aboriginal people together on a long tether rope and led them away.
On the party's return to Myall two days later, Fleming ordered the dismembering and burning of the corpses before resuming the search for the remaining people, who had gone to Peter MacIntyre's station at Keera, 30 kilometres to the south-east.
[2][4] When the manager of Myall Creek, William Hobbs, and the overseer of a neighbouring station, Thomas Foster, discovered the approximately twenty-eight bodies, they decided to inform a local squatter Frederick Foot.
Supported by the Attorney General, John Plunkett, Gipps ordered Police Magistrate Edward Denny Day at Muswellbrook to investigate the massacre.
Legends of Fleming then boarding a ship for Van Diemen's Land where he hid out have been shown to be false, a story invented to mask his true whereabouts.
[1][4][2] Despite seven members of his gang later being found guilty at trial and hanged for the killings at Myall Creek, and despite the reward for his capture still being active, Fleming was soon able to come out of hiding and live a normal life, seemingly without any fear of arrest.
[5] Fleming was also able to continue to maintain his pastoral interests, owning considerable amounts of livestock on northern frontier leaseholds associated with his brother.
[6] It has been postulated that Fleming also continued to work as a stockman on his brother's northern properties, particularly at Talavera, near Surat, where there was bloody conflict with the local Aboriginal population.
In 1882, he became a Justice of the peace, despite a member of parliament, Joseph Palmer Abbott, raising the issue of Fleming's involvement in the Myall Creek massacre.