Joseph Luker (c. 1765 – 26 August 1803) (also spelt Lucar and Looker) was a British convict transported to the Colony of New South Wales on the 12-gun sailing ship Atlantic as part of the Third Fleet.
On the evening of 25/26 August 1803, while investigating a robbery he was beaten to death, becoming the first police officer killed in the line of duty in Australia.
Luker and an accomplice James Roche, on 23 June 1789, were apprehended with 84 pounds of lead, worth 10 shillings (equivalent to £77.64 in 2023),[1] that had been removed from the guttering of the house of George Dowling in Mile End New Town, England.
[2] On 27 March 1791, Luker departed from Portsmouth, England, aboard the 12-gun sailing ship Atlantic, part of the Third Fleet.
[5] On the evening of 25 August 1803, Mary Breeze's brothel was robbed, the thieves getting away with a portable desk, containing legal documents and 24 guineas (equivalent to £2,906.79 in 2023),[1] this being only one of a number of robberies that had taken place in the area.
[6] Luker's body was found before dawn on 26 August 1803, behind Breeze's establishment at Back Row East (now Phillip Street, Sydney).
[8] Luker had implicated his fellow constable Isaac Simmonds in the robbery, when talking with Breeze during the evening before he died.
Simmonds was acquitted at trial for insufficient evidence after convincing the court that the bloodstains on the clothes were caused by his regular nosebleeds.
This was followed by a "public clamour",[8] and within an hour of that response Governor King claimed divine intervention and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
Franks believes that the only reason Luker is mentioned in these narratives at all is because he was the first officer of the law to be killed in the line of duty in Australia.
The epitaph was transcribed in the Sydney Gazette on 6 November 1803:[14] Sacred to the Memory of Joseph Luker, Constable; Assassinated Aug 19, 1803, Aged 35 Years Resurrexit in Deo My midnight’s Vigils are no more, Cold Sleep and Peace succeed The Pangs of Death are past and o’er, My Wounds no longer bleed.