Michael Howe (1787 – 21 October 1818) was a British convict who became a notorious bushranger and gang leader in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Australia.
Howe found means of sending a letter to Governor Sorell offering to surrender and give information about his former associates on condition that he should be pardoned.
For nearly a year he hid in the bush, but needing ammunition, on 21 October 1818 he was decoyed to a hut where William Pugh of the 48th regiment and a stock-keeper, Thomas Worrall, were hidden.
and fired; I slapped at him, and I believe hit him, for he staggered, but rallied again, and was clearing the bank between me and him when Pugh ran up, and with the butt end of his firelock knocked him down, jumped after him, and battered his brains out just as he was opening a clasp-knife to defend himself.
Many of the bones appeared above ground, either from the effects of time and weather, or animals of prey, William Patterson, Superintendent of Convicts, took the pains to collect them together, to inter them in a deeper grave, and to distinguish the spot by a large stone and other memorials of the dead.
As Carlo Canteri wrote in his Origins of Australian Social Banditry, "...a complete exposure of all the bushrangers, interconnecting linkages would shake Van Diemen's Land to its very rum-cellars."
In 1818, T. E. Wells, a cousin of Samuel Marsden, wrote an account of Howe's life and crimes, called The Last and Worst of the Bushrangers of Van Diemen's Land.
Titled Michael Howe, The Terror of Van Diemen's Land, it used William Wentworth's writings on Australia as its source material, and premiered at The Old Vic in London in 1821.
Dr Robert Espie claimed to have dissected Howe's body and placed his thigh bone in the wall of his house at Sayes Comb, Tasmania.
[14] Frank and Philip Pitt had a volume returned that Howe had stolen and the book cover was secured with kangaroo skin and very neatly sewed with sinews.
[15] The Campbell Town museum once displayed a photograph of the original letter, written by Michael Howe, to Governor Thomas Davey in 1816, and signed by all the members of the gang.
[17] The film was directed by Brendan Cowell and starred Damon Herriman, Mirrah Foulkes, Rarriwuy Hick, Darren Gilshenan and Matt Day.