John Foley was a bushranger and associate of Fred Lowry. In July 1863 they robbed several mail coaches, including the Mudgee mail robbery which netted £5,700 in bank-notes. Foley was captured several weeks later with bank-notes from the Mudgee mail in his possession. He was tried at Bathurst and sentenced to fifteen-years hard labour. Foley was released in 1873; he settled in the Black Springs district near Oberon and led a respectable life until his death in 1891.
John Foley, photographed in September 1873 (from his prison discharge file).
’The Mudgee mail arrives at its destination (!)’, a satirical response to the lucrative mail-coach robbery by Lowry and Foley (Melbourne Punch, November 1863).
Thomas Frederick Lowry, better known as Fred Lowry, was an Australian bushranger whose crimes included horse theft, mail-coach robbery, prison escape, and assault with a deadly weapon. Lowry briefly rode with the Gardiner–Hall gang, but soon afterwards formed his own gang with John Foley.
Illustration of Fred Lowry by Samuel Calvert (Illustrated Melbourne Post, October 1863)
The Cockatoo Island prison, Sydney Harbour, where Fred Lowry was sentenced to five years' hard labour for horse-stealing in 1858
The courthouse and goal at Bathurst (photographed in the early 1870s)
'The Mudgee mail arrives at its destination (!)', a satirical response to the lucrative mail-coach robbery by Lowry and Foley (Melbourne Punch, November 1863)