1832 - 1906

Robert Howard was one of Bondi’s most fascinating residents during the 1800s. He was born in Norwich, England in 1832 and migrated to Australia in 1861. He was reportedly six feet tall, blue eyed and handsome, and worked hard and profitably in Sydney for many years as the owner and driver of a hansom cab.

Disaster struck when one of his horses kicked him in the face. He acquired the nickname ‘Nosey Bob’, his nose having been completely smashed, and people shunned him because of the disfigurement. Darling Point’s wealthy residents and society ladies who’d hired his cab started avoiding him, he lost business, and he had to sell the cab and look for another job. Unemployed but having a wife and six children to support, he accepted the role of New South Wales’s first salaried hangman. He went on to execute 66 condemned prisoners at Darlinghurst Gaol and to be ‘guest hangman’ in other Australian states and New Zealand.

Being a very caring person, though, he earned another nickname: ‘The Gentleman Hangman’. He liked a glass of beer, but as the public hangman, he was rarely courageous enough to enter a hotel, knowing that after his departure, the publican would ceremoniously smash any glasses the unwelcome patron had used. As one hotel keeper explained, “It would do my business no good if I gave men glasses into which Nosey Bob had dipped his nose – if he had one.” However, the publican at a Taylor Square hotel kindly set aside a special glass for Robert.

Robert lived in one of the first wooden shacks built at Ben Buckler in North Bondi. He had a horse he trained to walk alone, around the beach, to the Cliff House Hotel, where the Astra Hotel now stands. When the horse arrived, the publican strapped to the saddle a sealed pannikin – an enamel-coated metal cup – he’d filled with beer, and sent it to ‘Nosey Bob’. The horse trotted to the hotel but walked back to the shack sedately, mindful of the precious cargo. He is credited with lending North Bondi Surf Club its first clubhouse in the form of a tent, and was also a caretaker of the North Bondi Military Fort.

Courtesy Waverley Local Studies Collection, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Victoria, the National Art School Collection and the Museum of Justine and Police.

Nosey Bob features in the podcast Famous and Forgotten - Nosey Bob the hangman.