{{Short description|Australian politician}} {{Use Australian English|date=August 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = | name = Major Logue | honorific_suffix = | image = Major Logue SLWA b6371204 1 (cropped).png | image_size = | caption = {{circa|1870}} | office = Member of the Legislative Council<br/>of Western Australia | constituency = Geraldton | term_start = 11 October 1870 | term_end = 29 September 1874 | predecessor = None {{Small|(new seat)}} | successor = Maitland Brown | birth_date = c. 1826 | birth_place = Derry, Ireland | death_date = 1 February 1900<ref name="bio"/> | death_place = Greenough, Western Australia, Australia }} '''Major Logue''' (c. 1826 – 1 February 1900) was an early settler of Western Australia.
Born in Ireland, he arrived in the colony as a child, and eventually settled on a pastoral property near Geraldton. Logue served in the Legislative Council of Western Australia from 1870 to 1874. He was involved in the murders of at least 19 Aboriginal people.
==Biography==
Logue was born in Derry, Ireland, to Elizabeth (née Goodwin) and Joseph Keys Logue. He arrived in Western Australia in 1837, travelling with parents onboard ''Hero''. In 1850, Logue overlanded stock from York to Geraldton, subsequently setting up as a pastoralist near Greenough on land belonging to the Yamatji people.<ref name="collard-2025" /> He named his new property ''Ellendale'', and remained there for the rest of his life. Logue entered parliament in 1870, as one of the Legislative Council's first elected representatives. He represented the seat of Geraldton until September 1874, when he resigned.<ref name="bio">[http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/library/MPHistoricalData.nsf/(Lookup)/41046F33916388D248257E5E00282E9C?OpenDocument Major Logue] – Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia. Retrieved 30 December 2016.</ref> Logue made two unsuccessful attempts to re-enter parliament in the 1890s, running in the seat of Greenough at the 1894 and 1897 general elections.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Black|first1=David|author-link=David Black (historian)|last2=Prescott|first2=Valerie|title=Election statistics : Legislative Assembly of Western Australia, 1890-1996|year=1997|publisher=Western Australian Parliamentary History Project and Western Australian Electoral Commission|location=Perth, [W.A.]|isbn=0730984095}}</ref> He died at Ellendale in February 1900, of apoplexy.<ref>[http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/23828490 "GERALDTON."], ''The West Australian'', 3 February 1900.</ref> He had married Lucy Ellen Shaw in 1856, with whom he had four sons and five daughters.<ref name="bio"/>
==Murders== Logue kept a diary for fifty years, in which he recounts his involvement in the shooting and killing of at least 19 Yamatji people.<ref name="collard-2025" /> The passages relating to killings of aboriginal people are concealed with a simple pigpen cipher.<ref name="collard-2025">{{cite news |last1=Allam |first1=Lorena |last2=Collard |first2=Sarah |last3=Archibald-Binge |first3=Ella |last4=Evershed |first4=Nick |last5=Ball |first5=Andy |title=The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler's diaries lay bare frontier atrocities |url=https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2025/aug/04/the-killing-code-strange-symbols-in-a-wa-settlers-diaries-lay-bare-frontier-atrocities-ntwnfb |access-date=4 August 2025 |work=The Guardian |archive-url=https://archive.today/20250803221951/https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2025/aug/04/the-killing-code-strange-symbols-in-a-wa-settlers-diaries-lay-bare-frontier-atrocities-ntwnfb|archive-date=3 August 2025|date=4 August 2025}}</ref> According to Geraldton-based historian Nan Broad, it is likely that Logue also took part in the massacre at Bootenal in 1854 in which at least 30 Aboriginal people were massacred by colonists led by John Nicol Drummond, Logue’s brother-in-law.<ref name="collard-2025" /> However, the diaries make no mention of this event.<ref name="collard-2025" />
An edition of the diaries was, as of 2025, scheduled to be published by Hesperian Press, excluding the sections relating to Logue's murders of Aboriginal people.<ref name="collard-2025" />
==References== {{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Logue, Major}} Category:1820s births Category:1900 deaths Category:Australian pastoralists Category:Irish emigrants to colonial Australia Category:Members of the Western Australian Legislative Council Category:People from the Mid West (Western Australia) Category:Settlers of Western Australia Category:19th-century Australian businesspeople Category:19th-century Australian politicians