- published: 05 Jan 2016
- views: 127355
Reverend James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip. Over 200 children were murdered at Jonestown, almost all of whom were forcibly made to ingest cyanide by the elite Temple members.
Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s.
The incident in Guyana ranks among the largest mass suicides in history, though most likely it involved forced suicide and/or murder, and was the single greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001. Among the dead was Leo Ryan, who remains the only Congressman assassinated in the line of duty as a Congressman in the history of the United States.
arewell to your bricks and mortar,farewell to your dirty lies
Farewell to your gangers and gang planks, to hell with your overtime
For the good ship Ragamuffin is lying at the quay
to take oul Pat with a shovel on his back
To the shores of Botany Bay.
I'm on my way down to the quay where the ship at anchor lays
To command a gang of navvys that they told me to engage
I thought I'd drop in for a drink before I went away
For to take a trip on an emigrant ship to the shores of Botany Bay
Farewell to your bricks and mortar,farewell to your dirty lies
Farewell to your gangers and gang planks, to hell with your overtime
For the good ship Ragamuffin is lying at the quay
to take oul Pat with a shovel on his back
To the shores of Botany Bay.
The boss came up this morning, he says "well Pat you know
If you don't get your navvys out I'm afraid you have to go"
So I asked him for me wages and demanded all my pay
For I told him straight, I'm going to emigrate to the shores of Botany Bay
Farewell to your bricks and mortar,farewell to your dirty lies
Farewell to your gangers and gang planks, to hell with your overtime
For the good ship Ragamuffin is lying at the quay
to take oul Pat with a shovel on his back
To the shores of Botany Bay.
And when I reach Australia I'll go and look for gold
There's plenty there for the digging of, or so I have been told
Or else I'll go back to my trade and a hundred bricks I'll lay