Wikipedia

Ned Kelly

This article is about the Australian bushranger. For other uses, see Ned Kelly (disambiguation).

Edward Kelly (December 1854[a] – 11 November 1880) was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.

Ned Kelly
Kelly on 10 November 1880, the day before his execution
Born
Edward Kelly

(1854-12-00)December 1854[a]
Beveridge, Colony of Victoria, Australia
Died11 November 1880(1880-11-11) (aged 25)
Melbourne, Colony of Victoria, Australia
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
OccupationBushranger
Relatives
Conviction(s)
  • Murder
  • assault
  • theft
  • armed robbery

Kelly was born and raised in rural Victoria, the third of eight children to Irish parents. His father, a transported convict, died in 1866, leaving Kelly, then aged 12, as the eldest male of the household. The Kellys were a poor selector family who saw themselves as downtrodden by the squattocracy and as victims of persecution by the Victoria Police. While a teenager, Kelly was arrested for associating with bushranger Harry Power and served two prison terms for a variety of offences, the longest stretch being from 1871 to 1874. He later joined the "Greta Mob", a group of bush larrikins known for stock theft. A violent confrontation with a policeman occurred at the Kelly family's home in 1878, and Kelly was indicted for his attempted murder. Fleeing to the bush, Kelly vowed to avenge his mother, who was imprisoned for her role in the incident. After he, his brother Dan, and associates Joe Byrne and Steve Hart shot dead three policemen, the government of Victoria proclaimed them outlaws.

Kelly and his gang, with the help of a network of sympathisers, evaded the police for two years. The gang's crime spree included raids on Euroa and Jerilderie, and the killing of Aaron Sherritt, a sympathiser turned police informer. In a manifesto letter, Kelly—denouncing the police, the Victorian government and the British Empire—set down his own account of the events leading up to his outlawry. Demanding justice for his family and the rural poor, he threatened dire consequences against those who defied him. In 1880, the gang tried to derail and ambush a police train as a prelude to attacking Benalla, but the police, tipped off, confronted them at Glenrowan. In the ensuing 12-hour siege and gunfight, the outlaws wore armour fashioned from plough mouldboards. Kelly, the only survivor, was severely wounded by police fire and captured. Despite thousands of supporters rallying and petitioning for his reprieve, Kelly was tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging, which was carried out at the Melbourne Gaol.

Historian Geoffrey Serle called Kelly and his gang "the last expression of the lawless frontier in what was becoming a highly organised and educated society, the last protest of the mighty bush now tethered with iron rails to Melbourne and the world".[1] In the century after his death, Kelly became a cultural icon, inspiring numerous works in the arts and popular culture, and is the subject of more biographies than any other Australian. Kelly continues to cause division in his homeland: he has variously been described as an Australian Robin Hood and folk hero, and a murderous villain and terrorist.[2][3] Journalist Martin Flanagan wrote: "What makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it's that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night."[4]

Family background and early life

 
Kelly's boyhood home, built by his father in Beveridge in 1859

Kelly's father, John Kelly (nicknamed "Red"), was born in 1820 at Clonbrogan near Moyglas, County Tipperary, Ireland.[5] Aged 21, he was found guilty of stealing two pigs[6] and was transported on the convict ship Prince Regent to Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania), arriving on 2 January 1842. Granted his certificate of freedom in January 1848, Red moved to the Port Phillip District (modern-day Victoria) and was employed as a carpenter by farmer James Quinn at Wallan Wallan.[5]

On 18 November 1850, at St Francis Church, Melbourne, Red married Ellen Quinn, his employer's 18-year-old daughter, who was born in County Antrim, Ireland and migrated as a child with her parents to the Port Phillip District.[7] In the wake of the 1851 Victorian gold rush, the couple turned to mining and earned enough money to buy a small freehold in Beveridge, north of Melbourne.[8]

Edward ("Ned") Kelly was their third child.[9] His exact birth date is unknown, but was probably in December 1854.[10][a] Kelly was possibly baptised by Augustinian priest Charles O'Hea, who also administered his last rites before his execution.[11] His parents had seven other children: Mary Jane (born 1851, died 6 months later), Annie (1853–1872), Margaret (1857–1896), James ("Jim", 1859–1946), Daniel ("Dan", 1861–1880), Catherine ("Kate", 1863–1898) and Grace (1865–1940).[12]

 
According to oral tradition, a young Kelly was awarded this green sash after saving another boy from drowning in a creek. Kelly wore it under his armour during his last stand at Glenrowan. It remains stained with his blood. (Benalla Museum)

The Kellys struggled on inferior farmland at Beveridge and Red began drinking heavily.[13] In 1864 the family moved to Avenel, near Seymour, where they soon attracted the attention of local police.[14] As a boy Kelly obtained basic schooling and became familiar with the bush. According to oral tradition, he risked his life at Avenel by saving another boy from drowning in a creek,[15] for which the boy's family gifted him a green sash. It is said this was the same sash worn by Kelly during his last stand in 1880.[16]

In 1865, Red was convicted of receiving a stolen hide and, unable to pay the £25 fine, sentenced to six months' hard labour. In December 1866, Red was fined for being drunk and disorderly. Badly affected by alcoholism, he died later that month at Avenel, two days after Christmas. Ned signed his death certificate.[13]

The following year, the Kellys moved to Greta in north-eastern Victoria, near the Quinns and their relatives by marriage, the Lloyds. In 1868, Kelly's uncle Jim Kelly was convicted of arson after setting fire to the rented premises where the Kellys and some of the Lloyds were staying. Jim was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to fifteen years of hard labour.[17] The family soon leased a small farm of 88 acres (360,000 m2) at Eleven Mile Creek near Greta. The Kelly selection proved ill-suited for farming, and Ellen supplemented her income by offering accommodation to travellers and selling sly-grog.[18]

Rise to notoriety

Bushranging with Harry Power

I'm a bushranger.

— The earliest known words attributed to Kelly in public record, as reported by Chinese hawker Ah Fook, 1869.[19]
 
Harry Power has been described as Kelly's bushranging "mentor".

In 1869, 14-year-old Kelly met Irish-born Harry Power (alias of Henry Johnson), a transported convict who turned to bushranging in north-eastern Victoria after escaping Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. The Kellys were Power sympathisers, and by May 1869 Ned had become his bushranging protégé. That month, they attempted to steal horses from the Mansfield property of squatter John Rowe as part of a plan to rob the Woods Point–Mansfield gold escort. They abandoned the idea after Rowe shot at them, and Kelly temporarily broke off his association with Power.[20]

Kelly's first brush with the law occurred in October 1869. A Chinese hawker named Ah Fook said that as he passed the Kelly family home, Ned brandished a long stick, declared himself a bushranger and robbed him of 10 shillings. Kelly, arrested and charged with highway robbery, claimed in court that Fook had abused him and his sister Annie in a dispute over the hawker's request for a drink of water. Family witnesses backed Ned and the charge was dismissed.[7]

Kelly and Power reconciled in March 1870 and, over the next month, committed a series of armed robberies. By the end of April, the press had named Kelly as Power's young accomplice, and a few days later he was captured by police and confined to Beechworth Gaol. Kelly fronted court on three robbery charges, with the victims in each case failing to identify him. On the third charge, Superintendents Nicolas and Hare insisted Kelly be tried, citing his resemblance to the suspect. After a month in custody, Kelly was released due to insufficient evidence. The Kellys allegedly intimidated witnesses into withholding testimony. Another factor in the lack of identification may have been that Power's accomplice was described as a "half-caste", but the police believed this to be the result of Kelly going unwashed.[7]

 
Power's capture. Kelly was accused of informing on the bushranger.

Power often camped at Glenmore Station on the King River, owned by Kelly's maternal grandfather, James Quinn. In June 1870, while resting in a mountainside gunyah (bark shelter) that overlooked the property, Power was captured and arrested by police. Word soon spread that Kelly had informed on him. Kelly denied the rumour, and in the only surviving letter known to bear his handwriting, he pleads with Sergeant James Babington of Kyneton for help, saying that "everyone looks on me like a black snake". The informant turned out to be Kelly's uncle, Jack Lloyd, who received £500 for his assistance.[21] However, Kelly had also given information which led to Power's capture, possibly in exchange for having the charges against him dropped. Power always maintained that Kelly betrayed him.[22]

Reporting on Power's criminal career, the Benalla Ensign wrote:[7]

The effect of his example has already been to draw one young fellow into the open vortex of crime, and unless his career is speedily cut short, young Kelly will blossom into a declared enemy of society.

Horse theft, assault and imprisonment

 
Mugshot of Kelly, aged 15

In October 1870, a hawker, Jeremiah McCormack, accused a friend of the Kellys, Ben Gould, of stealing his horse. Gould responded by sending an indecent note and a parcel of calves' testicles to McCormack's wife, which Kelly helped deliver. When McCormack later confronted Kelly for assisting Gould, Kelly punched him and was arrested for both the note and the assault, receiving three months’ hard labor for each charge.[23]

Kelly was released from Beechworth Gaol on 27 March 1871, five weeks early, and returned to Greta. Shortly after, horse-breaker Isaiah "Wild" Wright rode into town on a horse he supposedly borrowed. Later that night, the horse went missing. While Wright was away in search of the horse, Kelly found it and took it to Wangaratta, where he stayed for four days. On 20 April 1871, while Kelly was riding back into Greta, Constable Edward Hall tried to arrest him on the suspicion that the horse was stolen. Kelly resisted and overpowered Hall, despite the constable's attempts to shoot him. Kelly was eventually subdued with the help of bystanders, and Hall pistol-whipped him until his head became "a mass of raw and bleeding flesh".[24] Initially charged with horse stealing, the charge was downgraded to "feloniously receiving a horse", resulting in a three-year sentence. Wright received eighteen months for his part.[25]

 
Kelly in boxing attire, 1874

Kelly served his sentence at Beechworth Gaol and Pentridge Prison, then aboard the prison hulk Sacramento, off Williamstown. He was freed on 2 February 1874, six months early for good behaviour, and returned to Greta. According to one possibly apocryphal story, Kelly, to settle the score with Wright over the horse, fought and beat him in a bare-knuckle boxing match.[7] A photograph of Kelly in a boxing pose is commonly linked to the match. Regardless of the story's veracity, Wright became a known Kelly sympathiser.[26]

Over the next few years, Kelly worked at sawmills and spent periods in New South Wales, leading what he called the life of a "rambling gambler".[27] During this time, his mother married an American, George King.[28] In early 1877, Ned joined King in an organised horse theft operation. Ned later claimed that the group stole 280 horses.[29] Its membership overlapped with that of the Greta Mob, a bush larrikin gang known for their distinctive "flash" attire. Apart from Ned, the gang included his brother Dan, cousins Jack and Tom Lloyd, and Joe Byrne, Steve Hart and Aaron Sherritt.[30]

On 18 September 1877, Kelly was arrested in Benalla for riding over a footpath while drunk. The following day he brawled with four policemen who were escorting him to court, including a friend of the Kellys, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick. Another constable involved, Thomas Lonigan, supposedly grabbed Kelly's testicles during the fraccas; legend has it that Kelly vowed, "If I ever shoot a man, Lonigan, it'll be you."[31] Kelly was fined and released.

In August 1877, Kelly and King sold six horses they had stolen from pastoralist James Whitty to William Baumgarten, a horse dealer in Barnawartha, near the New South Wales border. On 10 November, Baumgarten was arrested for selling the stolen horses. Warrants for the arrest of Ned and Dan in relation to the theft were sworn in March and April 1878. King disappeared around this time.[32]

Fitzpatrick incident

Fitzpatrick's version of events

 
Constable Fitzpatrick

On 11 April 1878, Constable Strachan of Greta heard that Ned was at a shearing shed in New South Wales and left to apprehend him. Four days later, Constable Fitzpatrick arrived at Greta for relief duty and called at the Kellys' home to arrest Dan for horse theft. Finding Dan absent, Fitzpatrick stayed and conversed with Ellen Kelly.[33]

 
Remains of the Kelly residence at Greta, site of the Fitzpatrick incident

When Dan and his brother-in-law Bill Skillion arrived later that evening, Fitzpatrick informed Dan that he was under arrest. Dan asked to be allowed to have dinner first. The constable consented and stood guard over his prisoner.[34]

Minutes later, Ned rushed in and shot at Fitzpatrick with a revolver, missing him. Ellen then hit Fitzpatrick over the head with a fire shovel. A struggle ensued and Ned fired again, wounding Fitzpatrick above his left wrist. Skillion and Williamson came in, brandishing revolvers, and Dan disarmed Fitzpatrick.[35]

Ned apologised to Fitzpatrick, saying that he mistook him for another constable. Fitzpatrick fainted and when he regained consciousness Ned compelled him to extract the bullet from his own arm with a knife; Ellen dressed the wound. Ned devised a cover story and promised to reward Fitzpatrick if he adhered to it. Fitzpatrick was allowed to leave. About 1.5 km away he noticed two horsemen in pursuit, so he spurred his horse into a gallop to escape. He reached a hotel where his wound was re-bandaged, then rode to Benalla to report the incident.[36]

Kelly family version of events

In an interview three months before his execution, Kelly said that at the time of the incident, he was 200 miles from home. According to him, his mother had asked Fitzpatrick if he had a warrant and Fitzpatrick replied that he had only a telegram, to which his mother said that Dan need not go. Fitzpatrick then said, pulling out a revolver, "I will blow your brains out if you interfere". His mother replied, "You would not be so handy with that popgun of yours if Ned were here". Dan then said, trying to trick Fitzpatrick, "There is Ned coming along by the side of the house". While he was pretending to look out of the window for Ned, Dan cornered Fitzpatrick, took the revolver and released Fitzpatrick unharmed. If Fitzpatrick suffered any wounds they were possibly self-inflicted. Skillion and Williamson were not present.[37]

In 1879 Ned's sister Kate stated that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had made a sexual advance to her.[38] After Kelly was captured, he called it "a foolish story".[37]

In 1929 journalist J. J. Kenneally gave yet another version of the incident based on interviews with the remaining Kelly brother, Jim, and Kelly cousin and gang providore Tom Lloyd. In this version, Fitzpatrick was drunk when he arrived at the Kelly house, and while sitting in front of the fire he pulled Kate onto his knee, provoking Dan to throw him to the floor. In the ensuing struggle, Fitzpatrick drew his revolver, Ned appeared, and with his brother seized the constable, disarming him, but not before he struck his wrist against the projecting part of the door lock, an injury he claimed to be a gunshot wound.[39]

Three police officers later gave sworn evidence that Kelly, after his capture, admitted he had shot Fitzpatrick.[40] In 1881, Brickey Williamson, who was seeking remission for his sentence in relation to the incident, stated that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had drawn his revolver.[41] Jones and Dawson have argued that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick but it was his friend Joe Byrne who was with him, not Bill Skillion.[42][43]

Trial

 
Judge Redmond Barry presided over both Ellen Kelly's trial and that Ned two years later.

Williamson, Skillion and Ellen Kelly were arrested and charged with aiding and abetting attempted murder; Ned and Dan were nowhere to be found. The three appeared on 9 October 1878 before Judge Redmond Barry. Fitzpatrick's doctor, who had treated his wound, gave evidence that the constable "was certainly not drunk" and that his wounds were consistent with his statement. The defence declined to call Ned's sisters, Kate and 12-year-old Grace, to give evidence even though they were eyewitnesses. The defence did call two witnesses to give evidence that Skillion was not present, which would cast doubt on Fitzpatrick's account. One of these witnesses was a friend of the Kellys, the other, Joe Ryan, was a relative. Ryan revealed that Ned was in Greta that afternoon, which was damaging to the defence. Ellen Kelly, Skillion and Williamson were convicted as accessories to the attempted murder of Fitzpatrick. Skillion and Williamson both received sentences of six years and Ellen three years of hard labour.[44]

Ellen's sentence was considered harsh, even by people who had no cause to be Kelly sympathisers, especially as she was nursing a newborn baby. Alfred Wyatt, a police magistrate in Benalla, told the later Royal Commission, "I thought the sentence upon that old woman, Mrs Kelly, a very severe one."[45]

Stringybark Creek police murders

 
 
 
Greta Mob members Dan Kelly (left), Steve Hart (centre) and Joe Byrne (right) took to bushranging with Ned Kelly after the Fitzpatrick incident.

After the Fitzpatrick incident, Ned and Dan escaped into the bush and were joined by Greta Mob members Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. Hiding out at Bullock Creek in the Wombat Ranges, they earned money sluicing gold and distilling whisky, and were supplied with provisions and information by sympathisers.[46]

The police were tipped off about the gang's whereabouts and, on 25 October 1878, two mounted police parties were sent to capture them. One party, consisting of Sergeant Michael Kennedy and constables Michael Scanlan, Thomas Lonigan and Thomas McIntyre camped overnight at an abandoned mining site at Stringybark Creek, Toombullup, 36 km north of Mansfield.[47] Unbeknownst to them, the gang's hideout was only 2.5 km away[48] and Ned had observed their tracks.[47]

 
Clockwise from top left: Constable Lonigan, Sergeant Kennedy, Constable McIntyre and Constable Scanlan

The following day at about 5 p.m., while Kennedy and Scanlan were out scouting, the gang bailed up McIntyre and Lonigan at the camp.[49] McIntyre was then unarmed and surrendered. Lonigan made a motion to draw his revolver and ran for the cover of a log. Ned immediately shot Lonigan, killing him.[50][49] Ned said he did not begrudge his death, calling him the "meanest man that I had any account against".[51]

The gang questioned McIntyre and took his and Lonigan's firearms.[49] Hoping to convince Ned to spare Kennedy and Scanlan, McIntyre informed him that they too were Irish Catholics. Ned replied, "I will let them see what one native [Australian-born colonial] can do."[52] At about 5.30 p.m., the gang heard them approaching and hid. Ned advised McIntyre to tell them to surrender. As the constable did so, the gang ordered them to bail up. Kennedy reached for his revolver, whereupon the gang fired. Scanlan dismounted and, according to McIntyre, was shot while trying to unsling his rifle. Ned maintained that Scanlan fired and was trying to fire again when he fatally shot him.[49][53]

 
The gang prepares to open fire as Kennedy and Scanlan arrive. Lonigan's body lies in the foreground.

According to McIntyre, the gang continued firing at Kennedy as he dismounted and tried to surrender. Ned later stated that Kennedy hid behind a tree and fired back, then fled into the bush. Ned and Dan pursued and exchanged gunfire with the sergeant for over 1 km before Ned shot him in the right side.[54] According to Ned, Kennedy then turned to face him and Ned shot him in the chest with his shotgun, not realising that Kennedy had dropped his revolver and was trying to surrender.[49]

Amidst the shootout, McIntyre, still unarmed, escaped on Kennedy's horse.[49] He reached Mansfield the following day and a search party was quickly dispatched and found the bodies of Lonigan and Scanlan. Kennedy's body was found two days later.[55][56]

In his accounts of the shootout, Ned justified the killings as acts of self-defence, citing reports of policemen boasting that they would shoot him on sight, the cache of weapons and ammunition that the police carried, and their failure to surrender as evidence of their intention to kill him.[57] McIntyre stated that the police party's intention was to arrest him, that they were not excessively armed, and that it was the gang who were the aggressors.[58][59] Jones, Morrissey and others have questioned aspects of both versions of events.[60][57]

Outlawed under the Felons Apprehension Act

 
Proclamation by Governor George Bowen declaring Ned and Dan outlaws

On 28 October, the Victorian government announced a reward of £800 for the arrest of the gang; it was soon increased to £2,000. Three days later, the Parliament of Victoria passed the Felons Apprehension Act, which came into effect on 1 November. The bushrangers were given until 12 November to surrender. On 15 November, having remained at large, they were officially outlawed. As a result, anyone who encountered them armed, or had a reasonable suspicion that they were armed, could kill them without consequence. The act also penalised anyone who gave "any aid, shelter or sustenance" to the outlaws or withheld information, or gave false information, to the authorities. Punishment was imprisonment with or without hard labour for up to 15 years.[61]

The Victorian act was based on the 1865 Felons Apprehension Act, passed by the Parliament of New South Wales to reign in bushrangers such as the Gardiner–Hall gang and Dan Morgan. In response to the Kelly gang, the New South Wales parliament re-enacted their legislation as the Felons Apprehension Act 1879.[62]

Euroa raid

 
Scenes from the Euroa raid

After the police killings, the gang tried to escape into New South Wales but, due to flooding of the Murray River, were forced to return to north-eastern Victoria. They narrowly avoided the police on several occasions and relied on the support of an extensive network of sympathisers.[63][64]

In need of funds, the gang decided to rob the bank of Euroa. Byrne reconnoitered the small town on 8 December 1878. Around midday the next day, the gang held up Younghusband Station, outside Euroa. Fourteen male employees and passers-by were taken hostage and held overnight in an outbuilding on the station; female hostages were held in the homestead. A number of hostages were likely sympathisers of the gang and had prior knowledge of the raid.[65]

The following day, Dan guarded the hostages while Ned, Byrne and Hart rode out to cut Euroa's telegraph wires. They encountered and held up a hunting party and some railway workers, whom they took back to the station. Ned, Dan and Hart then went into Euroa, leaving Byrne to guard the prisoners.[66]

Around 4 p.m., the three outlaws held up the Euroa branch of the National Bank of Australasia, netting cash and gold worth £2,260 and a small number of documents and securities.[67] Fourteen staff members were taken back to Younghusband Station as hostages.[68] There the gang performed trick riding for the thirty-seven hostages, before leaving at about 8.30 p.m., warning their captives to stay put for three hours or suffer reprisals.[69]

Following the raid, a number of newspapers commented on the efficiency of its execution and compared it with the inefficiency of the police. Several hostages stated that the gang had behaved courteously and without violence during the raid.[70] However, hostages also stated that on several occasions the bushrangers threatened to shoot them and burn buildings containing hostages if there was any resistance.[71]

Cameron Letter

At Younghusband Station, Byrne wrote two copies of a letter that Kelly had dictated. They were posted on 14 December to Donald Cameron, a Victorian parliamentarian who Kelly mistook as sympathetic to the gang, and Superintendent John Sadleir. In the letter, Kelly gives his version of the Fitzpatrick incident and the Stringybark Creek killings, and describes cases of alleged police corruption and harassment of his family, signing off as "Edward Kelly, enforced outlaw". He expected Cameron to read it out in parliament, but the government only allowed summaries to be made public. The Argus called it the work of "a clever illiterate".[72] Premier Graham Berry, a vociferous critic of the gang, also found it "very clever", and alerted railway authorities to an allusion Kelly makes to tearing up tracks. Kelly expanded on much of its content in the Jerilderie Letter of 1879.[73]

Kelly sympathisers detained

 
The imprisonment of Kelly sympathisers without trial turned public opinion against the police. Among those imprisoned were John Quinn (left), John Stewart (centre), and Joseph Ryan (right).

On 2 January 1879, police obtained warrants for the arrest of 30 presumed Kelly sympathisers, 23 of whom were remanded in custody.[74] Over a third were released within seven weeks due to lack of evidence, but nine sympathisers had their remand renewed on a weekly basis for almost three months, despite the police failing to produce evidence for a committal hearing. In a letter to Acting Chief Secretary Bryan O’Loghlen, Kelly accused the government of "committing a manifest injustice in imprisoning so many innocent people" and threatened reprisals. Police claimed that such threats dissuaded their informants from giving sworn evidence.[75]

On 22 April, police magistrate Foster refused prosecution requests to continue remands and discharged the remaining detainees. Although the police command opposed this decision, by then it was clear that the tactic of detaining sympathisers had not impeded the gang.[76]

Jones argues that the detention strategy swung public sympathy away from the police.[77] Dawson, however, points out that while there was widespread condemnation of the denial of the civil liberties of those detained, this did not necessarily mean support for the outlaws grew.[78]

Jerilderie raid

 
The gang bails up the Jerilderie police barracks

Following the Euroa raid, the reward for Kelly's capture increased to £1,000. Fifty-eight police were transferred to north-eastern Victoria, totaling 217 in the district. Around 50 soldiers were also deployed to guard local banks. The gang distributed most proceeds from the raid to family and other sympathisers. Once more in need of funds, they planned to rob the bank at Jerilderie, a town 65 km across the border in New South Wales. A number of sympathisers moved into Jerilderie before the raid to provide undercover support.[79][80]

On 7 February 1879, the gang crossed the Murray River between Mulwala and Tocumwal and camped overnight in the bush. The following day they visited a hotel about 3 km from Jerilderie, where they drank and chatted with patrons and staff, learning more about the town and its police presence.[81]

In the early hours of 9 February, the gang bailed up the Jerilderie police barracks and secured in the lockup the two constables present, George Devine and Henry Richards. They also held Devine's wife and young children hostage overnight.[82] The following afternoon, Byrne and Hart, dressed as police, went out with Richards to familiarise themselves with the town.[83]

At 10 am on 10 February, Ned and Byrne donned police uniforms and took Richards with them into town, leaving Devine in the lockup and warning his wife that they would kill her and her children if she left the barracks.[84] The gang held up the Royal Mail Hotel and, while Dan and Hart controlled the hostages, Ned and Byrne robbed the neighbouring Bank of New South Wales of £2,141 in cash and valuables.[85] Ned also found and burnt deeds, mortgages and securities, saying "the bloody banks are crushing the life's blood out of the poor, struggling man".[86]

With hostages from the bank now detained in the hotel, Byrne held up the post office and smashed its telegraph system while Ned had several hostages cut down telegraph wires. After lecturing the 30 or so hostages on police corruption and the justice system, Ned freed them, except for Richards and two telegraphists, who he had secured in the lockup.[87] Dan and Byrne then left town with the police's horses and weapons. Ned stayed a while longer to shout a group of sympathisers at the Albion Hotel. While there, he forced Hart to return a watch he had stolen from priest J. B. Gribble, who also persuaded Ned to leave a racehorse he had taken as it belonged to "a young lady".[88] After the raid, the gang went into hiding for 17 months.[89]

Jerilderie Letter

Main article: Jerilderie Letter

I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present past and future.

— Opening line of the Jerilderie Letter[90]
 
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
 
Some of the 56 pages comprising the Jerilderie Letter, on display at State Library Victoria

Prior to arriving in Jerilderie, Kelly composed a lengthy letter with the aim of tracing his path to outlawry, justifying his actions, and outlining the alleged injustices he and his family suffered at the hands of the police. He also implores squatters to share their wealth with the rural poor, invokes a history of Irish rebellion against the English, and threatens to carry out a "colonial stratagem" designed to shock not only Victoria and its police "but also the whole British army".[91][92] Dictated to Byrne, the Jerilderie Letter, a handwritten document of fifty-six pages and 7,391 words, was described by Kelly as "a bit of my life". He tasked Edwin Living, a local bank accountant, with delivering it to the editor of the Jerilderie and Urana Gazette for publication.[93] Due to political suppression, only excerpts were published in the press, based on a copy transcribed by John Hanlon, owner of the Eight Mile Hotel in Deniliquin. The letter was rediscovered and published in full in 1930.[92]

According to historian Alex McDermott, "Kelly inserts himself into history, on his own terms, with his own voice. ... We hear the living speaker in a way that no other document in our history achieves".[94] It has been interpreted as a proto-republican manifesto;[95] one eyewitness to the Jerilderie raid noted that the letter suggested Kelly would "have liked to have been at the head of a hundred followers or so to upset the existing government".[96][97] It has also been described as a "murderous, ... maniacal rant",[98] and "a remarkable insight into Kelly's grandiosity".[99] Noted for its unorthodox grammar, the letter reaches "delirious poetics",[92] Kelly's language being "hyperbolic, allusive, hallucinatory ... full of striking metaphors and images".[90] His invective and sense of humour are also present; in one well-known passage, he calls the Victorian police "a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords".[100] The letter closes:[101]

neglect this and abide by the consequences, which shall be worse than the rust in the wheat of Victoria or the druth of a dry season to the grasshoppers in New South Wales I do not wish to give the order full force without giving timely warning. but I am a widows son outlawed and my orders must be obeyed.

Reward increase and disappearance

 
£8000 reward notice for the capture of the gang, about $3 million in modern Australian currency

In response to the Jerilderie raid, the New South Wales government and several banks collectively issued £4,000 for the gang's capture, dead or alive, the largest reward offered in the colony since £5,000 was placed on the heads of the outlawed Clarke brothers in 1867.[102] The Victorian government matched the offer for the Kelly gang, bringing the total amount to £8,000, bushranging's largest-ever reward.[103]

The Victorian police continued to receive many reports of sightings of the outlaws and information about their activities from their network of informants. Chief Commissioner of Police Frederick Standish and Superintendent Francis Augustus Hare directed operations against the gang from Benalla. Hare organised frequent search parties and surveillance of Kelly sympathisers.[104][105]

 
Native police unit, sent from Queensland to Victoria in 1879 to help capture the gang

In March 1879, six Queensland native police troopers and a senior constable under the command of sub-Inspector Stanhope O'Connor were deployed to Benalla to join the hunt for the gang. Although Kelly feared the tracking ability of the Aboriginal troopers, Standish and Hare doubted their value and temporarily withdrew their services.[106][107]

In May 1879, on the advice of Standish, the Victorian Land Board blacklisted 86 alleged Kelly sympathisers from buying land in the secluded areas of northeastern Victoria. The aim of the policy was to disperse the gang's network of sympathisers and disrupt stock theft in the region. Jones and others claim that it caused widespread resentment and hardened support for the outlaws.[108] Morrissey, however, states that although the policy was sometimes used unfairly, it was effective and supported by the majority of the community.[109]

 
A party of troopers participating in the hunt for the Kelly gang

Facing media and parliamentary criticism over the costly and failed gang search, Standish appointed Assistant Commissioner Charles Hope Nicolson as leader of operations at Benalla on 3 July 1879. Standish reduced Nicolson's police forces, withdrew most of the soldiers guarding banks, and cut the search budget. Nicolson relied more heavily on targeted surveillance and his network of spies and informers.[110]

After almost a year of unsuccessful efforts to capture the outlaws, Nicolson was replaced by Hare. In June 1880, police informant Daniel Kennedy reported that the gang were planning another raid and had made bullet-proof armour out of agricultural equipment. Hare dismissed the latter as preposterous and sacked Kennedy.[111][112]

Glenrowan affair

Murder of Aaron Sherritt

... I look upon Ned Kelly as an extraordinary man; there is no man in the world like him, he is superhuman.

— Aaron Sherritt to Superintendent Francis Augustus Hare[7]
 
Portrait of Sherritt showing his "larrikin heel" and wearing his hat in the Greta mob fashion with the chin strap resting under his nose

During the Kelly outbreak, police watch parties monitored Byrne's mother's house in the Woolshed Valley near Beechworth. The police used the house of her neighbour, Aaron Sherritt, as a base of operations and kept watch from nearby caves at night. Sherritt, a former Greta Mob member and lifelong friend of Byrne, accepted police payments for camping with the watch parties and for informing on the gang.[7] Detective Michael Ward doubted Sherritt's value as an informer, suspecting he lied to the police to protect Byrne.[113][114]

In March 1879 Byrne's mother saw Sherritt with a police watch party and later publicly denounced him as a spy.[115][116] In the following months, Byrne and Ned sent invitations to Sherritt to join the gang, but when he continued his relationship with the police, the outlaws decided to murder him as a means to launch a grander plot, one that they boasted would "astonish not only the Australian colonies but the whole world".[117]

 
Sherritt's murder

On 26 June 1880, Dan and Byrne rode into the Woolshed Valley. That evening, they kidnapped a local gardener, Anton Wick, and took him to Sherritt's hut, which was occupied by Sherritt, his pregnant wife Ellen and her mother, and a four-man police watch party.[118]

Byrne forced Wick to knock on the back door and call out for Sherritt. When Sherritt answered the door, Byrne shot him in the throat and chest with a shotgun, killing him. Byrne and Dan then entered the hut while the policemen hid in one of the bedrooms. Byrne overheard them scrambling for their shotguns and demanded that they come out. When they did not respond he fired into the bedroom. He then sent Ellen into the bedroom to bring the police out, but they detained her in the room.[119]

The outlaws left the hut, collected kindling, and loudly threatened to burn alive those inside. They stayed outside for approximately two hours, yelled more threats, then released Wick and rode away.[120][121]

Plot to wreck the police train and attack Benalla

 
Kelly forces two railway workers to damage the track at Glenrowan in a plot to derail the police special train

The gang estimated that the policemen at Sherritt's would report his murder to Beechworth within a few hours, prompting a police special train to be sent up from Melbourne. They also surmised that the train would collect reinforcements in Benalla before continuing through Glenrowan, a small town in the Warby Ranges. There, the gang planned to derail the train and shoot dead any survivors, then ride to an unpoliced Benalla where they would bomb the railway bridge over the Broken River, thereby isolating the town and giving them time to rob the banks, bomb the police barracks, torch the courthouse, free the gaol's prisoners, and generally sow chaos before returning to the bush.[122][123]

While Byrne and Dan were in the Woolshed Valley, Ned and Hart forced two railway workers camped at Glenrowan to damage the track. The outlaws selected a sharp curve at an incline, where the train would be speeding at 60 mph before derailing into a deep gully. They told their captives they were going to "send the train and its occupants to hell".[124][125]

The bushrangers took over the Glenrowan railway station, the stationmaster's home and Ann Jones' Glenrowan Inn, opposite the station. They used the hotel to hold the workers, passers-by, and other men; most of the women and children taken prisoner were held at the stationmaster's home. The other hotel in town, McDonnell's Railway Hotel, was used to stable the gang's stolen horses, one of which carried a keg of blasting powder and fuses.[114] The packhorses also carried helmeted suits of bullet-repelling armour, each made from stolen plough mouldboards and weighing about 44 kilograms (97 lb). Kelly conceived of the armour to protect the outlaws in shootouts with the police and planned to wear it when inspecting the train wreckage for survivors.[126]

Siege and shootout

 
A sketch by George Gordon McCrae shows the gang dancing with hostages.

By the afternoon of 27 June, the train still had not arrived, as the policemen in Sherritt's hut remained there until morning, for fear that the bushrangers were still outside.[127] The outlaws meanwhile had gathered all sixty-two hostages in the Glenrowan Inn. Amongst them were sympathisers planted by the gang to help control the situation. As the hours passed without sight of the train, the gang plied the hostages with drink and organised music, singing, dancing and games.[116] One hostage later testified, "[Ned] did not treat us badly—not at all".[128] However, Ned terrorised a young hostage by threatening to shoot him.[129]

Towards evening, Ned let 21 hostages he deemed trustworthy to leave, then captured Glenrowan's lone constable, Hugh Bracken, with the assistance of hostage Thomas Curnow, a local schoolmaster who sought to gain the gang's trust in order to thwart their plans. Believing that Curnow was a sympathiser, Ned let him and his wife return home, but warned them to "go quietly to bed and not to dream too loud".[119][130]

 
Hostage Thomas Curnow thwarted the gang's plans.

News of Sherritt's death finally reached the outside world at midday 27 June, and at 9 pm, a police special train left Melbourne for Beechworth. In addition to its crew and four journalists, the train carried sub-Inspector O'Connor, his native police unit, wife and sister-in-law. They stopped at Benalla at 1:30 a.m. to take on Superintendent Hare and eight troopers, bringing the total contingent to 27. Hare ordered a pilot engine to travel ahead of them as a lookout. One hour later, as the pilot approached Glenrowan, Curnow signalled it to stop and alerted the driver of the danger.[131]

Kelly had decided to free the hostages and was delivering them a final lecture on the police when the train pulled into Glenrowan. The outlaws donned their armour and prepared for a confrontation. Meanwhile, Bracken escaped to the railway station to explain the situation to the police, after which Hare led his troopers towards the hotel.[132] It was just after 3 a.m.[133]

The outlaws lined up in the shadow of the hotel's porch and, when the police appeared about 30 m away in the moonlight, opened fire. About 150 shots were exchanged in the first volley. Someone shouted that women and children were in the hotel, prompting a ceasefire. Hare was shot through the left wrist and, fainting from blood loss, returned to Benalla for treatment. Ned was wounded in the left hand, left arm and right foot. Byrne was shot in the calf. Two hostages were fatally wounded by police fire into the weatherboard building: thirteen-year-old John Jones and railway worker Martin Cherry.[134] A third hostage, George Metcalf, was also fatally wounded, either by police fire or shot accidentally by Ned.[135][136]

 
The gang and police exchange gunfire. Drawing by Tom Carrington, one of several journalists present during the battle.

During the lull in gunfire, a number of hostages, mostly women and children, escaped the hotel.[137][138] Kelly, bleeding heavily, retreated about 90 m into the bush behind the hotel, where police found his skull cap and rifle at around 3.30 a.m. Kelly was lying in the bush nearby.[139]

Police surrounded the hotel throughout the night, and the firing continued intermittently. At about 5:30 a.m., Byrne was fatally shot while drinking whiskey in the bar, his last words being a toast to the gang.[140][141] Over the next two hours, police reinforcements under Sergeant Steele and Superintendent Sadleir arrived from Wangaratta and Benalla, bringing the police contingent to about forty.[142][143]

Last stand and capture

 
"A strange apparition": when Kelly appeared out of the mist-shrouded bush, clad in armour, bewildered policemen took him to be a ghost, a bunyip, and "Old Nick himself".

Seriously wounded, Kelly lay in the bush for most of the night.[144] At dawn (about 7 a.m.), clad in armour and armed with three handguns, he rose out of the bush and attacked the police from their rear. Police returned fire as Kelly moved from tree to tree towards the hotel, at times staggering from his injuries, the weight of his armour and the impact of bullets on the plate iron, which he later described as "like blows from a man's fist". Due to these factors, Kelly had difficulty aiming, firing and reloading his guns.[145]

 
Sergeant Steele and railway guard Dowsett capture Kelly.

Eyewitnesses struggled to identify the figure moving in the dim misty light and, astonished as it withstood bullets, variously called it a ghost, a bunyip, and the devil.[146] Journalist Tom Carrington wrote:[147]

With the steam rising from the ground, it looked for all the world like the ghost of Hamlet's father with no head, only a very long thick neck ... It was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw or read of in my life, and I felt fairly spellbound with wonder, and I could not stir or speak.

The gun battle with Kelly lasted around 15 minutes with Dan and Hart providing covering fire from the hotel.[148] It ended when Steele brought down Ned with two shotgun blasts to his unprotected legs and thighs. Ned was disarmed and divested of his armour by the police while Dan and Hart continued firing on them. Dan was wounded by return fire, and Ned was carried to the railway station, where a doctor attended to him.[149] He was later found to have twenty-eight wounds, including serious gunshot wounds to his left elbow and right foot, several flesh wounds caused by gunshots, and cuts and abrasions from bullets striking his armour,[150][151] which showed a total of 18 bullet marks, including five in the helmet.[152]

 
Kelly's armour on display at State Library Victoria. The helmet, breastplate, backplate and shoulder plates show 18 bullet marks. Also on display are Kelly's Snider Enfield rifle and one of his boots.

In the meantime, the siege continued. Around 10 a.m., a ceasefire was called and the remaining thirty hostages left the hotel. They were ordered to lie down as police checked for any outlaws among them. Two of the hostages were arrested for being known Kelly sympathisers.[153]

Fire and aftermath

 
Ruins of Jones's Hotel after the fire
 
Police and Aboriginal trackers pose in front of the "Kelly Tree", the fallen gum tree where Kelly was captured

By the afternoon of 28 June, some 600 spectators had gathered at Glenrowan, and Dan and Hart had ceased shooting. Forbidding his men from storming the hotel, Sadleir ordered a cannon from Melbourne to blast out the outlaws, then decided to burn them out instead. At 2.50 p.m, Senior Constable Charles Johnson, under cover of police fire, set the hotel alight.[154]

Passing through the area, Catholic priest Matthew Gibney halted his travels to administer the last rites to Ned, then entered the burning hotel in an attempt to rescue anyone inside. He found the bodies of Byrne, Dan and Hart. The causes of Dan and Hart's deaths remain a mystery.[155] Police retrieved Byrne's body and rescued the mortally wounded Martin Cherry. After the fire died out at 4 p.m., the police recovered the badly burnt bodies of Dan and Hart.[156]

Others wounded during the shootout were hostages Michael Reardon and his baby sister Bridget (who was grazed by a bullet),[157][158] and Jimmy, an Aboriginal trooper.[159] Jones' sister Jane received a head wound from a stray bullet, and two years later died from a lung infection that her mother believed was hastened by the injury.[160]

Following the siege, Byrne's body was strung up in Benalla and photographed, with casts taken of his head and limbs for a waxwork, later exhibited in Melbourne.[161] Sympathisers asked for his body, but the police arranged a hasty inquiry and burial in an unmarked grave in Benalla Cemetery. Dan and Hart's charred remains were buried by their families in unmarked graves in Greta Cemetery.[162]

Kelly was transported to Benalla, where doctors determined that his injuries were non-fatal. He recuperated at Melbourne Gaol hospital ahead of his trial at the Supreme Court. His committal hearing began at Beechworth Court in August 1880, but was transferred to the Central Criminal Court in Melbourne. Despite claims that this was due to fears that a jury from "Kelly Country" would be unwilling to convict him, the primary reason was to avoid threats against jurors from Kelly sympathisers.[citation needed]

Trial and execution

 
Kelly in the dock

Kelly's trial began on 19 October 1880 in Melbourne before Sir Redmond Barry, the judge who had sentenced his mother over the Fitzpatrick incident.[163] Charles Smyth and Arthur Chomley appeared for the Crown, and the novice barrister Henry Bindon for the prisoner with David Gaunson serving as counsel.[164] Kelly was charged with the murder of constables Lonigan and Scanlan. The trial was adjourned to 28 October and the prosecution chose to proceed only with Lonigan's murder, for which Kelly was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.[165] After handing down the sentence, Barry concluded with the customary words, "May God have mercy on your soul", to which Kelly replied, "I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there where I go".[166] Barry was to die of natural causes twelve days after Kelly's execution.[167]

On 3 November, the Executive Council of Victoria announced that Kelly was to be hanged on 11 November, at the Melbourne Gaol.[168] In response, thousands turned out at protests in Melbourne demanding a reprieve for Kelly, and a failed petition for clemency attracted over 32,000 signatures.[169] The press was uniformly scathing: one journalist called the protests "inflammatory, seditious and plainly useless";[52] another, having noted the number of protesters, warned that Victoria was trending towards "a socialistic revolt of class against class".[170] Police reinforcements were mobilised to guard the gaol and other government buildings in Melbourne in case of a mob attack.[52]

 
Kelly goes to the gallows

The day before his execution, Kelly had his photographic portrait taken as a keepsake for his family, and he was granted farewell meetings with relatives. One newspaper reported that his mother's last words to him were, "Mind you die like a Kelly", but Jones and Castles have questioned this.[171][172]

The following morning at 9 am, Kelly was led to the gallows. When passing the gaol's garden he commented on the beauty of the flowers.[173] He was hanged at 10 am. Accounts differ about Kelly's last words. Some witnesses reported that it was, "Such is life", while others recorded that this was his response when told of the intended hour of his execution, earlier that day.[174] The Argus wrote that Kelly's last words were, "Ah, well, I suppose it has come to this", as the rope was placed round his neck.[175] According to another account, Kelly intended to make a speech, but "made no audible sound".[174] A policeman present later said that immediately before the cap was drawn over Kelly's head, he glanced up at the skylight and muttered something indiscernible.[176]

Royal Commission and aftermath

 
The royal commission into police conduct during the Kelly outbreak resulted in many force members being censured, reprimanded, demoted, suspended or dismissed

In March 1881, the Victorian government approved a royal commission into the conduct of the Victorian police during the Kelly outbreak.[177] Over the next six months, the commission, chaired by Francis Longmore, held sixty-six meetings, examined sixty-two witnesses and visited towns throughout "Kelly Country". While its report found that the police had acted properly in relation to the criminality of the Kellys, it exposed widespread corruption and ended a number of police careers, including that of Chief Commissioner Standish.[178] Numerous other officers, including senior staff, were reprimanded, demoted or suspended. It concluded with a list of thirty-six recommendations for reform.[163] Kelly hoped that his death would lead to an investigation into police conduct, and although the report did not exonerate him or his gang, its findings were said to strip the authorities "of what scanty rags of reputation the Kellys had left them."[177]

The £8,000 reward money was divided among various claimants with £6,000 going to members of the Victorian police, Superintendent Hare receiving the lion's share of £800. After Curnow complained about his payout of £550, it was increased to £1,000. Seven Aboriginal trackers were each awarded £50, but the Victorian and Queensland governments kept the money under the pretext that "It would not be desirable to place any considerable sum of money in the hands of persons unable to use it."[179]

There was widespread speculation that Kelly's execution would lead to further outbreaks of violence in north-eastern Victoria.[180] Jones and Dawson argue that changes in policing methods reduced this threat. The police no longer pursued a policy of dispersing Kelly sympathisers by denying them land in the district,[181][182] and assured them that they would be treated fairly if they kept the peace. During the royal commission there were threats of violence and intimidation against people who had assisted the police.[183][184] Nevertheless, the police reported a reduction in stock theft and crime in general in north-eastern Victoria following Kelly's death.[185]

Kelly's mother was released from prison in February 1881. Jones states that she met with Greta police constable Robert Graham soon after, and they reached an understanding which helped reduce tension in the community.[186]

Remains and graves

 
Kelly's death mask on display in the National Portrait Gallery

Kelly was buried at the Old Melbourne Gaol in what was known as the "old men's yard".[187] In May 1881, reports emerged that Kelly's body had been illegally dissected by medical students for study.[188] Public outrage at the rumour raised concerns of civil unrest, leading the gaol's governor to deny that it had occurred.[189]

In 1929, the Old Melbourne Gaol was closed for demolition works, during which the remains of felons were uncovered. Before being reinterred in a mass grave at Pentridge Prison, skeletal parts were looted by workers and spectators from a number of graves, including one marked with the initials "E.K.",[190] situated apart from the rest on the opposite side of the yard.[191] The skull from this grave was handed over to the police and stored at the Victorian Penal Department, then sent to the Australian Institute of Anatomy, Canberra in 1934. It went missing but was later found in a safe.[192] From 1972 the skull was exhibited at the Old Melbourne Gaol until it was stolen on 12 December 1978.[193]

On 9 March 2008, archaeologists announced they believed they had found Kelly's burial site at Pentridge Prison, among the remains of 32 executed felons.[194] In 2009, the skull that was stolen in 1978 was handed over for forensic testing along with the Pentridge remains. After conducting several tests in 2010–11, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine concluded the skull was not Kelly's.[195] Kelly's skeleton was identified among the Pentridge remains through DNA analysis and comparisons to bullet wounds he received at Glenrowan. Most of the skull is missing,[196] with what remains of the occipital bone showing cuts consistent with dissection.[189][197]

In 2012, the Victorian government approved the handover of Kelly's bones to his family, who made plans for his final burial and also appealed for the return of his skull.[198] On 20 January 2013, following a Requiem Mass at St Patrick's Catholic Church, Wangaratta, Kelly's final wish was granted as his remains were buried in consecrated ground at Greta Cemetery, near his mother's unmarked grave. It was encased in concrete to prevent looting.[199]

Kelly's original headstone, along with those of other felons executed at the Old Melbourne Gaol, was repurposed during the Great Depression to construct bluestone walls protecting Melbourne beaches from erosion.[200]

Legacy

Kelly myth

 
A homemade letterbox in the style of Ned Kelly's armour, Bullio, Southern Highlands, New South Wales

The myth surrounding Kelly pervades Australian culture, and he is one of Australia's most recognised national symbols. Academic and folklorist Graham Seal writes:[201]

Ned Kelly has progressed from outlaw to national hero in a century, and to international icon in a further 20 years. The still-enigmatic, slightly saturnine and ever-ambivalent bushranger is the undisputed, if not universally admired, national symbol of Australia.

Seal argues that Kelly's story taps into the Robin Hood tradition of the outlaw hero and the myth of the Australian bush as a place of freedom from oppressive authority. For many admirers of Kelly, he embodies characteristics thought to be typically Australian such as defying authority, siding with the underdog and fighting bravely for one's beliefs.[202] This view was already evident in the aftermath of his death. Reviewing an 1881 performance of the Kelly gang play Ostracised, staged at Melbourne's Princess Theatre, The Australasian wrote:[203]

... judging from the way in which the applause was dealt out, it was pretty certain that the exploits of the outlaws excited admiration and prompted emulation. ... In short Ostracised will help to confirm the belief, in the young mind of Victoria, that the Kellys were martyrs and not sanguinary ruffians.

According to Ian Jones, after Kelly's death, "a Robin Hood-like figure survived: good-looking, brave, a fine horseman and bushman and a crack shot, devoted to his mother and sisters, a man who treated all women with courtesy, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, who dressed himself in his enemy's uniform to outwit him. Most of all a man who stood against the police persecutors of his family and was driven to outlawry when he defended his sister against a drunken constable. Such was Ned Kelly the myth".[204] Kelly sought to live up to the bushranger-hero myth. The gang's raids were partly public performances where they acted courteously to women, burned mortgage documents and entertained their hostages.[205]

By the time Kelly was outlawed, bushranging was an anachronism. Australia was highly urbanised, the telegraph and the railway were rapidly connecting the bush to the city, and Kelly was already an icon for a romanticised past.[206][207] Macintyre states that Kelly turning agricultural equipment into armour was an irresistible symbol of a passing era.[3] For Seal, the failure of the gang to derail the train at Glenrowan was a symbol of the triumph of modern civilisation.[206] The national image of Kelly, he writes, may bear "about the same resemblance" to the man as his armour does "to the plough mouldboards from which it was beaten". He concludes:[208]

He is different things to different people—a murderer, an Australian Robin Hood, a social bandit, a revolutionary leader, even a commercial commodity. But to most of us he is somehow essentially Australian.

Cultural impact

Further information: Cultural depictions of Ned Kelly
 
An actor playing Kelly in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first dramatic feature-length film

The siege at Glenrowan became a national and international media event, and reports of the armour sparked widespread fascination, cementing Kelly and his gang's lasting infamy. Songs, poems, popular entertainments, fiction, books, and newspaper and magazine articles about the Kelly gang proliferated in the decades that followed, and by 1943 Kelly was the subject of 42 major published works.[209]

Within eight weeks of the Stringybark Creek killings, a play about the gang, Vultures of the Wombat Ranges, was being staged in Melbourne. The farce Catching the Kellys debuted the following year. By 1900, Kelly gang plays were "appearing all over the continent in a remarkably successful exploitation of popular myth".[210] Later plays include Douglas Stewart's 1942 verse drama Ned Kelly.[211]

Robert Drewe's novel Our Sunshine (1991) is a fictionalised account of the Glenrowan siege.[212] Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize for his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, written from Kelly's perspective and in emulation of his voice in the Jerilderie Letter.[213]

The first ballads about the Kelly gang were published in 1879 and it quickly became a popular genre.[209] In 1939 Tex Morton recorded a country and western-style ballad about Kelly, and singers including Slim Dusty, Smoky Dawson and Buddy Williams followed.[214] Non-Australian artists who have recorded songs about Kelly include Waylon Jennings[215] and Johnny Cash.[216]

Kelly has figured prominently in Australian cinema since the 1906 release of The Story of the Kelly Gang, the world's first dramatic feature-length film.[217] Among those who have portrayed him on screen are Australian rules football player Bob Chitty (The Glenrowan Affair, 1951), rock musician Mick Jagger (Ned Kelly, 1970), John Jarratt (The Last Outlaw, 1980), Heath Ledger (Ned Kelly, 2003) and George MacKay (True History of the Kelly Gang, 2019).[218] A comic film, Reckless Kelly (1993), drew on the Kelly legend.[219]

In the visual arts, Sidney Nolan's 1946–47 Kelly series is considered "one of the greatest sequences of Australian painting of the twentieth century".[220][221] His stylised depiction of Kelly's helmet has become an iconic Australian image. Hundreds of performers dressed as "Nolanesque Kellys" starred in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.[222]

The term "Kelly tourism" describes towns such as Glenrowan which sustain themselves economically "almost entirely through Ned's memory", while "Kellyana" refers to the collecting of Kelly memorabilia, merchandise, and other paraphernalia. The phrase "such is life", Kelly's probably apocryphal final words, has become "as much a part of the Kelly mythology as the famous armour".[223] "As game as Ned Kelly" is an expression for bravery,[224] and the term "Ned Kelly beard" is used to describe a trend in "hipster" fashion.[225] The rural districts of north-eastern Victoria are collectively known as "Kelly Country".[226]

Controversy over political legacy

 
An 1879 political cartoon titled "Our Rulers", published in Melbourne Punch, depicts Kelly, Premier Graham Berry, and a personification of The Age dancing around the flag of communism.

In Bandits (1969), Eric Hobsbawm argued that Kelly was a social bandit, a type of peasant outlaw and symbol of social rebellion with significant community support.[207] Expanding on this thesis, McQuilton argued that the Kelly outbreak should be seen in the context of deteriorating economic conditions in rural Victoria in the 1870s and a conflict over land between selectors (mostly small farmers) and squatters (mostly wealthier pastoralists who had initially acquired their runs by "squatting" on Crown land).[52] Jones,[7] Molony[227] and others argue that Kelly was a political rebel with considerable support among selectors and labourers in north-eastern Victoria. Jones claims that Kelly intended to derail the train at Glenrowan to incite a rebellion of disaffected selectors and declare a "Republic of North-eastern Victoria".[228]

Morrissey argues that McQuilton and Jones have exaggerated the degree of economic distress and support for Kelly among local selectors.[229] As for Kelly's alleged republican declaration or plan for a political rebellion, Dawson wrote: "there is no mention of any such document, plan or intention in any record of Kelly’s day, nor in the numerous interviews and memoirs of those connected with the gang, or its prisoners who listened to Kelly’s speeches while held up, nor in the work of early historians of the outbreak who knew the Kellys, their gang, their sympathisers, or the pursuing police."[230] While Kelly frequently complained of oppression by the police and squatters, derided the Victorian government and the British monarchy, and evoked historical Irish grievances against what he called "the tyrannism of the English yoke", his response was expressed in terms of a violent reckoning rather than a political program.[92][231]

Seal states that Kelly advocated for "a basic form of wealth redistribution".[232] In the Jerilderie Letter, the outlaw calls on squatters to share resources with the poor of their district, and orders anyone opposed to him to "sell out" of Victoria and donate a portion of the profits to the Widows and Orphans Fund. Morrissey sees the social justice element of the letter as a traditional call for the rich to help the poor with an additional argument that it is in their own interest to do so.[229]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c The date of Kelly's birth is not known, and there is no record of his baptism. Kelly himself thought he was 28 years old when he was hanged.[235] Evidence for a December 1854 birth is from a 1963 interview with family descendants Paddy and Charles Griffiths quoting Ned's brother Jim Kelly who said it was a family tradition that Ned's birth was "at the time of the Eureka Stockade", which took place on 3 December 1854.[236] In July 1870, Ellen Kelly, Ned's mother, recorded Ned's age as 15½, which could easily refer to a December 1854 birth.[236] There is also a remark made by G. Wilson Brown, school inspector, in his notebook on 30 March 1865, where he noted that Ned Kelly was 10 years and 3 months old.[236] The only evidence given in support for Ned Kelly's birth being in June 1855 is from the death certificate of his father, John Kelly, who died on 27 December 1866. Ned Kelly's age is written as 11½.

References

  1. ^ Serle, Geoffrey (1971). The Rush to Be Rich: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1883–1889. Melbourne University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-522-84009-4.
  2. ^ Basu 2012, pp. 182–187.
  3. ^ a b Mcintyre, Stuart (2020). A Concise History of Australia (Fifth ed.). Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. pp. 107–08. ISBN 978-1-108-72848-5.
  4. ^ Flanagan, Martin (30 March 2013). "Rebels who knew the end was coming, but stood up anyway" Archived 20 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine, The Age. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
  5. ^ a b Corfield 2003, p. 284.
  6. ^ Molony 2001, pp. 6–7.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Jones 2010.
  8. ^ Corfield 2003, pp. 284–85.
  9. ^ Aubrey, Thomas (11 July 1953). "The Real Story of Ned Kelly". The Mirror. Perth. p. 9. Archived from the original on 10 July 2020. Retrieved 16 June 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
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  11. ^ Corfield 2003, p. 378.
  12. ^ Corfield 2003, pp. 262–63.
  13. ^ a b Corfield 2003, p. 286.
  14. ^ Jones 2010, p. 2016.
  15. ^ Schwartz, Larry (11 December 2004). "Ned was a champ with a soft spot under his armour". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
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  24. ^ FitzSimons 2013, pp. 81–82.
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  28. ^ Corfield 2003, pp. 265–66.
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  38. ^ Kieza 2017, p. 217.
  39. ^ Kenneally 1929, Chapter 2.
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  49. ^ a b c d e f Macfarlane 2012, pp. 70–73.
  50. ^ Jones (1995) p. 364.
  51. ^ FitzSimons 2013, p. 191.
  52. ^ a b c d McQuilton 1987.
  53. ^ Jones (1995). p. 136.
  54. ^ Morrissey 2015, p. 87.
  55. ^ Corfield 2003, p. 462.
  56. ^ Macfarlane 2012, pp. 76–77.
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