Ned Kelly

For other uses, see Ned Kelly (disambiguation).

Ned Kelly the day before his execution

Edward "Ned" Kelly (c. 1855 – 11 November 1880) is Australia's most famous bushranger, and, to many, a folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities.

Early life

John "Red" Kelly, the father of Edward "Ned" Kelly, was convicted in Ireland of stealing 2 pigs which were the property of Mr. Quainy. He was sentenced to 7 years transportation to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and arrived in 1842.

After his release he found work in Beveridge at the farm of James Quinn, a member of the notorious Quinn extended family or "clan". Red Kelly, aged 30, married Quinn's daughter Ellen, then 18. Their first child died early, but Ellen then gave birth to a daughter, Annie, in 1853. In all they had eight children.

Their first son, Edward a.k.a. Ned, was born in Beveridge, Victoria just north of Melbourne, probably in January 1855 (perhaps December 1854).

Ned was baptized by Augustinian priest Charles O'Hea. As a boy he attended school and risked his life to save another boy who was drowning. As a reward he was given a green sash by the boy's family, which he would wear under his armour during his final showdown with police.

The Quinns were notorious in their area and were always suspected of being involved in cattle or horse stealing, though they were never convicted. Red Kelly himself was arrested when he killed and skinned a calf which belonged to a neighbour. He served two weeks in prison before Ellen could pay the fine.

Red Kelly died at Beveridge on 27 December 1866 when Ned was only eleven and a half (as recorded by Ned on death certificate), and according to custom he was forced to leave school to become head of the family. It was at this time that the Kelly family moved to the Glenrowan area of Victoria, which to this day is known as Kelly Country. Ned grew up in poverty in some of the harshest conditions in Australia, and folk tales tell of his sleeping on the ground in the bush during the Victorian winter.

File:Jerilderie-letter-ned-kelly.jpg

An extracted page of the Jerilderie Letter

In all, 18 charges were brought against members of Ned's immediate family before he was declared an outlaw, while only half that number resulted in guilty verdicts. This is a highly unusual ratio for the time, and is one of the reasons that has caused many to posit that Ned's family was unfairly targeted from the time they moved to North-East Victoria due to Ellen Quinn's bad family name.

Rise to notoriety

In 1869, 14-year-old Ned was arrested for assaulting a Chinese pig farmer named Ah Fook. Ah Fook claimed that he had been robbed by Ned, whose story was that Ah Fook had had a row with his sister Annie. Ned spent ten days in custody before the charges were dismissed. But from now on the police regarded him as a "juvenile bushranger".

The following year he was arrested and accused of being an accomplice of bushranger Harry Power. No convincing evidence was produced in court and he was released after a month. Historians tend to disagree over this episode: some see it as evidence of police harassment; others believe that Kelly’s relatives intimidated the witnesses, making them reluctant to give evidence. Power was eventually arrested while hiding out on land belonging to Kelly's relatives.

In October 1870 Ned was arrested again for assaulting a hawker, Jeremiah McCormack, and for his part in sending Kelly McCormack, his wife, an indecent note that had calves' testicles enclosed with it. This was a result of a row earlier that day caused when McCormack accused some friends of the Kellys of using his horse without permission. Ned did not write the note, but passed it to one of his cousins to give to the lady. He was sentenced to three months' hard labour on each charge.

Upon his release Ned returned home. There he met Isaiah "Wild" Wright who had arrived in the area on a beautiful chestnut mare. The mare had gone missing and since Wright needed to go back to Mansfield he asked Ned to find and keep it until his return. Ned found the mare and used it to go to town. He always maintained that he had no idea that the mare actually belonged to the Mansfield postmaster and that Wright had stolen it. While riding through Greta, Ned was approached by Constable Hall who did know that the horse was stolen property. When his attempt to arrest Ned turned into a fight, Hall brought out his gun and tried to shoot him, but Kelly overpowered the policeman and humiliated him by pretending to ride him like a horse. Hall later struck Kelly several times with his revolver after he had been arrested. After just three weeks of freedom, 16-year-old Ned was sentenced to three years imprisonment along with his brother-in-law Alex Gunn. "Wild" Wright got only eighteen months.

While Ned was in prison, his brothers Jim (aged 12) and Dan (aged 10) were arrested by Constable Flood for riding a horse that did not belong to them. The horse had been lent to them by a farmer for whom they had been doing some work, but the boys had to spend a night in the cells before the matter was cleared.

Two years later, Jim Kelly was arrested as part of a cattle-rustling operation. He and his family claimed that he did not know that some of the cattle did not belong to his employer Tom Lloyd. Nevertheless he was given a five-year sentence.

The Fitzpatrick Incident

Ned's mother, Ellen, was now married to a Californian named George King, with whom she had three children. He, Ned and Dan became involved in a cattle rustling operation.

On the 15 April 1878, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick arrived at Benalla suffering from a broken wrist. He claimed that he had been attacked by Ned, Dan, Ellen, and their friends Bricky Williamson and Bill Skillion, all armed with revolvers. Williamson and Skillion were soon arrested. Ned and Dan were nowhere to be found but Ellen was taken into custody along with her baby, Alice. She was still in prison at the time of Ned's execution. Ellen later remarried, and died on the 27 March 1923.

The Kellys claimed that Fitzpatrick had come to their house in order to question Dan over the cattle rustling issue. While there he made a pass at Dan's sister Kate. The men and her mother had only defended her by physically knocking him to the ground. They had bandaged his wrist and he had left saying that no real harm had been done. No guns, they claimed, were used during the incident, and Ned was in no way involved since he was actually in New South Wales at the time.

The fact that Fitzpatrick was later dismissed from the force for drunkenness and perjury has led many historians to take the Kellys' version of events as the real story.

The Killings at Stringybark

Based perhaps on previous experience, Dan and Ned doubted very much that they could convince the authorities of their side of the story. Instead they went into hiding. They were later joined by their friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.

On the 25 October 1878, police Sergeant Kennedy set off to search for the Kellys, accompanied by Constables McIntyre, Lonigan, and Scanlon. The wanted men were suspected of being in a hut at Stringybark Creek in a heavily timbered area. The police set up camp unaware that they were only a mile away from the hut.

The next day Ned discovered the police camp and warned the others. They surrounded the camp and, in the confrontation that followed, three of the officers were killed. Only McIntyre escaped.

Now certain to hang if they were caught, the outlaws remained at large for the next sixteen months, only making occasional appearances in public.

They were apposidley seen in a local unknow town and a pursuit resulted. Ned and his gang were not caught but it as said to be a warning for them.

Bank robberies

The gang only committed two major robberies, at Euroa and Jerilderie. Their strategy involved the taking of hostages and robbing the bank safes.

Euroa

On the 10 December 1878, the gang raided the National Bank at Euroa. They had already taken a number of hostages at Faithful Creek station and went to the bank claiming to be delivering a message from McCauley, the station manager. They got into the bank and held up the manager, Scott, and his two tellers. After obtaining all the money available, the outlaws ordered Scott, his wife, family, maids and tellers to accompany them to Faithful Creek where they were locked up with the other hostages, who included the station's staff and some passing hawkers and sportsmen. (It is claimed that Ned, posing as a policeman, took one of the men hostage on the grounds of being the "notorious Ned Kelly". The man was locked up in the storeroom saying that he would report the "officer" to his superiors. It was only then that he was told who his captor was.)

The outlaws gave an exhibition of horsemanship which entertained and surprised their hostages. After having supper, and telling the hostages not to raise the alarm for another three hours, they left.

The entire operation had been carried out without injury and the gang had netted £2000, a large sum in those days.

A ballad based on the raid was written, supposedly by gang member Joe Byrne. A copy can be found at Kellys, Byrne and Hart.

Jerilderie

The raid on Jerilderie is particularly noteworthy for its boldness and cunning. The gang arrived in the town on Saturday 8 February 1879. They broke into the local police station and imprisoned police officers Richards and Devine in their own cell. The outlaws then changed into the police uniforms and mixed with the locals, claiming to be reinforcements from Sydney.

On Monday the gang rounded up various people and got them into the back parlour of the Royal Mail Hotel. While Dan and Steve Hart kept the hostages busy, Ned and Joe Byrne raided the local bank of about two thousand pounds. Kelly also burned all the townspeople's mortgage deeds in the bank.

At this time, Ned dictated a lengthy letter for publication describing his view of his activities and the treatment of his family and, more generally, the treatment of Irish Catholics by the police and the English and Irish Protestant squatters. The Jerilderie Letter, as it is called, discusses the possibility of an uprising, not only in Australia but in the United States and Ireland itself, against what he regarded as a gross injustice. Some accounts of the Kelly story see Ned as ultimately planning armed rebellion (some even assert that he aimed to declare the north-east of Victoria an independent republic).

Capture, trial and execution

The trial of Ned Kelly.

Kelly in the dock.

The gang knew that an old friend of theirs, Aaron Sherritt, was a police informer. On the 26 June 1880 Dan Kelly and Joe Byrne went to Sherritt's house and killed him. The four policemen who were with him at the time hid under the bed and did not report the killing until late the following morning. This delay was to prove crucial since it upset Ned's timing for an ambush.

The Kelly Gang arrived in Glenrowan on 27 June and held about 70 hostages at the Glenrowan Inn, owned by the Jones family. They knew that a train loaded with police was on its way and ordered the rail tracks pulled up in order to cause a derailment.

The gang members had brought with them their famous armour. The armour was made with stolen and donated plough parts. It is not known exactly who made the armour. Some suggest they made it themselves, other suggest it was made by friendly blacksmiths. Each man's armour weighed about 96 pounds (44 kg); all four had helmets, and Joe Byrne's was said to be the most well done, with the brow reaching down to the nose piece, almost forming two eye slits.

While holed up in the Glenrowan Inn, their attempt to derail the police train failed when a released hostage, schoolmaster Thomas Curnow, gave the alert, at great risk to his own life, by standing on the railway line near sunrise, waving a red scarf illuminated by a candle. The police then laid siege to the inn.

At about dawn on Monday 28 June, Ned Kelly emerged from the inn in his suit of armour. He marched on to the police firing his gun at them, while their bullets bounced off his armour. His lower limbs however were unprotected and he was shot up to twenty-eight times in the legs (sources vary, some saying six times). The other Kelly Gang members died in the hotel, Joe Byrne allegedly by loss of blood due to a gunshot wound that severed his femoral artery, and Dan Kelly and Steve Hart by self-ingestion of poison (autopsies were not performed). The police suffered only one major injury: Superintendent Francis Hare, who was shot in the wrist by Kelly and lost a lot of blood. Also, several hostages were shot by the police; at least two died.

Ned Kelly survived to stand trial, and was sentenced to death by Judge Redmond Barry, who had tried him on previous occasions for lesser crimes. When the judge uttered the customary words "may God have mercy on your soul", Ned is reported to have replied "I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there when I go". He was hanged on 11 November at the Melbourne Jail. Although two newspapers (The Age and Herald Sun) reported Kelly's last words as "Such is life" and two other newspapers as "Ah well, I suppose it has come to this. Such is life", another source, Ned Kelly's gaol warden, writes in his diary that when Kelly was prompted to say his last words that he (Ned Kelly) opened his mouth and mumbled something that he couldn't hear—and seeing that the warden's office is closer to the scene of the hanging than the witnesses' allotted space, it is curious as to what Ned Kelly's last words actually were. Sir Redmond Barry died of the effects of a carbuncle on his neck on 23 November, 1880, twelve days after Kelly.

Stories abounded of Ned's altruistic and gentlemanly behaviour, casting him as a modern-day Robin Hood, and about 32,000 Victorians signed a petition against Kelly's sentencing. Also, an inquiry was held in which all the police officers involved in Ned's exploits were either fired or demoted.

Ned Kelly's death mask in the Old Melbourne Gaol

Cultural effect

One of the gaols in which he was incarcerated has become the Ned Kelly Museum in Glenrowan, Australia, and many weapons and artefacts used by him and his gang are in exhibit there. Since his death, Kelly has become part of Australian folklore, and the subject of a large number of books and several films, including one with Mick Jagger in the title role. To some, he is a folk hero, to others a common thug whose crimes were brutal and entirely for personal gain. Ned Kelly is particularly a hero for the Australian Celtic community, who view him as an anti-racist legend.

Ned Kelly as political icon

In the time since his execution, Ned Kelly has been mythologized among some into a Robin Hood figure of sorts, a political revolutionary and a figure of Irish Catholic and working-class resistance to the establishment and British colonial ties. It is claimed that Kelly's bank robberies were to fund the push for a "Republic of the North-East of Victoria", and that the police found a declaration of the republic in his pocket when he was captured, which has led to him being seen as an icon by some in the Australian Republican cause (itself including a lot of Australians of Irish descent, most notably previous Prime Minister Paul Keating and author Thomas Kenneally). However, concrete evidence of the planning of such a republic or Kelly's involvement in such has not appeared.

Australian far-right organisations such as National Action have also adopted Ned Kelly (as well as other Australian rebel imagery such as the Eureka Flag).

Ned Kelly in iconography

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Sidney Nolan's painting of Ned Kelly on trial

The distinctive homemade armour he wore for his final unsuccessful stand against the police was the subject of a famous series of paintings by Sidney Nolan.

Ironically Jerilderie, one of the towns Ned Kelly robbed, has built its Police Station featuring no less than 19 structural components mimicking his distinctive face plate. Some examples include walls made of differently toned bricks making up his image to storm drains with holes cut in them to form it.

Ned Kelly, based on Sidney Nolan's imagery, appeared in the "Tin Symphony" segment of the opening ceremony for the year 2000 Olympic Games.

Ned Kelly has appeared in advertisements, most notably in Bushells tea on television. A man drinking tea in the iconic suit of armour is the focal point of part of the ad.

Books

The Last of the Bushrangers, by F. A. Hare was published in London in 1892. A. Bertram Chandler's novel Kelly Country (1983) is an alternate history in which Kelly leads a successful revolution; the result is that Australia becomes a world power. Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang was published in 2000, and was awarded the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Ian Jones has produced several books concerning the Kelly Gang, including The Fatal Friendship and Ned Kelly; A short life. Keith Dunstan's Saint Ned (1980) chronicles lesser known aspects of Ned Kelly's life, whilst discussing the rise of the 'Kellyana' industry.

Also popular is another book called "The Jerilderie Letter by Ned Kelly", edited and introduced by Alex McDermott Text Publishing, 2001.

Films and television

The Story of the Kelly Gang is considered the world's first feature length film, it was released in 1906, with a then-unprecedented running time of 70 minutes. One of the actual suits worn by the gang (probably Joe Byrnes') was borrowed from the Victorian Museum and worn in the film.

Harry Southwell wrote, directed and produced three films, The Kelly Gang (1920), When the Kellys Were Out (1923) and When the Kellys Rode (1934), and began work on a fourth, A Message to Kelly (1947).

The Glenrowan Affair was produced by Rupert Kathner in 1951, featuring the exploits of Ned Kelly and his "wild colonial boys" on their journey of treachery, violence, murder and terror, told from the perspective of an ageing Dan Kelly. It starred the famous, tough Carlton footballer Bob Chitty as Ned Kelly. It was one of the last films to portray him with an Australian accent.

In 1967, independent filmmaker Garry Shead directed and produced Stringybark Massacre, an avant garde re-creation of the murder of the three police officers at Stringybark.

The next major film version of the Kelly story was Ned Kelly, starring Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, directed by Tony Richardson, running 1 hour, 43 minutes. It was poorly received and during its making it led to a protest by Australian Actors Equity over the importation of Jagger, and there were complaints from Kelly family descendants and others over the film being shot in New South Wales, rather than in the Victoria locations where the events actually took place.

Kelly expert and author Ian Jones worked with Tony Richardson on the script for Ned Kelly, and went on to present his own take on Ned Kelly in his 1980 television mini-series The Last Outlaw, which he co-wrote and produced with Bronwyn Binns. The series premiered on the centenary of the day that Kelly was hanged and its detailed historical accuracy distinguished it from many other films. It had recently been released on DVD.

Yahoo Serious wrote, directed and starred in the 1993 satire film Reckless Kelly as a descendant of Ned Kelly. It was considered a disappointment when compared to his first film, Young Einstein.

In 2003, Ned Kelly, a $30 million budget movie about Kelly's life was released. Directed by Gregor Jordan, and written by John M. McDonagh, it starred Heath Ledger (as Kelly), Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, and Naomi Watts. Based on Robert Drewe's book Our Sunshine, the film covers the period from Kelly's arrest for horse theft as a teenager, to the Kelly gang's armour-clad battle at Glenrowan, and attempts to portray the events from the perspectives of Kelly, and also of the authorities responsible for his capture and prosecution. That same year a low budget satire movie called Ned was released. Written, directed and starring Abe Forsythe, it depicted the Kelly gang wearing fake beards and tin buckets on their heads.

Songs

In 1971, US country singer Johnny Cash wrote and recorded the song "Ned Kelly" for his album The Man in Black. Other songs about Ned Kelly include those by Slim Dusty ("Game as Ned Kelly"), Ashley Davies ("Ned Kelly" (2001)), Waylon Jennings ("Ned Kelly" (1970)), Redgum ("Poor Ned" (1978)), Midnight Oil ("If Ned Kelly Was King" (1983)), The Whitlams ("Kate Kelly" (2002)), and Trevor Lucas ("Ballad of Ned Kelly", performed by Fotheringay on their eponymous album). He was also referred to in the Midnight Oil song "Mountains of Burma" (1990) ("The heart of Kelly's country cleared"). The Australian band The Kelly Gang consists of Jack Nolan, Rick Grossman and Rob Hirst. "Shelter for my Soul" was written and recorded by Powderfinger's Bernard Fanning for the 2003 film Ned Kelly. It was written from Kelly's perspective on death row and played over the movie's closing credits.

See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

External links

• Images and transcript of the Jerilderie Letter at the State Library of Victoria.
• Images, transcript and audio of John Hanlon's transcript of the Jerilderie Letter at the National Museum of Australia
• Glenrowan 1880
• Iron Outlaw
• Convict Creations page on Ned Kelly
• IMDb: Ned Kelly (2003)
• A collection of traditional ballads about Ned Kelly
• Crime Library's account of Kelly's life and death
• Ned Kelly on PictureAustralia