Ned Kelly
Edward Kelly was an Australian bushranger, gang leader and police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
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 for his enemies. In 1880, the gang tried to derail and ambush a police train as a prelude to attacking Benalla, the base of police operations in the region. 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 for murder, convicted and hanged 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". 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 is variously considered a Robin Hood-like folk hero and crusader against oppression, and a murderous villain and terrorist. 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."
Family background and early life
Kelly's father, John Kelly, was born in 1820 at Clonbrogan near Moyglass, County Tipperary, Ireland. Aged 21, he was found guilty of stealing two pigs and was transported on the convict ship Prince Regent to Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land, arriving on 2 January 1842. Granted his certificate of freedom in January 1848, Red moved to the Port Phillip District and was employed as a carpenter by farmer James Quinn at Wallan Wallan.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. 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.
Edward Kelly was their third child. His exact birth date is unknown, but was probably in December 1854. Kelly was possibly baptised by Augustinian priest Charles O'Hea, who also administered his last rites before his execution. His parents had seven other children: Mary Jane, Annie, Margaret, James, Daniel, Catherine and Grace.
File:Ned Kelly green sash.jpg|thumb|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.
The Kellys struggled on inferior farmland at Beveridge and Red began drinking heavily. In 1864 the family moved to Avenel, near Seymour, where 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, 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.
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.
The following year, the Kellys moved to Greta in north-eastern Victoria, near the Quinns and their relatives by marriage, the Lloyds. Several members were implicated in livestock theft, drawing police attention to the clan. 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. The family soon leased a small farm of 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.
Rise to notoriety
Bushranging with Harry Power
In 1869, 14-year-old Kelly met Irish-born Harry Power, 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.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.
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 HM Prison Beechworth. 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.
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 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. 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.
Reporting on Power's criminal career, the Benalla Ensign wrote:
Horse theft, assault and imprisonment
In October 1870, a hawker, Jeremiah McCormack, accused a friend of the Kellys, Ben Gould, of stealing his horse. In response, Gould sent an indecent note and a parcel of calves' testicles to McCormack's wife, which Kelly helped deliver. When McCormack later confronted Kelly over his role, Kelly punched him and was arrested for both the note and the assault, receiving three months' hard labour for each charge.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, 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". 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.
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. 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.
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". During this time, his mother married an American, George King. In early 1877, Ned joined King in an organised horse theft operation. Ned later claimed that the group stole 280 horses. 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.
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, "Well Lonigan, I never shot a man yet; but if I ever do...you will be the first!" 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. On 10 November, Baumgarten was arrested for selling the horses. Warrants for Ned and Dan's arrest for the theft were sworn in March and April 1878. King disappeared around this time.