Ned Kelly Australian Ironoutlaw

This time their target was the Bank of New South Wales at Jerilderie. It was a Saturday night and they captured the two local policemen and locked them up. Then they dressed themselves in police uniforms and stabled their horses. Next day, Ned supervised the rounding-up of more than 60 townspeople in the dining room of the Royal Mail Hotel, next door to the bank. Then he lectured to the captive audience from a document dictated by Ned to Joe Byrne, which he intended should be read by all the world. It was a remarkable document — autobiography, statement of fact and self-justification — which ran to well over 7500 words — and became known as the Jerilderie Letter.

A photographer travelling through the bush came across three riders whom he recognised as members of the Kelly Gang. The horsemen were later identified as Wild Wright, Ned Kelly and Steve Hart.
Photo Max Brown

On Monday morning, Ned went in search of the local newspaper editor to have it printed, but the editor had gone into hiding. Carefully checking to make sure all the telephone wires out of town had been cut, Ned then proceeded to rob the bank. The Bank of New South Wales lost over £2000 in notes and coin that day. Ned gave his manifesto to one of the tellers, who swore he would give it to Donald Cameron, MP, but instead he passed it on to the Crown Law Office in Melbourne.

The statement was then carefully put away and was not produced at Kelly’s trial; nor were its contents made known to the press. It was not made available to the public until the 1930s, and may now be read online in our Jerilderie section. It is believed that after Jerilderie the Kelly Gang went into hiding in the Bogong high plains while reports circulated that members of the Gang were seen as far away as Melbourne and the Goulburn. The Victorian government increased the Kelly reward to £4000, matched by £4000 from New South Wales — the total worth more than $2 million today. But the Kelly Gang had disappeared and would not be seen for 17 months.

Increasingly frustrated by support for the Gang the police, under direction from Chief Commissioner Frederick Charles Standish, locked up Kelly friends and relatives for months without trial. When this move backfired, the police drew up a blacklist of Kelly associates, or ‘sympathisers’, who would not be allowed to take up land in the north-east. This ill-advised action tipped the Kelly outbreak into rebellion. Ned and the Gang advanced plans for a Republic of North-Eastern Victoria, to be launched by a pre-emptive strike at their police enemies. But one of those enemies was laying his own devious plan to destroy the Gang.

Aaron Sherritt, a lifelong friend of Joe Byrne, had been a key Kelly agent while pretending to help the police. A detective set out to incriminate Sherritt in the eyes of the Gang. If they broke from cover to kill Sherritt, the police would at last have a chance to capture or kill the outlaws. One night Aaron Sherritt opened his door to find Joe Byrne standing there. Without a word, he shot Sherritt dead. Four armed police had been entrusted with the protection Sherritt and his family who, by then, was on the police payroll. Joe Byrne and Dan Kelly challenged them to come out and fight but the troopers declined, and instead hid under the Sherritt’s bed. After threatening to burn the house down the two outlaws rode 40 miles across country to join Ned and Steve Hart at Glenrowan.

Native Troopers After months of delay, the press announced that twenty native police were en route from Queensland. Publication of the fact was a deliberate attempt to foil his efforts to capture the bushrangers, declared the Acting Chief Secretary, Sir Bryan O’Loghlen. In the event, the twenty trackers proved to be six. They arrived in March after a voyage to Sydney in which all were extremely sick, especially Corporal Sambo who had contracted congestion of the lungs.
Max Brown Australian Son
Photo Victoria Police Historical Unit

On Saturday, June 27 1880, the Kelly Gang captured the railway station at Glenrowan, but not before the news of the Sherritt shooting had been wired south. Ned Kelly knew now that the time had come to stand and fight. A crowd of people from the tiny railway town was herded into Mrs Ann Jones' hotel near the station. Ned suspected that the voluble Mrs Jones was a police spy.

Characteristically, he chose her hotel rather than the other one at Glenrowan in which to make his last stand. With the local policeman, Constable Bracken, having been made prisoner and the telegraph wires cut, the Kelly Gang then proceeded to drink with the locals. On the Sunday afternoon they held a light-hearted “sports” meeting in the hotel yard. Putting aside his guns, Ned competed in a hop, step and jump event, while carrying under his overcoat a full set of armour. There was more drinking but, as night fell, the Kellys decided to cut off Glenrowan more drastically. Ned ordered a railway fettler named Reardon to tear up a section of the railway track. By then there were more than 30 people crowded into Mrs Jones' hotel.

Stopping the police train After earlier convincing Ned Kelly to release him, Thomas Curnow, the crippled Glenrowan school teacher, stopped the special pilot train with a candle held behind a red scarf.

The Kelly's had not slept for two nights but only the resourceful Constable Bracken and the school teacher, Thomas Curnow, were able to outwit them and escape. A train crowded with police left Melbourne for Kelly Country at 10.15 pm that Sunday. In the early hours of next morning the whistle of the approaching train could be heard above the noise in Mrs Jones' hotel. The Kelly Gang waited for the sound of derailment but it never came. Curnow had run along the track, waving a light shaded in a red cloth shawl he had borrowed from his wife.

The train stopped before it reached the rail break, and armed police and blacktrackers leapt out. Mrs Reardon, imprisoned in the hotel with her children, could hear clanking as Ned Kelly donned his armour in a back room. Hammered out from ploughshares, the armour consisted of a cylindrical helmet, a breastplate with apron and a back plate laced with leather thongs. The armour weighed 90 pounds.

The Shooting Begins

One of Australia’s most famous images is that drawn by Thomas Carrington and titled ‘Ned Kelly at bay’. While many of the finer details were drawn after Ned’s capture, Carrington’s interpretation is never the less highly authentic.

It was 3am and bright moonlight. Under Superintendent Hare, the police moved among the trees to surround the hotel. As they took up firing positions, the Kelly Gang came out and started shooting. In the very first volley Hare was wounded in the forearm by a bullet. He promptly retired to the safety of the post office, leaving some 50 police without a commanding officer.

In the exchange of fire, Joe Byrne was shot in the leg, then he Dan and Steve retreated into the hotel. Ned Kelly, who was shot in the foot, hand and arm, escapes into the trees to warn the armed sympathisers their plan to derail the train had failed. During the confusion a signal rocket had been fired to alert Ned’s militia. The dream of a “Republic of North East Victoria” died with Curnow and the waving of a red scarf.

The women roused their little ones and a large party ran out the back door and down the Wangaratta side of the house. They were about to cross the drain close to the gatehouse when a voice from under the culvert cried, “Who comes there?” “Women and children”, they answered. A fusillade of shots passed their faces and they broke and turned and made their way back to the hotel. It was apparent that the police, unuse to battle and schooled in dread of the outlaws, would fire in panic at anything on two legs.
p.174 Max Brown Australian Son

The women and children pinned inside were screaming, but the police kept up a murderous rate of gun fire. Inside, Dan Kelly ordered the townspeople to lie flat and not to raise their heads. As night faded, the police still kept firing and still bullets were aimed from the outlaws' guns. Inside the hotel, Joe Byrne grabbed a bottle of whisky, straightened up to drink it and, half way through a toast, dropped dead with a bullet to his groin. Dawn was breaking. The townspeople, by then almost hysterical, started to brave the police barrage and come out. Mrs Reardon, clutching a shawl round her baby, stepped out from the hotel veranda.

She heard a policeman, afterwards identified as Sergeant Steele, call out, “Throw up your hands or I'll shoot you like a bloody dog!” Mrs Reardon ran forward. Steele fired and the bullet passed through the shawl, missing the baby by inches. Two other children were not so lucky. One was wounded and another shot dead, with another youth wounded only a few minutes later.

Sometime before dawn Ned Kelly returned to the hotel, only to see Joe Byrne lying dead. He then appears outside the hotel and heads into the bush where he collapses. Here he is comforted by his cousin Tom Lloyd. Ned has lost much blood, has missed two nights sleep and is still carrying his armour. At this moment he could have escaped, most men would have. Not Ned Kelly. Instead he goes back to rescue his brother and Steve Hart.

This wood engraving titled “A Strange Apparition” appeared in The Illustrated Australian News on July 9, 1880.

As the sun rose, out of the ground mist came Ned Kelly, an apparition limping in dented armour, one arm extended, his gun in his hand. Bullets rang against his armour as he walked slowly towards the police front line. They fell back and on Kelly came. A railway guard named Jesse Dowsett stood his ground, firing at Ned Kelly’s legs. Then a senior constable, also named Kelly, fired again at Kelly’s legs and at last he fell. Within minutes police had surrounded the grotesque figure of the outlaw. They had to cut the thongs to free Ned from his armour and his face was a mask of blood. He had so many wounds they thought he would not live, and carried him into the railway station. With the sunrise another train had come to Glenrowan and one of its passengers was Father Matthew Gibney, a Roman Catholic priest. Ned Kelly’s sisters, Kate and Maggie, begged him to see their brother and give him the last rites.

Harsh Justice

Father Gibney found the outlaw conscious and comforted him. He then went to the hotel. At 3pm, thinking all the townspeople were out, the police constable had crept close and fired the Glenrowan Inn with straw soaked in kerosene, ultimately burning the hotel to the ground. Someone cried out that Martin Cherry, a townsman, was trapped inside with the outlaws. So with great courage, Father Gibney went into the blazing building with hands raised high to show he was unarmed. But no shots came.

Gibney fought his way through to a back room and there found the lifeless bodies of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart. Giving evidence later at the 1881 Royal Commission, the priest gave it as his opinion that the outlaws had committed suicide, probably by taking poison. The bodies lay side by side, heads propped on folded blankets. Martin Cherry was rescued but later died from wounds he received from police gun fire. Joe Byrne’s lifeless body was dragged from the Inn but those of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were charred beyond recognition. Later that day the families claimed both the bodies of Dan and Steve who, after a fiery wake at Eleven Mile Creek, were buried in Greta Cemetery.

This famous Australasian Sketcher drawing shows the execution of Edward Kelly on November 11, 1880.

After a Petty Sessions hearing at Beechworth in August, Ned Kelly was taken to Melbourne, passing through streets thronged with gaping people. He was deemed fit to stand trial for murder at Melbourne’s Supreme Court on October 28, 1880. The judge, Sir Redmond Barry, who had once made the grim promise that he would see Ned Kelly hang, wanted to dispose of the Trial in a single day, in order to have it finished before Melbourne Cup Day. The inexperienced barrister defending Ned was no match for an expert prosecutor, a determined judge and a chief Crown witness — the constable who escaped at Stringybark Creek — who committed perjury. Barry also misdirected the jury on a vital point of law concerning self-defence. Inevitably, a guilty verdict was announced. Barry sentenced Ned to hang, concluding with: “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.” Ned famously retorted: “I will see you there, where I go.” Twelve days later, Judge Barry dropped dead in his chambers.

This photograph shows the last full length image of Ned Kelly taken on November 10, 1880, the day before his execution.
Photo Victoria Police Historical Unit

Ned Kelly’s execution was scheduled for Thursday November 11, 1880 — only 13 days after his trial. A massive movement was launched to save his life; there were huge public meetings, torch-lit marches, a deputation to the Governor and a petition for Ned’s reprieve from execution. Three days before the planned hanging, the petition was presented to the Governor with more than 32,000 signatures. An hour later, the Executive Council announced that the execution would go ahead.

At 9am on the morning of November 11, as a crowd of 5,000 gathered outside the Melbourne Gaol, Ned was transferred to the condemned cell. Just before 10am, he was led out onto the scaffold. As the hangman adjusted the hood to cover his face, Kelly's last words were: “Arr well, I suppose it has to come to this. Such... (is life)”. At four minutes past 10, the executioner pulled the lever and Ned Kelly plunged into immortality. His headless body was buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds of the Old Melbourne Gaol. It was then later removed to Pentridge Prison's Cemetery.

Stationed along with three fellow officers, Senior Constable Robert Graham was charged with bringing order to a highly volitile situation. While the police occupied the first floor of O’Brien’s Hotel, Kelly sympathisers swore vengeance in the bar below.

An End and a Beginning

The Grahams Constable Robert Graham, pictured with his new wife Mary Kirk, gained the trust of Mrs Kelly and her family, to become a respected member of the community.
Photo Victoria Police Historical Unit

For months after his death, Ned Kelly’s rebellion simmered in North East Victoria, fuelled by the distribution of the £8000 reward money — often referred to as “blood money” by the Gang’s many sympathisers — and a Royal Commission which exposed a number of police spies in Kelly Country. Mrs Ellen Kelly, whose last words to her son Ned were: “I'll mind you die like a Kelly, Son” survived until 1923, dying at the age of 92.

At this juncture, Constable Robert Graham - a young officer contemplating marriage and nicknamed “Honest Bob” - saw an opportunity for conciliation and was allowed to reopen the police station at Greta, which he did - of all venues - in O’Brien’s Hotel. The Glenmore strength was increased meanwhile, and a new station opened in Kiewa valley to block the escape of stolen stock to Gippsland.
Max Brown Australian Son