I received an email from an American publisher asking for a photo of Ned for a book they were producing on famous outlaws. Being skeptical about the accuracy of many of these “reference” books, I requested a read through of their extract and, well, the rest is history...

Outlaws, Mobsters & Crooks
From the Old West to the Internet
Volume 4 and 5
source: gale.com

Kelly Photo
From: Sarah Hermsen [Sarah.Hermsen@gale.com] 28 Jun 02
Hi Brad. The book will be out this winter on November 1st, 2002, and we will get a copy to you right away. I would love if I could get the photo of Kelly from the history page of the website - the one that's called “Ned's final portrait” but any face shot or head and shoulders shot of him will work nicely. You can email me the photo whenever you want to. There will be someone from our imaging department who will be sending you some paperwork to sign saying that you give us permission to us the photo, so I need your specific contact information - for someone who is mailing from the U.S. to you.

Also, since you have been so kind and probably know a lot about Ned Kelly I thought I would send you - attached to this email - the entry on Kelly as it is so far. If you see any incorrect information in it I would appreciate if you let me know. Our books go to 12 - 14 year old readers and we are limited to around 2000 words per entry so the entry may not be as specific or detailed as some of your information but if you see any inaccuracies, please let us know. Thank you so much.

PS In the attached entry at the end of the document you will see things that are labeled as sidehead - those are just going to be information boxes that will placed in different sections of the entry. please let me know what you think of it. thanks again

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Brad Webb [info@ironoutlaw.com] 29 Jun 02
Sarah, I have read through the story and there are quite a few errors and made up sections which are not part of any accepted history. I have marked them in blue. Main errors being the state of Beveridge is VICTORIA, Ned's parents were NOT married in Tasmania, Ned was born in December 1854 and it makes no mention of why the Kelly outbreak occurred. I realise this is a highly condensed history of Ned Kelly but so is the highly accurate version found in our History section. Pity you didn't come to me for the write up...

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Sarah Hermsen [Sarah.Hermsen@gale.com] 02 Jul 02
Brad, Thank you for all the information on the entry. Trust me, I wish we could hire 45 different experts to write the 45 different entries for this book but that gets extremely expensive and extremely difficult to organize - especially when our editors, on average, work on 3 different books at one time. We NEVER want to have incorrect information and try to do enough of our own research to be able to support what our authors say but, with so many entries, sometimes we have to trust the authors that we have worked with repeatedly and who have gotten good reviews in the past and trust that they are bringing as much accurate information to the entry as possible. Thank you again for your help. I have made some changes to the entry based on your information and will review the website history page. I hope you weren't so upset with the entry that you are not going to send the Kelly photo. That would really help the entry. Hopefully I will hear from you soon.

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Sarah Hermsen [Sarah.Hermsen@gale.com] 09 Jul 02
Brad, I think that the author who wrote the entry hates research. She's a great writer but not thorough enough and we may not use her anymore in the future. Laziness in inexcusable - especially in biographies where the facts must be accurate. Thank you so much for your help. I love the website and it's address will be in the For More Information section of the entry. Has our imaging person contacted you yet? If not, could you send me the Kelly image and your mailing address and I can send everything along to her - her name, ironically, is Kelly. Thank you again for the photo - it is greatly appreciated.

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Brad Webb [info@ironoutlaw.com] 09 Jul 02
Sarah, so who is writing the Kelly article now? Surely not a writer that hates research. This is how misinformation is spread. Supporting such a venture would go against every reason I set the site up in the first place!

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Sarah Hermsen [Sarah.Hermsen@gale.com] 09 Jul 02
Brad, I will be the one tweaking the Kelly entry. I am using some of the information that Marie wrote - except for the incorrect information. I am using the dates and locations from your website to make sure the entry is accurate and adding further information that she left out. Basically we are keeping her style of writing and the chronology of things but a big chunk of what she wrote will be deleted and replaced with the corrections that you indicated needed to be made and the facts from the website. I am trying as hard as I possibly can to make the entry accurate from this point forward. That is the best I can do. In the end it is my name that goes on this book as the editor and even though Marie's name goes on the cover as the writer of the book if there is inaccurate information that reflects on me - I don't want that to happen. I will do some more research as well.

Brad, I contacted you to try and make this an accurate entry. I could have just asked for the photo and that would have been the end of it. I hope that my continuous contact with you has shown you that I want the best for this entry and am trying to fix what is not right. Please let me know how you want to continue from here. We have to have the photo by Thursday otherwise there won't be time to get it in the book. If you feel uncomfortable - fine - we'll just use the photos of his armor that we have and not have a face photo. It would be nice to have picture for the kids to see and would have helped the entry even more. I am still working on the entry and will not spread “misinformation” as you said. Thank you for the assistance you have given - your aid has helped make it a better entry. I would love to get the photo but if you don't want to send it then it was very nice chatting with you and I wish you the best.

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Brad Webb [info@ironoutlaw.com] 11 Jul 02
The image of Ned on my site is a low resolution jpeg so it would be useless to use in a high production print run. I suggest you contact the State Library of Victoria and negotiate a deal where you can reproduce a high quality photograph of Mr Kelly. He deserves that afterall. And have you ever come across the word 'condescending'?

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Sarah Hermsen [Sarah.Hermsen@gale.com] 22 Aug 02
Hi Brad. It turns out that we were unable to use the portrait of Ned Kelly due to the resolution and size of the photo. If you still would like a copy of the book, however, for helping me with the entry, I could send you one in November when the books come out or I can just send you an email of the entry so you can see how it turned out. I completely rewrote parts of the entry to make it as accurate as I could. I would like to thank you again for all of the help you gave me.

Re: Kelly Photo
From: Brad Webb [info@ironoutlaw.com] 22 Aug 02
Thanks but I’ll pass on that one as I'd rather stick pins in my eye...

So here is the Kelly excerpt from the book:

Outlaws, Mobsters & Crooks: Ned Kelly
December 1854 or June 1855
November 11, 1880
Outlaw, Robber, Murderer

My corrections appear in blue next to original mistake. Needless to say Ms Hermsen did not receive a Ned Kelly photo to compliment this poor writing exercise...

“Ned Kelly’s story is a myth for a nation of immigrants coming to terms with their country, a path by which the urban-dwelling majority of Australia can make an imaginative connection to the land. Kelly was an individual who kept his people’s (Irish) traditions and stories alive, but also joined himself experientially to his birth country”.
Such Is Myth by Bernard Caleo, Arena Magazine What, you couldn't find a better quote?

The Australian equivalent of Jesse James hardly, Ned held honour and loyalty in high regard!, Ned Kelly was a bank-robbing outlaw who became a folk hero in his own time and after. Also likened to Robin Hood, his story lives on in art, literature, and film.

Irish transplants in the land of convicts
Kelly was born in June December 1854 or June 1855 in Beveridge, New South Wales Victoria, in the southeastern corner of the continent of Australia. Melbourne, then the capital of the colony of Victoria, lay 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the south. Also south of Beveridge was an area known as Van Diemen’s Land or Tasmania — one time penal (prison) colony where male and female prisoners were transported from the British Isles to live. Kelly’s father, John “Red” Kelly, a native of County Tipperary, in Ireland, was one such convict, having been transported to Van Dieman’s Land to serve a seven-year sentence for stealing two pigs. Transplanted to the British colony of Victoria, he remained fiercely loyal to his homeland and continued to nurse a hatred for the British legal system which, in his eyes, upheld the oppression of the Irish and Ireland.

Kelly’s mother was also Irish. Raised in County Antrim, Ireland, Ellen Quinn Kelly moved to Australia with her parents when she was a child. In Tasmania Victoria, she met and married John Kelly. Ned, who was probably baptized as Edward Kelly, was the couple’s third child. Raised in poverty, Kelly received little education. But he was able to read and write and he later became a persuasive speaker. By the age of fourteen, Kelly — whose father had died three two years earlier — began to run into trouble with the law.

A bushranger in the making
Harry Power, an older Irish man, became somewhat of a mentor to the adolescent Kelly. An outlaw who lived illegally on land that was not his, Power was a bushranger, an outlaw in the Australian outback, who made a living by stealing. Kelly was first arrested when he was just fourteen. Charged with assault and robbery, the boy — who identified himself as a bushranger — was acquitted (cleared of all charges and set free). Two years later, Kelly and Power were both charged with armed robbery. Although Power was convicted, Kelly was freed. Months later, he was convicted of assault and other charges, for which he was sentenced to six months in prison.

The following year, 1871, Kelly landed a three-year sentence for accepting a horse that had been stolen. Time in jail did nothing to soften his feelings toward the Victorian police, whom he regarded as agents of oppression. A colorful writer and speaker, Kelly described members of the law enforcement community as a “parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splay-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of Justice or Victorian Police”. Police informants fared no better in Kelly’s view. As a young outlaw, he publicly announced what fate informants would suffer at his hands: with hands and feet tied, they were to be bound ìin an ant-bed with their bellies opened their fat taken out rendered (liquefied) and poured down their throat boiling hot”.

Kelly made some attempts to earn an honest living, working as a fence-builder, sheep-sheerer, sawmiller, and lumberjack stone mason, among other trades. But his troubles with the law continued to mount. In 1877 in the town of Benalla he was apprehended for drunken behavior. The following April, Kelly’s situation took a turn for the worse when a local lawman by the name of Constable Fitzpatrick arrived at the Kelly household. What Fitzpatrick’s intentions were are now debated. According to some accounts, he attempted to arrest Dan Kelly (Ned’s brother) without a warrant. Ned’s sister, Kate, later claimed that the constable had come to see her and had made unwanted advances toward her. Whatever the constable’s motives, he left the Kelly household with a bullet wound in his hand wrist. Warrants were issued for the arrest Dan and Ned, who were accused of attempting to murder a police officer no mention of Mrs Kelly being arrested?.

The hero of Jerilderie
Fleeing into a mountain range known as the Wombat Ranges, Ned and Dan Kelly hid from the law with two other men: Steve Hart and Joe Byrne. The group of four young outlaws would later be known as “the Kelly gang”. In October 1878 members of the Kelly gang were being pursued by mounted policemen when they found a group of four well-armed lawmen camped next to Stringybark Creek. Convinced that an all-out offense would be their only defense, the gang launched an attack on the policemen where is this written in the history books?. Constable McIntyre, the only surviving policeman, returned to Mansfield to report that Ned Kelly had killed the constable’s three companions: Constable Michael Scanlan, Constable Thomas Lonigan, and Sergeant Michael Kennedy.

Next, the Kelly gang, now officially considered outlaws, began robbing banks. First they hit the National Bank in Euroa. Two months later, they struck the Bank of New South Wales, in Jerilderie, where they created a great commotion. They locked the police in jail cells, took their uniforms, and marched through town dressed as police. Ned, who had burned mortgage deeds (property contracts) at the bank, bragged to the townspeople that he had released them from their debt. (In truth, however, the debts were still binding.) The gang also arranged to give the children of Jerilderie a holiday from school. Following the Jerilderie incident, many Australians began to regard Kelly as a folk hero — a modern-day Robin Hood who stood up for common people.

A crook in shining armor
Kelly’s final encounter with the law took place in 1880 near the town of Glenrowan. Planning to derail a train carrying policemen, the Kelly gang members outfitted themselves in homemade armor and laid in wait for their victims. Fashioned out of plough steel, Kelly’s suit of arms weighed nearly 100 pounds 90 pounds (45 kilograms). The suit included a breastplate, skirt, and helmet, but left his arms and legs exposed.

When the train carrying the police was delayed, Kelly and his supporters went to the Glenrowan Inn to wait they had been there for nearly 2 days. The longer they waited, the more they drank. The more they drank, the less they focused. By the time the train arrived, Kelly’s crew had dwindled to a small group of tired and drunken men says who?. Making matters worse, an informant had managed to alert the policemen about the planned ambush. When the train pulled into Glenrowan, the policemen were prepared: They shot at the outlaws, wounding Ned and killing Joe Byrne. They set fire to the Inn, where the remains of Steve Hart and Dan Kelly were later found. According to some accounts, the two committed suicide when their attempts to escape proved futile.

The following morning, Ned Kelly, still in his armor, was captured by police after Sergeant Steele shot him in the legs. After he recovered from his wounds, Kelly was tried in Melbourne. Historian Robert Melville said of the trial, “No witnesses were called for the defense. The defending counsel (lawyer), appointed by the Crown (the British monarch) because Ned had no funds, relied on an address to the jury, pointing out a few discrepancies (inconsistencies) in the evidence”.

Kelly’s suit of armor was introduced as evidence. After just thirty minutes of debate, the jury returned with a guilty verdict. Sir Redmond Barry, a Victorian Supreme Court Judge who had a reputation for harsh sentencing, condemned Kelly to death. Having pronounced his sentence, Barry said to Kelly, “May the Lord have mercy on your soul” — to which the outlaw responded, “I will go a little further than that, and say that I will see you there when I go”. On November 11, 1880, Ned Kelly was executed.

The Outlaw as Legendary Hero
Some historians and sociologists identify Ned Kelly as a romantic outlaw, whose fictional feats are as telling as fact. E. J. Hobsbawm, author of Bandits, describes these social bandits as “peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions for justice, avengers, fighters for justice”.

All in the Family
Ned Kelly was not the only member of the Kelly clan to run into trouble with the law. His brother Dan was also a member of the Kelly gang. Kelly’s mother, too, was arrested (and later acquitted) for “furious riding” in a public place.

Closing Statements
“Well, it is rather too late for me to speak now. I thought of speaking this morning and all day, but there was little use, and there is little use blaming anyone now. Nobody knew about my case except myself, and I wish I had insisted on being allowed to examine the witnesses myself. I am confident I would have thrown a different light on the case. It is not that I fear death; I fear it as little as to drink a cup of tea. On the evidence that has been given, no juryman could have given any other verdict. I lay blame on myself that I did not get up yesterday and examine the witnesses, but I thought that if I did so it would look like bravado and flashiness”. Ned Kelly, in an address to the jury after he was convicted.

For More Information what a weak collection of references!
Caleo, Bernard Such Is Myth Arena Magazine (August 2000)
Grossman, Mark Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998, pp. 139—140
Plagens, Peter An Outlaw Painter from Down Under Newsweek (August 1, 1994)
Prassel, Frank Richard The Great American Outlaw: A Legacy of Fact and Fiction. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, p. 255
Ryan, Peter Relics Quadrant, (September 1999)
Ryan, Peter Redmond Barry Quadrant, (December 2000)
Souter, Gavin Bizarre Folk Hero Still Broods Over the Australian Bush Smithsonian, (June 1983).
The State of Victoria (Australia) American Libraries, 32 (September 2001): p. 30