Found: Rare pictures of Kelly gang matriarch
Steve Waldon
02 December 2006
source: theage.com.au/news/national/found-rare-pictures-of-kelly-gang-matriarch

To the untrained eye, they look like the kind of old family photographs you might find stashed away in a neglected box — posed black and white snaps handed from one generation to the next.

In one, a mature bespectacled lady looks directly into the camera lens as she sits at the wheel of her automobile. In another, the same woman sits posed for a portrait with three men in hats and waistcoats, one of them her son.

The pictures are unremarkable, except in one important sense. The woman photographed is Ellen Kelly, mother of Ned. And the son at her right is Ned's younger brother Jim, who took over his mother's care when Ned was hanged.

Noted Kelly historian and author Ian Jones this week described the photos, which have never been seen publicly before, as "stunning" and "mind-boggling".

"To see Ellen Kelly at the wheel of a car — it's the ultimate reminder of how close the Kelly era still is to us," he said.

The collection of photos, which include one of the Kelly family homestead, at Greta, near Glenrowan, were almost certainly taken by Fred Piggott, a detective with Victoria's police from 1912. Piggott retired as a superintendent in 1934, after a distinguished career.

The rare find was made by researcher Kevin Morgan, whose 2005 book Gun Alley: Murder, Lies and Failure of Justice detailed the shocking 1921 murder of Melbourne schoolgirl Alma Tirtschke.

When reviewing the case for his book, Mr Morgan tracked down the most direct descendant of Piggott, who with fellow detective John Brophy arrested Footscray man Colin Campbell Ross, the man controversially found guilty of Tirtschke's murder and hanged in 1922.

The search led him to Eric Beissel, Piggott's grandson, who said he had inherited an old leather satchel full of scrapbooks kept by his detective grandfather.

There, among the abundant press clippings that record Piggott's career, Mr Morgan found some original prints. The captions were in Piggott's handwriting, and identify Ellen and Jim Kelly.

Piggott was a keen amateur photographer, who photographed crime scenes at a time when the official photos were still taken by the Government Printing Office photographer.

Considering the Kellys' strained relations with authorities over many decades, just how Piggott got them to agree to pose is unknown.

Eric Beissel said he had shown little interest in the scrapbooks until Mr Morgan asked to see them. Now, he can see what an important time capsule they are, detailing his grandfather's intriguing career as a detective in the 1920s and '30s.

Forensic science was basic, and police such as Piggott relied on nous, instinct and cunning to solve cases. The clippings of his career point to a competent and respected detective — probably the state's most prominent policeman of the period.

Piggott was celebrated for solving "the Wharparilla axe murder", "the Mooroolbark poisoning sensation", "the Buchan Caves mystery", and for the arrest of "the prince of swindlers".

Dating Piggott's Kelly photos will not be easy. The only date Piggott uses in his captions is 1920 — when, he writes, he arrested Jim Kelly for horse stealing. Ian Jones said the pictures had to have been taken between 1911 and 1923. Ellen Kelly is obviously older than the well-known 1911 photo of her with two granddaughters, and she died in 1923.

The car could be a clue. But Mr Jones said the importance of this new Kelly revelation was to place the family in a more modern context, far removed from images of horses and buggies.

"We love to compartmentalise history — to consign people and events to a narrow time. It ain't always the way it was."

Mr Jones said Ellen Kelly had endured a life of almost unthinkable sadness. Her first daughter died in infancy, and her husband, John Kelly, died when the youngest of their children was four. She lost Ned and Dan to the battles with the law and daughter Kate to illness in 1898. Three of Kate's six children had already died in infancy.

After Kate Kelly died, Jim Kelly collected her three remaining children from Forbes and brought them to Victoria, where he and Ellen raised them.

"One of them, Fred Foster, was killed in World War I," Mr Jones said. "It must have just about finished her, and she died just a few years later."

Curiously, Fred Piggott's life was also marked by loss. His wife, Matilda, died on December 11, 1922. On December 23, their son Fred jnr, who turned 18 that morning, died after a motorcycle accident.