Ned Kelly Head Committed a Capital Crime, as the Charge Sheet Read
At 10:00 on the morning of Nov eleven, 1880, Ned Kelly hanged from a rope until dead. His final words were "Such is life." By some accounts, however, a journalist working to a tight word limit distilled this phrase from "Ah well, I suppose information technology has come to this." Whatever the case, the laconic fatalism of Ned Kelly'due south apocryphal final refrain resonated. He is Commonwealth of australia'south well-nigh loved bushranger, and his words and image are emblazoned on bumper stickers, chubby holders, and tattooed chests across the breadth of the nation.
Well earlier his young death behind the common cold bluestone walls of the Onetime Melbourne Gaol, Kelly had begun cultivating a legend. And whenever Kelly supporters have found reality wanting, they oasis't hesitated to add to it — sometimes movingly, sometimes comically.
In 1995, for example, in the midst of growing republican sentiment, Ned Kelly historian Ian Jones published Ned Kelly: A Curt Life. And then–Labor prime number minister Paul Keating was a fan. Like many before him, Keating became thoroughly convinced that at his last stand, under his homemade armor, Ned Kelly carried a announcement of independence for the Republic of N-Eastern Victoria.
There is no actual evidence that such a declaration existed. The showtime mention of it dates back to a satirical article in Bulletin Magazine, published in 1900. Notwithstanding, the notion conspicuously held appeal. In 1947, the Western Australian newspaper Northern Times published an commodity claiming that Kelly had planned to constitute a commonwealth with Benalla as capital and himself equally president. In 1969, Leonard Radic — a Melbourne journalist and theater critic — claimed to take seen a printed re-create of the declaration in a public records office in London in 1962.
Radic's oral testimony was enough for Ian Jones. And Ian Jones'southward book was enough for Paul Keating, who petitioned the British authorities to return the declaration. Sadly, owing to the document's nonexistence, Britain was unable to accommodate her loyal colony'due south humble asking.
Despite their sometimes absurd extremes, the myths surrounding Ned Kelly contain their own truths. His life combined messianism and fatalism in equal measure. And these extremes cast into stark relief an unjust reality against which the Kelly Gang took upwards arms. And while Kelly didn't get out us a declaration of independence, he left backside something better. The Jerilderie Alphabetic character is his revolutionary manifesto.
"A Widow's Son Outlawed"
"Beloved Sir, I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present, past and time to come," Ned Kelly begins, before launching into an business relationship of the injustices he and his family had experienced at the easily of the colonial authorities.
Built-in in 1854 at Beveridge, a boondocks well-nigh forty kilometers n of Melbourne, Ned Kelly was the eldest of eight. Red Kelly, his father, left Ireland in bondage, transported as penalisation for petty theft. The British made convicts into unwilling settlers in Australia, where they worked off their sentences in slave-like conditions. "More was transported to Van Dieman's Land," Kelly records, citing Tasmania's old name, "to pine their young lives abroad in starvation and misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself."
Almost 3,600 convicts were political prisoners. This number included Luddite rioters, Chartists, and Irish gaelic rebels transported for fighting the British occupation of their land. As Kelly recounts, many Irish were "doomed to Port McQuarie, Toweringabbie and Norfolk Island and Emu Plain. And in those places of tyranny and condemnation," he continues, "rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke [they] were flogged to decease and bravely died in servile chains."
The colonial regime permitted poor migrants and convicts who survived their sentences to settle on modest plots. Known as selectors, their land was frequently infertile and riddled with rocks, trees, and stumps. Harassed past wealthy British squatters, selectors ofttimes lived a semilegal existence.
As Kelly explains, "Not being satisfied with all the picked country . . . and the run of their stock on certificate gratuitous ground," the squatters paid heavy rent for the remaining land. As a result, "a poor man could non keep his stock." In league with the squatters, the colonial police "impounded every creature they could catch, even off Authorities roads. If a poor man happened to go out his horse or a bit of poddy calf exterior his paddock, information technology would be impounded."
The colonial authorities evidently regarded cattle and equus caballus theft differently depending on whether they were dealing with squatters or selectors, Irish gaelic or British, Catholics or Protestants.
Ned'southward denunciation was informed past bitter experience. In 1866, his begetter served half dozen months of hard labor for having received a stolen hide. He died shortly afterwards beingness released, merely two days later on Christmas. Ned Kelly signed the decease certificate. He was twelve years sometime.
Later on his begetter's death, Ned Kelly bore the brunt of police harassment. In 1869 and 1870, the constabulary held him in custody twice without charge. Subsequently, in 1970, he served half-dozen months hard labor over a fight with a local bell-ringer. Just 3 weeks later on being released in 1871, the police charged Ned once more, this time with horse theft. Realizing that Ned had been in prison when the equus caballus in question was stolen, they downgraded the charge to receiving a stolen horse. On the testimony of a constable who had been tried several times for perjury, the court sentenced Ned to three years that he served mainly in Pentridge Prison, in Melbourne'due south northward. After his release in 1874, he worked in the timber industry.
The police did non leave the Kelly family in peace. In Apr 1878, constable Alexander Fitzpatrick visited the Kelly household claiming to have come to arrest Dan Kelly — Ned's brother — for stealing horses. By Fitzpatrick'due south access, he had no warrant. The Kelly family unit said that Fitzpatrick had come to need sex with Ned's sister, and collection him from their firm. The humiliated constable brought charges against the Kelly family unit, alleging that Ned had shot him in the wrist.
Knowing by at present to wait no justice from the police or courts, Ned took to the bush, accompanied by his blood brother, Dan, equally well as his mates Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.
Accepted to accepting the word of law officers, guess Redmond Barry sentenced Kelly's mother, Ellen, to three years in jail. Barry said that had Ned Kelly been nowadays for the trial, he would have received 20-one years.
Both Barry and Fitzpatrick were of Irish gaelic descent. Perhaps this is why Ned Kelly reserved a special loathing for Irish gaelic Catholics who collaborated in the oppression of their own. Even the most servile Irishman, Kelly argues,
would be a king to a policeman who for a lazy loafing cowardly billet left the ash corner, deserted the Shamrock, the emblem of truthful wit and dazzler to serve under a flag and nation that has destroyed, massacred and murdered their forefathers.
"Permit Who Will Brand Their Laws, So Long equally I Make Their Ballads"
"The hills are steep, the woods pathless, and the gullies deep, nighttime, and winding; vast gorges, bounded by well-nigh perpendicular ranges." This is how the unknown author of an 1879 book, The Kelly Gan1000, described the bush — Kelly country — in which the gang hid. "A more admirably adapted retreat for fugitives from the grasp of the law could not be conceived," the author continues, "provided the refugees were fortunate plenty to have made arrangements with reliable and trustworthy friends."
The Kelly Gang had no shortage of friends. When the colonial regime sent Sergeant Kennedy and constables Lonigan, McIntyre, and Scanlan to track them downwardly, give-and-take got to Ned Kelly well in accelerate. On Friday, October 25, 1878, the Kelly Gang silently surrounded the troopers equally they camped next to Stringybark Creek. An infamous shootout ensured.
Joe Byrne immortalized the events in the "Carol of Stringybark." As his lyrics recount, Kennedy and Scanlan had left to explore the creek, leaving McIntyre and Lonigan alone. MacIntyre surrendered, but Lonegan made tracks and reached for his revolver — until "Ned Kelly pulled his trigger and dropped him like a stone."
Equally McIntyre surrendered, the Kelly Gang spared him. Upon returning, Kennedy and Scanlan refused to surrender. In the ensuing firefight, Scanlan died instantly while Kennedy was mortally wounded. In the confusion, McIntyre escaped.
Whether it was justified self-defence, a massacre, or a minor strategic triumph, after Stringybark creek, the Victorian government stepped up the hunt for the Kelly Gang. Parliament offered £500 on each gang member and passed infrequent laws criminalizing support for the gang and making it legal for civilians to shoot gang members on sight.
The colonial police, however, did non observe cooperation forthcoming from the poor of Kelly country or Melbourne. Although the newspapers cried blue murder, Joe Byrne'southward carol won the battle of public opinion. As the author of The Kelly Gang recounts, support for the outlaws was most noticeable among the "the youth in various large centers of population. . . . They besiege occasionally at street corners and elsewhere to sing ballads — hymns of triumph, equally information technology were — in their [the Kelly Gang'due south] praise."
"At that place Never Was Such a Affair every bit Justice in the English Laws"
On ix Dec 1878, the Kelly Gang held up the National Bank at Euroa and made off with £2000 in notes and gold. The colonial authorities doubled the advantage.
They likewise sent a force of well-nigh two hundred Victorian constabulary, supplemented past police from the Colony of New Southward Wales (NSW) to encircle the gang. They failed quite badly. In an 1879 article in the Argus, the author quotes a chat with a law helm in charge of the force sent to encircle and capture the Kelly Gang. The captain explains that there was footling that could be done to capture them because "from the Upper King River, and down to the Wombat Ranges . . . the whole country swarms with their connexions and friends." At one indicate, the Victorian and NSW Police opened fire on each other in confusion.
In early on 1879, the Kelly Gang slipped through the police cordon and crossed the Murray River into NSW. On Sabbatum, February eight, the Kelly Gang took the police force at Jerilderie captive by surprise. Dressed in freshly requisitioned uniforms, they went to the Regal Hotel and requested rooms for 2 nights. They cutting the telegraph wires to the town and so robbed the bank of £1450 pounds. Ned Kelly also insisted on called-for mortgage deeds and the bank'south books. On their morning of elated departure, the townsfolk cheered the Kelly Gang.
During the stay, Ned Kelly dictated the Jerilderie Letter to Joe Byrne. Although at pains to protestation his innocence, he did not expect a fair hearing from the constabulary, the courts, or the printing. "In every newspaper that is printed I am chosen the blackest and coldest blooded murderer ever on tape."
Instead, Ned wanted the alphabetic character to be printed and distributed as a pamphlet. Sadly, still, he entrusted it to an auditor who gave it to the Melbourne part of the Bank of New South Wales. The bank turned the Jerilderie Letter over to the law who ordered that it be suppressed, fearing it would incite rebellion. The total document was finally made public in 1930 and donated to the State Library of Victoria in 2000.
As Ned Kelly states, "There never was such a thing as justice in the English language laws. Merely whatever amount of injustice to be had."
"It Is Only Foolishness to Disobey an Outlaw"
The Jerilderie Alphabetic character was Ned Kelly'due south 2d endeavor to tell his side of the story. The offset, known every bit the Cameron Letter, was also suppressed by the police. In both, we hear the voice of a man systematically denied peaceful redress. We also hear a man who refused to lay down and dice. "If the public practice not see justice done I volition seek revenge for the proper noun and character which has been given to me and my relations, while God gives me strength to pull a trigger."
To this twenty-four hours, conservatives, police, and centrists affect righteous indignation over Ned Kelly'south challenge to their monopoly on violence. Doug Morrisey declares in the Herald Sun that "Ned'south crimes were of his own making. . . . They came about from personal choices he alone made to appoint in crime." In another article, Morrisey argues that the Kelly Gang'southward "plundering lifestyle . . . disrupted and interfered with the smooth running of the [Greta] community." At a 2013 anniversary honoring the police that died at Stringybark Creek, Police Association secretarial assistant Greg Davies concluded, "Thankfully, Kelly concluded with a slice of rope around his neck." The Historic period's very own difficult-boiled criminal offense reporter, John Silvester, describes Kelly as a "psychotic knucklehead," suggesting "Kelly wasn't much of a worker, preferring life as a thief."
Perhaps, all the same, the prize for the worst recent take should go to Melissa Fyfe. After a niggling excavation, Fyfe discovered that according to reports in the Argus, the Kelly Gang shot a "native acquit," that is, a koala. "For me, this is the final harbinger," Fyfe writes. "What sort of hard-hearted man shoots a koala?" It seems almost too obvious to betoken out that Aboriginal people happily hunted koalas for tens of thousands of years before the British invaded.
One thing is beyond dispute, however: Kelly had a meliorate turn of phrase than his detractors, past and nowadays. And when denied complimentary speech, Ned Kelly's deeds resonated securely and broadly instead. Every bit late every bit 1929, Jerome J. Kenneally, a neighbor of the Kelly family unit, wrote: "Information technology is at present generally admitted that the quickest fashion to get to the Wangaratta Hospital is to say something offensive about the Kellys in Kelly country."
And anyway, when they made it legal for anyone to shoot Ned Kelly on sight, the colonial government forced him to choose between expiry and resistance. This is why Ned Kelly's assertion that "in that location is not ane drib of murderous claret in my veins" rings far truer than the indignance of his accusers. Their denunciation of his violence was ever an entrée to jubilant the more than violent reimposition of police force and guild.
Also, the Kelly Gang were more than just outlaws. Kelly did not take up artillery for self-enrichment but in the proper noun of a higher, more universal justice. This is the fundamental distinction betwixt a criminal and a revolutionary — the Bolsheviks also robbed banks.
Indeed, the Jerilderie Letter contains a plan for social transformation. Granted, Ned might have developed it further by reading Marx. Even so, there are some points worth preserving. In place of the police, Kelly proposes pop justice. To those concerned with protecting their personal property, he writes:
I would advise them to subscribe a sum and give it to the poor of their district, as no man could steal their equus caballus or cattle without the noesis of the poor, and they would rise as one human and notice information technology if it was on the face of the earth.
Kelly issued a further alarm aimed at the colonial government. Fail to requite his people "justice and liberty," Kelly warned, and "I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which volition open the eyes of not only the Victorian police and inhabitants just also the whole British army." The letter concludes with an order directed at Victoria's police officers. They must sell their belongings and give £ten out of every £100 to the widow and orphan fund, and and then leave the colony in "as curt a time equally possible afterward reading this notice."
Neglect this warning, Kelly warned, and the "consequences shall be worse than rust in wheat in Victoria or the drought of a dry season to the grasshoppers in New S Wales." He concludes with the full strength of revolutionary law: "I am a Widow's Son outlawed and my orders must exist obeyed."
"Some Colonial Stratagem"
Although the reward on each gang member's head had gone up to £8000 — about $three million in today's currency — by 1880, the police force were no closer to catching the Kelly Gang.
Subsequently Jerilderie, Ned Kelly retreated to the Victorian bush for two years where he planned his colonial stratagem. The gang set to work manufacturing iv heavy suits of armor, hammering out steel plowshares on a stringybark log.
The Victorian boondocks of Glenrowan was Ned's target. He planned to sabotage the railroad train rails into town and occupy the inn, provoking the regime to send a train of constabulary from Benalla. The constabulary train would derail before reaching the station, giving Ned Kelly and his comrades an unassailable advantage in the ensuing firefight. From there, they would ride to Benalla to rob the bank and employ the funds to support a wider rebellion.
Things didn't go to plan. After capturing Glenrowan Inn, instead of hours, the Kelly Gang found themselves waiting days for the expected railroad train, which came from Melbourne, non Benalla. Kelly allowed his captives to drinkable and organize games to pass the time. The gang joined them.
Somewhen, Ned Kelly'south judgement was impaired, if not past potable or burnout, then past compassion. He allowed Thomas Curnow — Glenrowan's schoolteacher — to go dwelling, allegedly to have care of his ill married woman.
As the police force railroad train approached Glenrowan in the dark of the morning of Monday 28 June, the pilot saw Thomas Curnow on the line, waving a cerise handkerchief to betoken danger. Forewarned, the troopers disembarked safely.
The Kelly Gang stood their ground, arrayed on the porch of Glenrowan Inn in their homemade armor. Police officers reported seeing groups of armed men moving in the countryside effectually Glenrowan. Two skyrockets let off past the gang illuminated the early morning time — a signal whose meaning is still unknown.
Though the gang's armor repelled the police'due south bullets, their legs, anxiety, and arms remained unprotected. Having sustained injuries, Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, and Dan Kelly retreated within. As Byrne reportedly commented, "I always said this bloody armor would bring us to grief." Ned took to the bush nether the cover of darkness. The police riddled the inn with bullets, with little regard for the lives of the townsfolk inside.
Joe Byrne poured himself a drink and toasted: "Here's to many more days in the bush-league, boys!" He was then struck by a bullet and died of claret loss. Steve Hart and Dan Kelly held out. Ned Kelly, meanwhile, outflanked the police lines. Wearing shut to 50 kg of steel armor and with less sleep and claret than he might accept liked, he made his attack, laughing and taunting the police. As Kelly moved through the mist, seemingly impervious to gunfire, one trooper exclaimed that he was a bunyip, a deathless fauna of Aboriginal mythology. A journalist wrote, "With the steam rising from the basis, information technology looked for all the globe like the ghost of Hamlet'southward father, with no head, only a very long, thin cervix."
Ned used upwardly the ammunition in his revolvers before a Sergeant had the wherewithal to shoot him in the leg. When he was captured, Kelly had taken twenty-8 bullets in total. Although his armor deflected most, he was badly injured in his knee, hip, and arms. Nether the armor, the doctor who treated him institute a green sash Ned Kelly had been awarded when, every bit a twelve-year-erstwhile, he rescued a drowning boy. Information technology is at present on display at Benalla Museum.
Early on Monday morning, Dan and Steve took each other's lives in a suicide pact. Fearing a "phantom army" of Kelly sympathizers, the police set fire to the Glenrowan Hotel. Dan and Steve's bodies were burned across recognition, although their armor survived. The police took Joe Byrne's body to Benalla and posed it for photographs and gawkers. Ned was taken to the Melbourne Gaol to recover in training for a trial.
"No Affair How Long a Homo Lives He Is Leap to Come to Judgement Somewhere"
The Honorable Sir Redmond Barry was a hanging guess if ever there was one. Having already sentenced Ellen Kelly, he at present presided over Ned's trial. The accuse was the murder of lawman Thomas Lonigan at Stringybark Creek. Kelly claimed self-defence force. Barry allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence unrelated to the accuse at hand and refused to permit Ned Kelly to recount his version of the events or question the prosecution's witnesses. He instructed the jury to rule out manslaughter, leaving them with a choice between acquittal or convicting Ned Kelly of murder. The jury establish him guilty.
During sentencing, Ned Kelly interrupted Redmond Barry, and at that place followed a cursory exchange in which the hanging guess reasserted Kelly'south guilt. Kelly replied:
I dare say; but a day volition come at a bigger court than this when nosotros shall see which is right and which is wrong. No matter how long a man lives he is bound to come to judgement somewhere.
When Redmond Barry sentenced Ned Kelly to decease by hanging, he customarily ended: "May the Lord have mercy on your soul." Ned replied: "I volition get a little further than that and say I volition run across yous where I go."
In the lead-upwardly to Ned Kelly's execution, his supporters organized a mass coming together of viii thousand. The Age condemned information technology as "entirely without any value" and as attended by people whose "associations lead them to find palliation for crime and excuse for the criminal in the near unpromising textile." At least thirty-two 1000 people signed a petition calling for clemency. The police force refused to let a demonstration of thousands to march on Government House. The authorities did allow Ned's sister, Kate Kelly, to request an audience with the governor. The governor refused. Unnerved, the authorities banned songs and plays that praised bushrangers.
Ellen Kelly was as well held at Melbourne Gaol. Prior to his execution, the authorities allowed Ned to run into his mother a final time. It's said she instructed him, "Mind you lot die similar a Kelly." On the day of Ned'southward execution, a crowd of five thousand gathered outside.
Ned Kelly's dying wish was to exist given a proper burial. Instead, the authorities gave his body to the University of Melbourne for students to study. Coincidentally, Redmond Barry was besides the university's inaugural chancellor. Although this was illegal and the government denied information technology, a recent forensic investigation confirmed that Ned had been dissected. He was then buried in not-consecrated basis at the Melbourne Gaol and later reburied in a mass grave at Pentridge Prison.
In 2011, Ned Kelly'south remains were recovered and identified. In 2013, he was finally granted his last wish — he was laid to rest at last in a cemetery in Greta.
On November 15, 1880, four days after Ned's hanging, Redmond Barry fell ill with a carbuncle on his neck. Already weakened by diabetes, he so defenseless a cold that led to a lung infection. Just 20-five days after departing ways in this world, a smiling Ned Kelly greeted the breathless hanging estimate in the adjacent.
Since and so, Sir Redmond Barry has lain underneath a substantial grayness granite monument in Melbourne Full general Cemetery. Its undefaced surface is a testament to the strategic restraint and maturity of Melbourne's labor movement.
Occurrences of the Present, By, and Future
Myths imaginatively bridge the gap between an intolerable situation and an impossible goal. And precisely because Ned Kelly lived his myth to its terminal, self-annihilating conclusion, he ensured that it would live on across him.
Nosotros can merely empathize the by with perspectives born of our nowadays. As Walter Benjamin wrote, "The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule." Ned Kelly was twenty-six years old when he died. He lived most of his life in a state of emergency, an unwilling exile from justice. Whoever stands aslope hit essential workers will hear a friend's words in Ned Kelly's eloquent denunciation of squatters. Whoever marches for Indigenous people murdered in custody will know that Ned's enemies are our own. And whoever disdains obsequiousness toward ability will feel contempt for the coward Thomas Curnow — and for his nowadays-day equivalents.
Informed by present injustices, leftist writers accept typically presented Ned Kelly politically, equally a Che Guevara in oilskins. The past, withal, need not resemble us in order for united states of america to learn from information technology. And anyway, shy of finding the fabled proclamation of independence of the Republic of North-Eastern Victoria, the chances are slim that we'll detect a fully-fledged revolutionary program for socialism among Ned Kelly'due south ephemera.
Past sidestepping historical accurateness, art tin sometimes grasp realities — past and present — more clearly and movingly than history writing. The myths about Ned Kelly, and especially their artistic renderings, tell united states of america as much about colonial Australia and its legacy than the historical facts do. This is why Ned Kelly has inspired many works of culture, including the world's first feature-length film , The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906.
Perhaps the most powerful artistic representation of the myth is Sidney Nolan'south series of Ned Kelly paintings. They are ane role Marc Chagall, one part László Moholy-Nagy, and 1 role Henri Rousseau. Blue nymphs dance with blackness squares — amid cerise blossoms.
The almost famous of the series — Ned Kelly (1946) — depicts Kelly on a diminutive horse riding into a vibrant desert under a strikingly blueish heaven. On arriving in Australia for the first time, Europeans and North Americans ofttimes comment that the sky is bluer here. Ned is depicted entirely in black, with sky and clouds visible through the visor in his helmet. He resembles Christ equally he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, seated backward on a ass.
As Benjamin wrote, "Our image of happiness is indissolubly spring up with the image of redemption." The words bring to mind a passage from Peter Carey's novel The True History of the Kelly Gang, in which a fictitious Ned Kelly recounts a fictitious picnic held to celebrate the fictitious birth of his girl.
These was your own people girl I mean the good people of Greta & Moyhu & Euroa & Benalla who come up globe-trotting downwards the rails all through the forenoon & afternoon & dark. . . . Through the dusk & icy starbright night them visitors connected to ascension form the world like winter oats their cold faces was soon pressed through doorway and window and even when the grog wore out they wd. not leave they come to touch my sleeve or clap my dorsum they hitched great logs to their horses' tails to drag them outside beside the track. half-dozen fires these was your birthday candles shining in 200 optics.
Although it's sparser and more frugal, Nolan'southward Bush-league Picnic (1946) captures something of this utopianism, including Ned'due south mercy toward Constable McIntyre — if not the other traps who hounded him. But Ned's visor is still empty and the faces of his friends indistinct. The aforementioned emptiness exists in every myth, historical and cultural. It's an invitation to meet ourselves in the past.
Justly, Ned Kelly wanted to negate an unjust law. This work is still unfinished. Australia is all the same a crime scene. Monuments celebrate Redmond Barry. The police still resentfully baby-sit Dan Kelly's armor. Until nosotros behave out the orders of this widow's son outlawed, the new, higher police that Ned Kelly dreamed of will remain unrealized. Until then, the Jerilderie Letter will remain a revolutionary manifesto.
And when his orders are fulfilled, at last we will be able to embark piece of work of building a new, more universal law. On that day, Ned Kelly will live again and once more "spend many happy days fearless gratuitous and bold."
Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/ned-kelly-jerilderie-letter-revolutionary-manifesto-bushrangers-colonial-police-kelly-gang-outlaws
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