Dan Kelly: An Overview

Forever consigned to popular culture as Ned Kelly’s little brother, Dan Kelly was a young man of only nineteen when he lost his life fighting the police. Like so many “boy bushrangers” his young life was snuffed out without him having ever fulfilled his potential, wasting his youth on a life of crime. But there was more to Dan Kelly than just having Ned Kelly as his big brother.

Studio portrait of Dan Kelly

Daniel Kelly was born on 1 June, 1861 to John “Red” Kelly and Ellen Quinn. He was named after one of his father’s brothers and christened in the church in Beveridge, Victoria, where the family were living in a house John had built. Before Dan was born, there had been Mary Jane (died in infancy), Annie, Ned, Maggie and Jim. Dan would be followed by Kate and Grace. Dan’s infancy years were quiet for the family. John turned his hand to a number of occupations but was primarily employed doing odd jobs around the district and splitting timber. Financial strain, however, soon saw John attempting to distill his own whiskey. Unfortunately he took to drinking most of the produce himself. The difficulty saw the family relocate to Avenel, but here their problems would not only continue, they would worsen.

[Source: The Illustrated Australian News, 17/07/1880]

John spent six months in gaol in 1866 for stealing and butchering a calf. This meant that for half a year Ellen was reliant on her brothers for help around the place. The Quinn brothers were not model citizens by the furthest stretch, Jimmy Quinn being the worst of the lot. Jimmy was too fond of liquor, quick to violence and did not discriminate when choosing a target. No doubt Dan’s exposure to this would have negatively shaped his young mind. When John was released from gaol he was a broken man. Dan was barely five years old when his father died of dropsy, an old term for oedema (build-up of fluid in the soft tissues), likely linked to his alcoholism. He was buried in Avenel. The family soon found themselves frequently homeless, moving from Avenel to an abandoned pub in Greta. Here the Kellys co-habited with Ellen’s sisters, both of whose husbands were in prison at the time, and their children while they attempted to make ends meet.

The new home in Greta was short-lived. One night John Kelly’s brother James had arrived at the house drunk and his sexual advances were rebuffed by Ellen. He returned later that same night and burned the place to the ground. The children inside were asleep but the sisters remained awake, fearful of retribution. After another binge at the local pub, James threw incendiary devices at the house until a fire took hold, but thankfully there were no fatalities. The families were now homeless again and devoid of earthly possessions such as clothes and furniture. When James was tried he was sentenced to death by Sir Redmond Barry. This was later commuted to a long prison sentence by the executive council. The Greta community got together and helped the victims get back on their feet. Ellen soon gained a lease on a selection on the 11 Mile Creek. Things were starting to look up.

This portable lock-up was formerly used in Greta and likely was the one that held young Jim and Dan Kelly before they were transferred to Wangaratta.

With his big brother Ned, only twelve himself when Red died, acting as man of the house, Dan and his brother Jim often ran wild. By 1870 things had changed dramatically for the family. Ellen had her selection but the land was not fit for crops. The family had to rely on the money they made from lodgers and travellers looking for a drink. Fifteen year-old Ned worked for a time as Harry Power‘s offsider, and then found himself in and out of gaol, eventually copping three years for receiving a stolen horse. Jim was now the man of the house in Ned’s absence. Jim was not a good candidate, however, and would coax Dan into mischief; their first arrest occurring when Dan was only ten years old.

In September 1871, Jim and Dan had borrowed horses without permission from a hawker named Mark Krafft. Krafft had been grazing his horses at the Kelly selection, as he had frequently done, and the boys had taken them for a joyride. Jim had previously been working as Krafft’s servant to get some extra money, the pudgy child being less physical than his big brother and thus less suited to splitting work. Constable Ernest Flood, newly stationed in Greta, nabbed them on a charge of illegally using a horse and took the children to Wangaratta to be kept in the logs until trial. When they went to court two days later the case was quickly dismissed on account of Jim’s and Dan’s ages (12 and 10 respectively) and the fact that Jim had been a servant of Krafft for a time. One can only imagine the impact that the experience of being taken away from their family and locked up in a cell with a bunch of strange, grown men waiting for trial for two days would have been on the children. It would eventuate that Flood was nothing but bad news for the family, allegedly stealing their horses and selling them to railway workers and sexually assaulting Dan’s big sister Annie and making her pregnant, though the truth of this is debatable owing to there being no solid evidence to back the claims.

Jim, only fourteen, ended up in gaol in 1873 with two sentences of 2 1/2 years to be served consecutively for helping shift stolen cattle. With Red gone and Ned and Jim in gaol, Ellen was on the lookout for a new man to help around the house and to protect her from her brothers or anyone else that might come sniffing around with bad intentions. She took the bold move of selling grog on the sly to travellers and seemed to think she had found her man in Bill Frost, an itinerant worker who had lodged with the family. Frost engaged in a sexual relationship with Ellen, from which she became pregnant with a daughter. Frost was apparently not keen to be a father and skipped town. Ellen, not one to be passive, tracked him down and took him to court for maintenance. After a long and bitter dispute she won but the infant died before the first maintenance payment came through. One can only imagine how this would have impacted young Dan, who had to assume the role of man of the house.

It wasn’t all gloomy for Dan though. According to some accounts, while his big brothers were doing time, Dan was lavished with affection from his sisters. Some considered this made him spoiled, but at any rate he managed to keep his nose clean during this period. It was at this time that Ellen took in George King, a 25 year-old American-born traveller, miner and stock thief. It was a remarkably short courtship as they were married in 1874, just after Ned came home from Pentridge. Within a month Ellen gave birth again. No doubt Dan, now thirteen, was relieved not to have the responsibility of being the male head of the household anymore. Between Ned and George the role was well taken care of.

Dan’s main hobbies at this time were much the same as the majority of young men in the country – riding and hunting. Dan would latch onto groups of boys who were out kangaroo hunting and took much pride in his marksmanship. He also took much joy in racing his peers on horseback. A brilliant description of Dan came from Joseph Ashmead, a friend of the Kelly family, in an unpublished memoir:

He was riding a smart black pony, and proudly told us it was a galloper and could clear any fence in the north east. The boy was alert and active with piercing black eyes that took in everything at a glance. He wore strapped trousers, a red shirt and straw hat tilted forward, secured by a strap under his nose. The back of his head was broad and covered with close cropped hair as black and shiny as a crow; his jaw was heavy, his lips thin, and when closed tightly, there seemed to be something cruel in them, but when they relaxed into a smile, he appeared to be a jovial, good-natured fellow. His name was Dan Kelly and he was a great lover of horses. I was the only one of the boys who had a horse. A bay pony. She had belonged to a clergyman and was an honest goer. Dan ran his eye over my over my horse and proposed that we should have a race, a challenge that I gladly accepted. When Dan found that he could not shake me off, he developed a great respect for me, and declared there was not a kangaroo in all the country who could get away from us, so we went kangaroo hunting, not once but many times. I left my cows to look after themselves, or bribed some of the boys to look after them for me, with the promises of some sinews out of the kangaroo’s tail to make whip crackers with.

No doubt Dan’s hunting provided much needed meat for the family, or at least was able to be sold to raise money for other goods. Seemingly Dan left home at the first opportunity to seek work. By some reports he travelled into New South Wales to work on sheep stations around the Monaro region as a shearer. He was also reported to have worked in Chesney Vale with Ned as a brick layer, but was not very good at it. It is likely that this is when Dan took up possession of an abandoned miner’s hut by Bullock Creek in the Wombat Ranges and began prospecting for gold. Sluices were later constructed along the creek and this would have provided a bit of pocket money. No doubt the seasonal nature of most of these jobs left Dan with a considerable amount of free time in between and he soon found himself adopting the larrikin culture of the day.

[Source: Melbourne Punch, 30/10/1873]

The fast riding, clownishly attired, skirt chasing lifestyle of the larrikin had become a widespread issue throughout the colonies. Gangs of youths in porkpie or billycock hats worn on jaunty angles, short Paget coats and jackets, bell-bottom trousers, colourful sashes and pointy high-heeled boots would loiter in public areas making a nuisance of themselves. Dan became a founding member of the “Greta Mob”, who populated the streets around Greta and Wangaratta. Apart from Dan, the mob consisted mostly of his cousins Tom and Jack Lloyd and a young Wangaratta jockey named Steve Hart, with the rotating roster of associates typical of these forms of social group. Their primary interests were fast horses, smoking, booze and chatting up girls. The boys were known to ride full gallop through the streets and challenge each other to various horse tricks. Steve Hart, for instance, could get his horse to vault over the railway gates, much to the chagrin of the gatekeeper. The Greta Mob adopted as their signature the larrikin badges of high-heeled boots, cocked billycock hats with the hatstring worn under the nose (to stop the hat flying off when riding at full gallop) and brightly coloured sashes worn around the waist. The style was clownish but that’s not unusual for teenage boys of any era. Unfortunately, Dan was still living in hand-me-downs and cut an odd figure in his threadbare, oversized, outdated outfits. The only verified photographic images we have of Dan illustrate this clearly. He wears a rumpled hat, a baggy sack coat with missing buttons and fraying cuffs as well as baggy trousers held up with a piece of rope. He was known to grow his hair long and seems to have cultivated a moustache at some point. But what Dan lacked in creole couture he made up for in his riding and his drinking. It has been written that Dan had many sweethearts but whenever they were unavailable for a night of frivolity he would employ the services of working girls, though it is incredibly unlikely that a fifteen year-old boy would have the presence of mind or the funds to engage in that lifestyle, regardless of the usual rampant libido they enjoyed.

One of the few times Dan graced the courts was in relation to a supposedly stolen saddle. In March 1877 he was charged with stealing the saddle in question in Benalla and was tried during the Beechworth general sessions before Judge Hackett. It had taken five months to lay charges against the teenager. The saddle in question was one that Dan had purchased from a man named Roberts in exchange for a different saddle and £1, and he produced a receipt to prove it, which was verified in court. Along with Jack Lloyd and his brother-in-law Bill Skillion, Ned Kelly was present during the hearing as a witness to back up his little brother. In the end the case was dismissed and Dan walked away with a sense of vindication. Judge Hackett stated that he “did not see why the prisoner was there at all” as his case was clear-cut. During this case Dan displayed a trait that distinguished him from his older brothers – he provided no resistance to arrest and complied happily with the police. This could be interpreted by some as overconfidence in his ability to dodge a conviction, but more likely Dan understood that resisting arrest was a fool’s game and further that he was innocent of the crime of which he was accused (which a trial would – and did – prove). This would not be the last time he displayed a conspicuous willingness to comply.

While he had been waiting to appear in court over the saddle charge, Dan met two boys from the Woolshed Valley named Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt. They were also waiting to appear in court that day over a charge of assault against a Chinaman named Ah On. It would eventuate that the pair would not get their day in court that same day, remanded to be tried in the next session. What exactly transpired between the young men in that cell can only be guessed at, but this would prove to be a fateful friendship.

Dan’s first and only conviction came from an incident at Goodman’s store, Winton, on September 28, 1877. Dan had travelled into town to exchange meat for goods. When he arrived the establishment wasn’t open and therefore no trade took place. Annoyed, Dan went drinking with his cousins Tom and Jack then returned with them to Goodman’s store, drunk. Dan smashed in the door and took the goods he sought. A man going by the name Moses Solomon was also there and claimed he was assaulted by the rowdy larrikins. Tom Lloyd lingered and flashed Mrs. Goodman, the other two pushing Tom into her with the lights out. Dan was found guilty of wilfully damaging the property and sentenced to three months in Beechworth Gaol. Tom Lloyd was additionally charged with intent to rape but was found not guilty, yet still got six months for his part. Dan did his time in Beechworth Gaol without incident. Almost miraculously for a Kelly boy he managed to get through his sentence without incurring any additional penalties. Three months crushing granite would have given Dan bigger muscles, but also greater resolve to walk the straight and narrow once he was out. Unfortunately fate had a different plan for him.

Tom Lloyd, Dan’s cousin [Source: Victoria Police Museum, VPM3061]

While Dan was still in prison a warrant was issued for his arrest. A witness saw two young men they believed to be Dan Kelly and Jack Lloyd leading a mob of stolen horses near Chiltern. They reported it to the police and the paperwork was duly issued. This was noted by Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick after reading the announcement in the Police Gazette. On April 15, 1878, Fitzpatrick was sent from Benalla to take over at Greta police station. Fitzpatrick informed his superior, Sergeant Whelan, that he knew of a warrant for Dan Kelly and intended on arresting him on his way to the station. Fitzpatrick went alone to the Kelly property and what occurred has been subject to much scrutiny and debate. The general thrust is that Fitzpatrick enquired after Dan but found he was away. The constable then asked a neighbour, Brickey Williamson, about Dan’s whereabouts before electing to return to the Kelly house and wait. He was greeted by Dan who offered to go quietly on the provision that he could finish his dinner first. After this, a scuffle broke out and Fitzpatrick was wounded in the wrist. The policeman claimed Ned Kelly had shot him, Ned Kelly claimed he wasn’t even there. Each witness account conflicted with the others in some way. Regardless, Dan and Ned immediately fled to the Wombat Ranges. Ellen Kelly, Brickey Williamson and Dan’s brother-in-law Bill Skillion were arrested and charged with aiding attempted murder.

Constable Fitzpatrick [Source: Victoria Police Museum, VPM2580]

For six months Dan and Ned hid in the ranges. A second, fortified, hut was built further up the creek from Dan’s place using thick logs, and both huts were equipped with whiskey stills. The intention was to raise money for Ellen Kelly’s defence by selling gold and bootleg whiskey. Unfortunately it was not enough and Ellen got three years, the men each received six years.

After the trial police parties were organised to bring the Kelly brothers to justice. Warrants had been issued for their arrest. There was £100 on each of their heads; Ned for attempted murder, Dan for aiding and abetting. A party was sent from Mansfield to find the Kellys in the Wombat Ranges. The party consisted of Sergeant Michael Kennedy and constables Michael Scanlan, Thomas McIntyre and Thomas Lonigan. When Ned found the police party’s tracks he sent Dan to find their camp, which he duly did. The next day the brothers, roused by McIntyre firing a shotgun while hunting parrots, went to the police camp with Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. They hid in the spear-grass and intended on ambushing the camp to take the police guns and horses. When the bushrangers emerged they held McIntyre at gunpoint. When Lonigan ran to cover and moved to fire at the arrivals, Ned shot him. There was a moment of disbelief as Lonigan struggled on the ground. Dan remarked “He was a plucky fellow. Did you see how he went for his gun?” He then seized the police shotgun and searched the tent. When Lonigan’s identity was revealed, Dan exclaimed that “He won’t be putting any of us poor buggers away again.”

[Source: State Library of Victoria]

McIntyre took a particular dislike to Dan, describing his nervous laughter and his “grotesque” appearance in his oversized hand-me-down clothes. McIntyre fully believed that Dan would be the one to put a bullet in him.

Dan insisted McIntyre be handcuffed but Ned refused, believing a fear of being shot was incentive enough for the trooper to obey his orders. This did not sit well with Dan who grumbled that the police would just as soon clap cuffs on them.

When Kennedy and Scanlan returned from scouting McIntyre tried to persuade them to surrender but a gunfight broke out. Scanlan was shot, McIntyre escaped on Kennedy’s horse and Kennedy fired at the Kellys with his pistol. A bullet from Kennedy hit Dan’s shoulder as the sergeant retreated into the bush after McIntyre. Kennedy was soon killed by Ned a considerable distance from the camp. The gang looted the bodies and Dan took Scanlan’s pocket watch. The salvageable items were collected and the tent burnt as the gang escaped.

Source: Weekly Times. 16 November 1878: 17

As a result of the incident at Stringybark Creek, Ned and Dan were outlawed with a reward of £500 each. At this stage Joe and Steve were unidentified.

In December 1878 the gang re-emerged near Violet Town. They stuck up Younghusband’s Station on Faithfuls Creek in the afternoon and began herding the staff into a shed. They kept the staff as prisoners in the tool shed overnight and stole new outfits from a hawker’s wagon. That night the gang chatted with their captives, answering questions but with Ned doing most of the talking. Dan and Steve were overheard talking about how they’d like a lark with the female prisoners. In the morning the nearby telegraph poles were damaged by Ned, Joe and Steve. In the afternoon Ned, Dan and Steve headed into Euroa to rob the bank, leaving Joe on sentry at the station. The timing was meticulously arranged to coincide with a funeral that would keep the townsfolk occupied during the gang’s activities. Dan acted as a guard, standing at the rear of the bank, making sure that nobody escaped or interrupted while Ned and Steve robbed the place. Once the loot had been acquired the bushrangers headed back to the station with the bank staff and the manager’s family and servants. On the way Dan rode in the stolen hawker’s wagon and kept his gun trained on Mrs. Scott, the bank manager’s wife, who was driving a buggy alongside, in case she tried to escape or raise an alarm. The raid went off without a hitch and the gang escaped with thousands of pounds to distribute among their families and sympathisers. Before they left, Dan gave Constable Scanlan’s watch to Becroft, the hawker’s assistant, and money with which to repair it. It is unclear what the nature of the damage was.

[Source: Melbourne Punch, 19/12/1878]

In February 1879 the gang struck again at Jerilderie. They travelled over the border to answer a challenge that they wouldn’t last 24 hours in New South Wales. The gang roused the police in the middle of the night and locked them in their own cells. Mrs. Devine, the wife of the senior constable, recalled how as the gang occupied their home during their stay Dan would bounce her son on his knee but later spoke in quite a violent manner in order to make her work faster as she decorated the courthouse for mass. The gang then went through town disguised in police uniforms pretending to be reinforcements against the Kelly Gang. On the Monday Dan and Joe had their horses shod at the blacksmith and investigated the telegraph lines before the gang put their plan into full effect. Ned, Steve and Joe robbed the bank while Dan kept prisoners under control next door in the hotel. The gang had successfully managed to occupy the town for a whole weekend unmolested and rode away with thousands of pounds in unmarked notes that could not be traced. In response, the New South Wales government doubled the reward for the gang to £8000.

Dan Kelly (John Ley) helps Mrs. Devine (Anne Pendlebury) prepare the courthouse for mass in ‘The Last Outlaw’ (1980)

Upon leaving New South Wales, the gang split up to reconvene at the Byrne selection at a set date and time. Only Dan arrived on time. He stayed for dinner and questioned the Byrnes about whether the other gang members had been past. Dan seems to have had a good relationship with the Byrnes, frequently stopping by in much the same manner for a meal and a chat. Dan also seemed to be the most active gang member, being reported as having been spotted more than any other member of the Kelly Gang. It is also probable that he partook in Joe’s favourite past-time of visiting the Sebastopol opium dens for a smoke and card games.

Over the course of 1879 and early 1880, Dan and Joe Byrne tested the loyalty of the Sherritts and various other sympathisers that were suspected of turning on the gang. On 14 May, 1880, Dan paid a visit to his uncle Tom Lloyd. Lloyd’s neighbour, a police informant named Jacob Wilson, saw horses in Lloyd’s garden and began snooping. He was found behind the cow shed by the dogs and the barking roused everyone in the house. Uncle Tom sent the dog to chase the man down and he climbed up a cherry tree. Dan Kelly and cousin Tom Lloyd, who were unarmed, fetched the dog and yelled taunts to the police they assumed were nearby, before going back inside. Wilson was so terrified he stayed in the tree until morning. Incidents like this were increasingly common and the gang began to stop visiting certain people in case they were spotted.

More concerning to the gang however was the rumour that had been circulating that the Sherritts were in cahoots with the police, fuelled by the vicious game of “Chinese Whispers” that accounted for the gang’s bush telegraph. On one occasion Dan arrived at the Sherritt selection on Sheepstation Creek looking for Jack Sherritt, Aaron’s younger brother. When he was told Jack wasn’t home he pushed his way inside with a revolver drawn and searched for him. Dan said they wanted to speak with him. Unbeknownst to Dan, Jack was at that moment speeding away to speak to Assistant Commissioner Nicolson in a desperate attempt to seek protection. Nicolson told him to go to a local pub and use that as his alibi. It was clear to everyone that the gang was getting desperate and had cottoned on that something was up and Ned was determined to address it in his next big scheme.

In early 1880 a plan had been devised by Ned Kelly to escalate the gang’s activities. The banks were too heavily guarded to rob as they had done previously, so now they were struggling to find ways to keep their network of sympathisers on-side. The gang’s health was also deteriorating as the rigours of life on the run was wearing them down. Ned suffered sciatica and sandy blight, Joe struggled with withdrawals as his opium supply was cut off due to lack of funds, and Dan was described by one witness as looking gaunt and hollow-cheeked. Police parties were coming closer than before to catching the gang and even had the assistance of an elite team of black trackers from Queensland on top of a network of police spies and informants. Ned wanted to end the pursuit in dramatic fashion by luring a trainload of police and trackers to be derailed at Glenrowan. He sent Dan and Joe to create a commotion at Aaron Sherritt’s hut, where a team of constables had been allocated to protect him, as the bait. On Saturday 26 June, Dan and Joe kidnapped Aaron’s neighbour Anton Wick and used him to lure Aaron to his back door whereupon he was murdered by Joe with a shotgun. Dan guarded the front door in case the police that were hiding inside tried to escape. The two bushrangers then terrorised the party of constables as they cowered in the bedroom, Aaron’s mother-in-law and pregnant wife stuck between the two sides. Attempts to burn the place failed and the outlaws rode away two hours later. It would be midday the next day before any of the police were brave enough to see if they had gone. Initially Ellen Barry, the mother-in-law, stated that Dan had been quiet when entering the hut with a pistol. It was only later when attempts were being made to gain a payout from the police that she would describe him resting on the table as he looked at the murdered Sherritt with a grin.

Aaron Sherritt’s Hut

Dan and Joe arrived at Glenrowan at around 5am on 27 June, 1880. Dan was immediately employed with tending the horses and carrying the gang’s armour into the Glenrowan Inn. Over the course of the day Dan guarded the prisoners in the inn and even initiated dancing to keep them entertained. He was seen to get intimate with Jane Jones, the publican’s daughter, she having been spotted sitting on his knee and kissing him, even being given one of his revolvers to use while she kept the prisoners at bay when Dan had to leave the room. As the weekend rolled on and the special train did not appear as expected, tensions began to rise. Multiple times during the gang’s stay at Glenrowan, Dan told Ned they should leave and argued the point only to be shouted down by his brother who was determined that they would stay and fight. The longer they waited the more difficult it became to keep the prisoners under control and the more they risked accidentally derailing a civilian train. Ned refused to heed his brother’s pleas. When Ned decided to release Thomas Curnow, the school teacher, Dan argued publicly with him as he knew Curnow could not be trusted. Curnow had spent the day trying to butter Ned up, a suspicious Dan watching like a hawk. Sure enough, when the train did appear in the early hours of 28 June, Curnow warned the police that the tracks were damaged and the gang was in Glenrowan. Just before the train arrived, Dan had told the prisoners to head home, however they were detained by Ann Jones who told them to wait for Ned to make a speech. If Dan’s instructions had not been countermanded a considerable amount of the tragedy that was to unfold could have been avoided.

Dan Kelly’s armour [Source: Victoria Police Museum, VPM1799]

When the train arrived the gang dressed in their homemade armour and engaged in a gun battle. Ned and Joe were wounded early on and they retreated inside. Ned soon disappeared into the bush behind the inn and Dan took control of the situation, doing his best to evacuate the women and children despite the relentless firing from police. Joe was shot dead by a police bullet early in the morning and Dan and Steve became very disheartened, believing Ned had also been killed or had abandoned them. When Ned re-emerged just before 7am the remaining gang provided covering fire from the inn, but within a half hour Ned was captured and the two bushrangers were stuck in the inn surrounded by police in broad daylight. Dan had received a bullet in the leg that shattered his knee and necessitated a retreat into the inn. At 10am the rest of the prisoners were released and Dan and Steve remained inside. As the prisoners left they shook Dan’s hand.

What happened in the inn next is unknown but it is possible that Dan was struck in the neck by a bullet while his helmet was off and killed or that he took his own life by taking poison. All that is known for certain is that at 3pm the inn was burned and while it was on fire his corpse was witnessed by multiple people, in the back room still in body armour and resting on a pillow made of sacks. The body was effectively cremated in the fire and the burnt remains released to his family. Later, Dr. Hutchison, a medic who had been called up to assist during the siege, retrieved what was believed to be Dan’s foot from the ruins and the scorched bones were handed down through the family.

The bodies of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart in the Glenrowan inferno, sketched by Thomas Carrington.

Around 200 people attended the wake at Maggie Skillion‘s home, many of whom were drunk and armed. Police efforts to reclaim the bodies were scrapped in response, the risks being too high. Though there are a number of (probably deliberately) conflicting oral histories with respect to the location of the last resting place of the two outlaws, most accounts indicate Dan Kelly was buried in an unmarked double grave in Greta cemetery with Steve Hart. The location within the cemetery of the exact double grave they were interred in is a closely guarded secret in family traditions in an effort to avoid the graves being disturbed. Unfortunately, this has added fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories and in one infamous case a particularly motivated “truther” went through the cemetery plunging steel probes into grave sites hoping to prove that there were no coffins in them. When Ellen Kelly died the 1923, she was buried in an unmarked plot next to the official spot where Red Kelly’s youngest son is buried.

Somewhat grotesque depiction of the wake for Dan and Steve. Maggie Skillion stands at the door with a shotgun while an oath of vengeance is sworn over the charred corpses. Kate Kelly rests on her knees in the foreground. It was not reported who had sworn the oath in most accounts. [Source: Australasian Sketcher, 17/07/1880]

In the years after Glenrowan there were rumours that Dan and Steve had escaped to South Africa to fight in the Boer War. In 1911, novellist Ambrose Pratt, author behind the memoirs of Captain Thunderbolt’s apprentice William Monckton, published a book claiming to be the memoirs of Dan Kelly. In fact, many people claimed to be Dan Kelly over the years, most notably a tramp called James Ryan whose ridiculous attempt to cash in on the survival rumours were published in the press and convinced scores of people who lacked knowledge of basic facts of the story. Ryan’s story even inspired the utterly woeful film The Glenrowan Affair. Ryan was killed by a coal train in the 1933 and is buried in Ipswich, Queensland. In order to lure tourists, the cemetery even erected a memorial telling the story of the claimant. None of the alleged Dans ever had any solid case to back their claims up but the myths of a miraculous escape from the burning inn persist to this day.

Dan Kelly was, in most ways, at least as competent as his big brother. As a horseman, tracker and marksman, his abilities were perhaps even better. Certainly he was more ruthless than Ned, a pragmatism that some interpreted as callousness or even psychopathy. It must be remembered that the gang were wanted dead or alive (preferably dead) and mistakes could not be afforded. Dan was a much better judge of character than Ned and certainly better at performing under pressure. Even the Kelly matriarch was known to have held Dan in more regard than Ned in these measures.
Unlike his brothers, Dan was fairly successful at avoiding trouble. In fact, it is probably telling that the worst trouble in Dan’s life seemed to come from following Ned’s and Jim’s lead. Imagine how different the story would have turned out if Dan had been able to accompany Fitzpatrick as intended, before Ned and Ellen had attacked the policeman. A stint in the logs, a quick trial during which the mistaken identity could be proven and Dan could have gone home as a free man. Sadly, as in all things, life never pans out the way we think it should.

Posted on July 24, 2019March 30, 2020 by AJFPhelan56 3

Ned Kelly (2003): an analysis

Every interpretation of the Kelly story brings with it a host of conflicting perspectives on various points, and each is unique. More recent film depictions have been executed more artfully than the early silent films or even early “talkies”. Whereas the formative depictions of the story were usually morality plays, emphasising the social ramifications of lawlessness, the rise of the understanding of film as an artform changed the approach many directors and writers took. Gregor Jordan’s contribution is no exception. It is not a depiction of a historical figure, rather it’s an interpretation of the cultural figure of Ned Kelly that seeks to explore the idea of a man being shaped and guided by external forces to his doom.

Jordan’s film is crafted from a John Michael McDonagh screenplay based on the Robert Drewe novel Our Sunshine. Just as the book moves away from history for the sake of artistic expression, the film steps away from the history as well as the book both for artistic purposes and marketability (the latter being driven by executives rather than the creative team). This has riled many history buffs who had hoped to see the history brought to life on screen, but this is most definitely not that. It must be highlighted that the film differs drastically from the book in many areas also, thus any interpretation of the film text is not reflective of the source novel, just as much as it is not reflective of history, and must be viewed on its own terms.

He wasn’t such a bad fella. He… he was just a dumb paddy who got picked on his whole life. And that does something to your pride, you know?

Jordan’s Ned is a man with a deeply ingrained sense of injustice and is a passive protagonist. The events in the story that shape his life have nothing to do with the decisions he makes, he merely enacts a pre-conceived narrative. While Ned is brash and prone to explosions of temper his actions have no real effect on the outcome of events. This is most conspicuous in the aftermath of the Fitzpatrick incident when Ned is accused of injuring the constable despite not being present. He seeks an alibi but is denied, locking in his fate. It is then that he goes into hiding and his mother is jailed. Neither Ned’s participation, nor indeed his presence, was required to affect him becoming a bushranger. Even the act of taking Kennedy’s watch at Stringybark Creek plays out without any explanation of the protagonist’s motivation, it is simply part of the pre-conceived narrative.

None of his actions prevent the bad things from happening and nothing he does results in the undoing of the undesirable outcomes. By the end Ned has become resigned to this and when Hare unexpectedly appears and asks for Ned’s sash, he is met merely with a look of weary indifference – nothing Ned could say or do would matter because it would happen anyway.

Of course, there is an easy explanation for this fixation on destiny. This is Ned’s own interpretation of his life being acted out before the audience. This is demonstrated by the voice-over narrating the story throughout. Ned is unable to see how his actions could have resulted in the outcomes that he found himself subject to and thus we are not shown anything that could condemn him. The effect is that Ned is merely following a script and is little more than a puppet of fate. This sense of determinism is the desperate rationalising of events to make sense of a life gone astray.

Ned is thrown in gaol over a suspected stolen horse but we’re never shown anything to contextualise the event other than Ned finding a horse then being assaulted by police. The police are bullies who pick on the Kellys, but again there’s no context given beyond them being Kellys and Irish and the police not liking them for that. This trend for oversimplified cause and effect creates a sense of there being no control over things – they just are. We don’t know why the police at Stringybark Creek are carrying stretchers in the middle of the bush, but this is all it takes to confirm Ned’s belief that he would be gunned down. There’s no suggestion that the police may simply arrest him. All of this indicates Ned twisting the events in his mind to justify the way they turned out in such a manner that he is not at fault.

Further to this is the way that the supporting players are portrayed. This is Ned’s own interpretation of his gang, his family, the police and public, but of course it is all determined by its relationship to himself. Joe Byrne is Ned’s closest friend, but depicted as a womaniser and keenly intelligent, always at Ned’s beck and call. This is in contrast to Ned’s comparative sexual repression, lack of education and his natural leadership. Joe is the yin to Ned’s yang; the Horatio to Ned’s Hamlet, always on hand to confirm Ned’s suspicions or bounce ideas off. Dan Kelly is depicted as an impulsive runt. He is brash and somewhat arrogant but just as devoted to his family as his big brother, despite harbouring ill-feelings towards their deceased father. Ned takes on that paternal role and we see their relationship develop in such a way that Ned becomes something of a sage for Dan, offering wisdom from the school of hard knocks. Steve Hart however is shown as petulant, flaky and mischievous with a cowardly streak. Ned seems to look at him as little more than an inconvenience and is not afraid to belittle him. For all their differences, one thing unites this gang, which is a complete subservience to and admiration of Ned.

Then we see how the various other characters relate to Ned: Julia falls in love with him to the extent of cheating on her husband because he is so much more manly; Kate adores him and sees him as the family’s protector; the police fear Ned while also having a begrudging respect for him; Aaron views Ned with admiration but this soon gives way to fear once he starts helping the police. In essence, the characterisation of the cast is almost entirely derived from how they view Ned, or rather how Ned imagines they view him.

I am a widow’s son, outlawed, and my orders must be obeyed!

This leads us to Ned’s perception of himself. By the way many events play out we see Ned as charming, attractive, playful, witty, tough, commanding and, moreover, popular. Everyone knows who he is wherever he goes, even if they occasionally need their memory jogged at gunpoint. When we see the Jerilderie robbery, Ned’s passion and charisma as he dictates his letter in front of a crowd whips them into a frenzy, chiming in to help him create memorable insults directed towards the police. Whenever Ned speaks people listen and even the police can’t help crack a smile when they think of how devilishly clever and witty he is.

I’ve watched gravel fade. Dust settle into crust. I’ve seen drips of water turn to stone that defied gravity. I’ve turned blood red with cave mud. I’ve been a bloody rock!

The film’s extremely gloomy, desaturated palette echoes the increasingly burdened state of mind of Ned. As the film is framed as Ned telling his own story, naturally the atmosphere is reflective of Ned’s own feelings, embodying his essence. The flatness and sparseness of the locations is also indicative of Ned’s emotional connections to the places we visit in the story. While in reality the Kellys lived near the foot of a large, smooth hill dotted with trees and covered in grass, albeit prone to drought, when we see the homestead in the film it juts out of the grey, flat and boggy landscape as if plonked in the middle of nowhere and looks more like his ancestral home, Ireland, than Australia. Ned does not really imagine the surroundings, his only focus is what the house represents – his family. To Ned, it’s his mother and siblings that matter, not the place they live in. Ned is very focused on family and the pain and loss he feels relating to his mother’s imprisonment is signified by a shot of Ellen in her cell, alone and surrounded by darkness except for a patch of light coming from the cell window. His memories of his family are generally bleak bar one: the memory of the day he received his green sash.

Ah, what did Da call me? That’s right. He called me Sunshine.

Here we see his parents beaming with pride, the sun shining brightly upon young Ned as he receives his reward for saving a life, surrounded by people that cheer for him. This is Ned’s “happy place”, the memory he clings to that proves he really is a good person. This is why the reveal of the sash after his capture is so important. It shows how beneath the armour, his outlaw facade, he still clings to this sash as a symbol of something pure and virtuous inside him. The only other time we really see the sunshine and the beauty of the landscape is between Ned’s return home and the Fitzpatrick incident then the gang’s emergence from the fire-decimated landscape. Colour and sunshine and the beauty of nature symbolise hope and optimism. His time working on the Cooks’ station is a happy time as it seems things could be improving for the Kellys, and it serves to drive home how bleak things become afterwards.

They said I’d lost what it meant to be human, maybe never had it in the first place, but wasn’t this about protecting the ones I loved? The ones who gave me food, and shelter, even the clothes on me back? And therefore wasn’t it now a war?

Perhaps the most disturbing sequence in the film involves the gang, starving and dying of thirst, slaughtering their horses to drink the blood. This is immediately following a huge bushfire that the police cause leaving the gang stranded and struggling to survive. The horses are slaughtered in the dark of night and the gang look like wild men, deranged and filthy. The desperation of their situation is written on their faces in mud, soot and blood. This nightmare is a representation of Ned’s feelings during the height of his outlawry. He is ashamed of what he has become and is desperate to reform his image and so ventures to the only person he can think of that could help him – the only woman who has ever shown him romantic love – Julia Cook. Julia reminds Ned of who he really is and this motivates his crazy scheme at Glenrowan.

They say the trouble with the Irish is that they rely too much on dreams and not enough on gunpowder. Whereas the English were shy on dreams, as usual, but had plenty of the other. Now we had both.

Ned never states definitively what the plan is for Glenrowan. We are given allusions that it’s something big and important as the gang create armour, gather weapons and then re-emerge with clean clothes and haircuts. The town of Glenrowan becomes the base of operations, though what Ned hopes to achieve here is never made clear. Ned gives a speech about how he and his gang are at war with the British Empire and even the London Times. Ned has emerged from the chrysalis of desperation as a revolutionary, a freedom fighter. The bizarre mix of people in the inn represents what Ned sees as the common people, the ones who are victimised by the corruption in the power structure. Yet, they are also reflective of the nature of the social and political dimension Ned’s situation has taken on: little more than a bizarre circus. The caged lion that paces and hollers outside is a symbol of Ned’s warrior spirit; ironic and subversive in that the lion is usually the symbol of England, the culture Ned is so opposed to. When the gang emerge in their armour they are chivalrous knights, protecting the downtrodden from the oppression of police and the political construction they represent. We see the ruthlessness of the police as they gun down innocent civilians as they try to escape from the inn. The gang respond by emerging from the shadows like steel automatons and casually decimate the front line of the police despite the fact that it is pitch black, raining and they are wearing helmets that restrict their vision. The gang avenge those who have been struck down by the cruelty of the police before being forced to head back inside. This is where Ned decides to make his last stand.

Whereas in history Ned’s last stand occurred as he returned to the inn from behind police lines, in this interpretation it is portrayed as Ned venturing out to fight the police single-handedly to create enough of a distraction for the captives to escape. The last stand now becomes a noble and selfless act whereby Ned saves the surviving captives at the cost of his own freedom and, in effect, his life. Naturally without Ned to lead them, the rest of the gang end up dead and the scene of what should have been Ned’s greatest victory goes up in flames. Ned wanders through the bizarre, alien landscape with its camels and pelting rain, only to collapse metres behind the police. The dead lion signifies the death of Ned’s spirit. He realises that he was never destined to succeed and when he regains consciousness again he fires on the police and is quickly taken down. His survival beyond this maiming seems to add insult to injury as he lies gasping under the weight of his armour, the very thing that saved his life from gunfire now little more than an embodiment of his crushing defeat resulting in a demeaning death at the end of a rope.

Such is life.

This is perhaps one of the most unusual interpretations yet of the Kelly story, as it is in essence a warped portrayal played out in the memories of a doomed man. The inaccuracies become the artifice that demonstrates the unreliable nature of a narrator assured of the notion that his life was predetermined and all of his actions, no matter how nefarious or altruistic, were incapable of altering the course of his destiny. Everyone is in awe of the protagonist either through fear or respect as he does a marionette dance from one happenstance to another. This is the story of a man shaped by external forces to become the most hunted man in the British Empire and destined to die an ignominious death as a young man fighting a war he cannot possibly win. There is no real moral lesson to this story, merely the depressing realisation that life rarely turns out the way we want it to.

Posted on May 22, 2019February 24, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 1

Like the Bushrangers of Old: The Kelly Gang in Jerilderie

Despite their infamy, the Kelly Gang were hardly prolific in any sense as far as bushrangers are concerned, but perhaps it’s a matter of quality over quantity. The second raid they undertook was one of the most audacious in history and definitely ranks with anything performed by the likes of Ben Hall or Dan Morgan. Yet, there are many conflicting accounts that vary in small details so creating an accurate and concise account is no small feat.

Since December 1878 the Kelly Gang had gone to ground and, despite the best efforts of the police, they had avoided capture easily. A change in police leadership saw Superintendent Hare take the reins from Superintendent Nicolson with no noticeable change in effect. The gang meanwhile were plotting. A morally dubious undertaking by the police saw scores of people arrested and imprisoned indefinitely on remand as suspected sympathisers. This no doubt put a strain on many of the poor farms in the region and would have infuriated Ned Kelly, who had already identified himself as a figurehead for the struggles of the smaller farmers against the oppressive influence of certain squatters and police.

The gang had a plan to ride across the border into New South Wales and rob a bank. The banks in Victoria had all been allocated guards since the Euroa robbery and the New South Wales police had bragged that the Kelly Gang wouldn’t last 24 hours in their colony. The gang were determined to prove them wrong. They used Joe Byrne’s best friend, Aaron Sherritt, to create a diversion by telling the police the gang were headed to Goulburn. The police fell for it and the gang were able to pass into the neighbouring colony unmolested while the police were distracted elsewhere.

On 7 February 1879 the Kelly Gang crossed the border into New South Wales. Splitting up, Dan and Steve going one way, Ned and Joe the other, they made their way into the Riverina. Ned and Joe stopped at the Woolpack Inn where they spoke and drank freely with Mary Jordan (aka Mary the Larrikin), a popular barmaid. The pair were able to glean some information about the township of Jerilderie, specifically about the police, and this helped to cement the game plan. What other shenanigans they got up to at the Woolpack Inn one can leave up to their imagination.

On the 8 February the gang moved into the township of Jerilderie. It was a town primarily concerned with agriculture and pastoral industry, flat and close to Billabong Creek. At midnight they approached the police station. Inside Senior Constable George Devine and Constable Henry Richards were just settling into bed. Mrs. Devine, who was pregnant at the time, had related to her husband that she had had a dream that the Kelly Gang were there but the annoyed husband dismissed it as rot. Suddenly there was a racket outside. “Devine, Richards, come out! There’s been a row at the hotel!”

Snr Const. Devine [Source: The Daily News, 20/05/1926, p.1]

When the police exited the building they were greeted with the Kelly Gang brandishing revolvers. The gang had split up to cover the front and rear and they closed in on the shocked officers. The troopers were taken prisoner then locked in the cell behind the station usually reserved for drunks and freshly arrested criminals. Mrs. Devine and her children were kept in the sitting room. Mrs. Devine was then sent to gather the firearms in the house. She begged Ned not to harm the men. Ned stated that if they didn’t misbehave then they would be unharmed. While Dan and Steve stabled the horses Mrs. Devine prepared a supper. When she moved to shift a bath full of water Ned refused to allow her to and did it himself, recognising that she was pregnant and in no condition for heavy lifting. In the early hours the gang took turns to rest and guard the others.

The following morning the gang set about putting the rest of the plan into action. The police ate breakfast with the bushrangers and then Ned and Dan dressed in police uniforms. Mrs. Devine expressed that she was scheduled to decorate the courthouse for mass and Ned, realising that her absence could arouse suspicion, allowed her to go, but she was accompanied there and guarded closely. Shortly after her return she accepted a delivery from the butcher, watched closely by Steve Hart and Ned Kelly.

Ned and Steve dressed in police uniforms to patrol the town, escorting Constable Richards and learning the lay of the land. Everyone assumed these new constables were reinforcements against the Kelly Gang. Mrs. Devine was guarded in the house with her husband by Dan and Joe.

A photolithograph of the town’s layout was procured and Ned and Joe plotted their exact movements for the following day. It was a remarkably domestic scene with Mrs. Devine bustling about doing chores while the outlaws made plans. Dan sat attentively and bounced one of the children merrily on his knee. Joe wrote a joke on the back of the photolithograph:

Q. Why are the Kellys the greatest matchmakers in the country?

A. Because they brought loads of ladies to Younghusbands (station), Euroa, Victoria.

As the night wound on Joe rode back to the Woolpack Inn and stayed there having a grand old time with Mary the Larrikin, until midnight when he was so sozzled Mary had to help him onto his horse. Meanwhile Ned had read a portion of the letter he and Joe had been writing to Mrs. Devine but it had all gone in one ear and out the other, her continued anxiety over the welfare of her family too dominant in her mind to pay attention.

Mrs. Devine [Source: The Daily News, 20/05/1926, p.1]

On Monday the 9th, the raid was put into action. The gang rode into town early and Dan and Joe, dressed as troopers, took their horses Rea’s blacksmith shop. They had the horses shod by blacksmith Andrew Nixon (all charged to the government account, naturally) and Joe left a loaf of bread. Next, Dan and Joe examined the telegraph wires that ran through town and noted them for later. Ned and Dan escorted Constable Richards through the streets with Joe and Steve riding behind on their horses. Ned and Dan ordered Richards to introduce them to Cox, the publican at the Royal Hotel. Ned informed Cox that his hotel was to be a prison for the day, but that if there was compliance there would be no bloodshed. Cox made the sensible choice to co-operate. Joe and Steve were placed in the front room, Dan on guard in the bar. As people entered the building they were bailed up.

Over the course of the day prisoners were rounded up and installed at the Royal Hotel where they were guarded by Dan Kelly, who remained in a police uniform. The gang had surmised that people are more likely to be compliant if you give them free booze. The hotel was connected to the bank by a walkway at the rear. It was not uncommon for drunks to go ambling in the back door of the bank, and with this in mind Joe began to pretend to be intoxicated as he wandered across the walkway into the bank. The bank staff were not alarmed by his intrusion but rethought their opinion when Byrne drew a pistol and stated “I’m a Kelly, bail up!”

Joe was soon joined by Ned and Steve. The till was emptied of just under £700 but Ned was not satisfied. “You must have at least £10,000!” he shouted. Edwin Living, the accountant, maintained that there was no more. Living was in his mid-twenties and spoke with a slight stammer. Just as Robert Scott had done at Euroa months earlier, Living was doing all he could to delay and misdirect the bushrangers. Not believing a word of it Ned located a locked treasure drawer. In order to open the treasure drawer the manager’s key was required. Joe suggested using a sledgehammer to get it open. Tarleton, the bank manager, had only just returned from a trip and was having a bath when Steve Hart burst in waving a revolver. The key was soon liberated. Steve was ordered to keep watch over the manager while he dressed and the cash was liberated, in all just over £2000. In the meantime, William Elliott the school teacher had wandered in and been bailed up by Joe Byrne. Ned told Elliot to return to the school and let the children go home as he was declaring a holiday in honour of the gang’s visit. Tarleton soon emerged freshly washed and dressed in a silk coat and smoking cap. The situation was one of great peril but no peril was too great to prevent him from indulging in selecting his finest haute couture for the occasion, it would seem.

vlcsnap-2019-02-12-01h00m09s990 — The bank robbery as depicted in The Last Outlaw (1980)

Ned located a strongbox and while rummaging through it Ned came across the bank’s collection of mortgage papers, deeds and books. He decided that destroying the records of the bank’s debtors was a far more virtuous action than merely robbing the bank and announced his intention to burn the records. Edwin Living was permitted to rescue his life insurance policy. The documents were soon burned.

A trio of locals wandered into the bank at this time – the postmaster, his assistant and the newspaper editor – and caught the bushrangers in the act of robbing it. Two were seized but the third took off and kept running until he was out of town. It eventuated that this fleet-of-foot man was Gill, the newspaper editor, who Ned wanted to publish his letter. This letter was of huge significance to Ned. It was a 56 page document detailing much of his life, with emphasis on what he perceived to be injustices perpetrated against him and his family. It was his attempt to explain and justify his actions in killing three policemen and he wanted his message to be broadcast. With Gill missing the chance of Ned’s letter being published was effectively null. Edwin Living heard Ned’s grievance and offered to safe-keep the letter and forward it to Gill. Reluctantly Ned did so.

William Elliot in later life [Source: Weekly Times, 24/01/1931, p. 12]

Joe rode to the telegraph office dressed as a trooper and ordered the postmaster to dismantle the Morse key. He then examined the telegrams that had been sent that day to see if there was anything concerning.

With the bank robbed, everyone was herded into the pub. When Joe attempted to direct the hotel’s cook, a Chinese man, into the bar he was met with insolence and gave him a whack to make him compliant. With a captive audience, Ned gave a speech detailing his life, crimes and tribulations. At the conclusion of the speech drinks were had and the gang performed riding tricks in the street shouting “Hurrah, for the good old days of Morgan and Ben Hall!”

Ned set a group of townsfolk to work hacking down the telegraph poles with axes. He declared that if anyone touched the wires before the following day he’d return from robbing the Urana bank and shoot them all down like dogs. It was Ned’s typical hyperbolic, overly violent bluffing style and it worked. Many of the men continued chopping down the poles long after the gang were gone.

As they left town, Joe and Dan paired up and headed off while Ned and Steve headed to the Traveller’s Rest Hotel. There Steve Hart stole a saddle to replace his own with then bailed up Reverend Gribble and took his watch. Gribble went to Ned and expressed his distaste for Steve’s behaviour. Ned responded to the reverend’s quibble by berating Steve and forcing him to return the watch. Steve complied and Ned berated him, though it was unclear whether he was more annoyed at the act of petty theft or the fact that the watch was far less valuable that what Steve had already taken that day. Ned had another drink, conspicuously placing his revolver on the counter and announcing that anyone looking for the reward could come and grab it and shoot him if they had the guts. Ned left with another of his famous threats, this time stating that if anyone were to raise an alarm then Jerilderie would be awash in its own blood.

Once the outlaws were gone Reverend Gribble attempted to form a posse to hunt them. He was met with a mix of apathy and strong rejection. Living and Tarleton mounted up and rode to Deniliquin to raise the alarm. By the time news had filtered out it was too late to catch up with he outlaws. They had performed one of the most successful bank heists in Australian history.

In the wake of the raid Sir Henry Parkes, premier of New South Wales, committed to doubling the already hefty reward to £8000. This was the largest reward offered to date for anyone foul of the law, equating to around $2 million AUD. The guards on the banks created a massive hurdle to any future robbery plans for the gang and they disappeared for the remainder of the year. They would re-emerge in a spectacular way midway through the following year when executing a masterplan in Glenrowan. Gill never published the letter.

Posted on February 13, 2019February 8, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 4

Spotlight: Further Outrages by the Kelly Gang

The following is a report from just after the Kelly Gang raided the bank at Euroa. It describes in a fair amount of detail the events at Younghusband’s Station and Euroa, while missing some of the details and getting a few spellings wrong – as was typical of reporting at the time. It provides an interesting insight into how the bank robbery caught the public’s imagination after the outrage over the tragedy at Stringbark Creek. It is also worth noting that while Joe Byrne’s identity had been known for some time, it was only because of one of the servants in the bank recognising Steve Hart that the identity of the fourth gang member was finally revealed. This report also references the Egerton bank robbery, which some may remember is the well publicised robbery allegedly performed by Andrew Scott aka Captain Moonlite.

FURTHER OUTRAGES BY THE KELLY GANG

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By Electric Telegraph

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[FROM OUR OWN REPORTER.]

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Euroa, 11th December.

The greatest excitement has prevailed here in consequence of the perpetration by the brothers Edward and Daniel Kelly, and two men named Steve Hart and Byrne, of one of the most daring and skilfully planned bank robberies that has occurred since the Egerton gold robbery, and the sticking up of Mr. Younghusband’s station at Faithfull’s Creek, at the foot of the Strathbogie Ranges, about four miles from here, in the direction of Violet Town. The particulars I have been able to glean are as follows : — On Monday last, about half past twelve in the day, a man arrived at the Faithfull’s Creek station and asked one of the station hands named Fitzgerald, who was having his dinner in the kitchen, whether the manager, Mr, Macauley, was at home. He was told by Fitzgerald that the manager was not in, and was asked if he wanted anything particular, and whether he, Fitzgerald, could do anything for him. The stranger said it was no matter, and going from the kitchen made signals to some persons outside, and then two other men out of three, who were a little distance away, came up, leading with them four very fine saddle horses, three bays and one grey. The man who had arrived first; then went into the dwelling house where Fitzgerald’s wife was engaged in some household duties, and said to her, ‘Don’t be afraid ; I am Ned Kelly ; we won’t do you any harm ; you must give us refreshments and food for our horses.’ Mrs. Fitzgerald was naturally greatly surprised, and much alarmed. She called her husband, and said, ‘Here’s Mr. Kelly, and they want food for their horses and refreshment.’ Fitzgerald, seeing that the stranger had a revolver, and that resistance was useless, said, ‘No matter who they are, if they want refreshment and food for their horses, of course they can have it.’ Edward Kelly, for there is not the slightest doubt it was he, then asked how many men there were about the station, and threatened Fitzgerald if he did not tell him the truth. Fitzgerald told him there were only three or four hands. Kelly then informed Fitzgerald that it was his intention to lock him and a lad who was also present in the store room. This purpose Kelly and his mates immediately carried into effect. Three other men shortly afterwards came in to their dinners, and as they arrived they were bailed up and placed in the storeroom along with the others.

Shortly after this Mr. Macauley, the manager of the station, arrived home. As he was crossing a little wooden bridge over a creek near the homestead he noticed that the place appeared unusually quiet for the time of day, it being customary for the men engaged about the station to be working about. He had no suspicions, however, of anything being wrong, and rode straight on to the buildings. When he got to the storeroom Fitzgerald, who was allowed to put his head out of the door, told him the Kellys were there. Mr. Macauley would not believe him at first, but Edward Kelly came out of the building and said, ‘I am Ned Kelly ; you will have to bail up,’ Mr. Macauley, in reply, said it was no use their sticking up the station, as there were no horses on it better than those they had with them. Kelly said they did not want to take anything from the station ; all they wanted being a rest and food for their horses, and to have a sleep themselves. Mr. Macauley then, seeing that all the men were armed, gave in. At first he could not believe that it was really the Kellys who had paid him such an unwelcome visit ; but afterwards he saw Daniel Kelly, and immediately recognised him from the portraits that have been published in the Illustrated News, and the photographs that have been circulated throughout the country. One of the other men was afterwards recognised as one Steve Hart, well known as an associate of the Kellys, and who is probably identical with one of the two unknown men who took part in the Mansfield murders. The other man, Byrne, is supposed to make up the fourth of the party who slew Constables Scanlan and Lonigan and Sergeant Kennedy. Both these men are said to answer to the descriptions published.

703030846 — Source: The illustrated Australian news, December 27, 1878. (SLV: 1697231)

To return to the narrative, however, Mr. Macauley, seeing there was no help for his position, proposed that dinner should be partaken of, but the bushrangers refused to eat anything unless they saw the others partake of the food, being evidently frightened of being poisoned. The horses had in the meantime been put in the stable and attended to. Ultimately the men had dinner, and the party of outlaws also, the latter leaving two of their number to keep guard while the others took their food. It was then getting towards evening, and shortly before dark a man named Gloster, who keeps a store at Seymour, and also follows the trade of a hawker around the district, arrived at the station, and prepared to camp on its outskirts. He had unharnessed his horse and went to the kitchen to get some hot water for his tea. One of the women there told him he had better bail up, as the Kellys were there. Gloster treated the matter as a joke, and went on with what he was doing and was about to return to his cart. Daniel Kelly then raised his gun, and Edward Kelly called out to Gloster to stop, and Mr. Macauley, knowing him to be a man of considerable courage and determination, also endeavored to dissuade him from resisting, as he feared if he went to the waggon and got at his revolver, murder would be committed. Gloster, however, persisted in going to the waggon, and got up into it, but Edward Kelly followed him, and, putting his revolver up to Gloster’s cheek, ordered him to get down again. This he did very reluctantly, and was very surly and short in his language to the bushranger. Edward Kelly said he would like to shoot him, and that he was one man out of a hundred not to do so. Gloster having been thus secured was disposed of in a similar manner to the other men, and put into the store with the hands. The outlaws then commenced to ransack Gloster’s waggon, and quickly had its contents strewn over the ground, so that they might pick out such articles as they were most in need of, or as took their fancy at the moment. Each man then arrayed himself in a new rig out from head to foot, and even such luxuries as soaps and perfumery were not despised, – the bushrangers pouring bottles of the latter over themselves, and pocketing the former for future use. Having got tired of overhauling the unfortunate hawker’s stock-in-trade, the two Kellys and their mates composed themselves for the night. Two men were kept on guard while the others slept, all the station hands being kept in the storehouse except Fitzgerald and Mr. Macauley, who were allowed to move about the place, but only under strict surveillance, and on their promise that they would not attempt to escape.

In the course of the night the desperadoes conversed freely with their captives, and, indeed, appear to have taken them into their confidence to a certain extent. In speaking of the Mansfield murders, Edward Kelly said he was sorry Kennedy had been shot, and that it had never been their intention to kill him. He stated that Kennedy fired five shots at the bushrangers, one of which grazed Edward Kelly’s whiskers, and another his sleeve. The first time Kennedy was hit it was in the arm, and Kelly did not intend to fire at him again. Kennedy, however, when hit was partly behind a tree, and, being shot, threw his arm up as if to aim at Edward Kelly, whereupon the latter again fired, hitting him in the side, and be dropped. They also spoke of Constable McIntyre in a way the reverse of complimentary as to his courage. They said that when Kennedy arrived at the camp and jumped from his horse he dismounted on the wrong side, throwing his leg on the horse’s wither, and that McIntyre immediately mounted and rode off, leaving his companions to cope with the gang themselves. Edward Kelly is also stated to have said that had it not been for the police separating things would never have happened as they did. With respect to the shooting of Constable Fitzpatrick, he asserted that he was not concerned in that outrage at all, and could bring evidence which would prove beyond a doubt that he was fifteen miles away when it occurred. He also said that he and his party had no wish to harm any one who did not harm them. One of the most remarkable statements made by the outlaws, however, was that they had written a communication addressed to the Legislative Council, and containing a detailed account of the exploits of the gang and the causes of their being led into a career of crime. There may be some truth in this, as Mrs. Fitzgerald has been understood to say that a document was given to her by one of the Kellys, and that she posted it at his request.

The night having been passed in this manner, the first thing done by the bushrangers on the following Tuesday morning was to break down one of the galvanised iron telegraph posts on the line of railway which runs within a few yards of the home station and out the wires, thereby preventing communication with Benalla, where a large body of police was known to be stationed. The bushrangers appeared to be very apprehensive of being observed by passing trains, as everyone that went by slackened speed, the driver’s attention being no doubt attracted by the broken telegraph wires. About half-past four p.m. the train for Melbourne passed and stopped, leaving a man who had been sent from Benalla to repair the damage, but as soon as the train that brought him had departed he was bailed up and speedily placed with the rest of the captives in the storeroom. Shortly after breakfast another incident occurred. It appears that two selectors named Casement and Tannant respectively, and two visitors named Dudley and McDougall, had been out shooting kangaroos, having a saddle horse and a springcart with them, and two carrying double-barrelled guns. To return to their home they had to pass the station, and while so doing, they were met by two of the bushrangers, one of whom told them to bail up, as he was Ned Kelly. Casement said to Kelly he had better mind himself, or the consequence might be bad. Kelly told Tannant to get down from his horse. Tannant dismounted and said to Casement ‘Let’s go and load the guns’ and he went to the cart and began to charge them. Kelly then ordered him off the cart, and throw his rifle down and put his fist up, saying, ‘Won’t you come and try it out with me? That’s the fist, of Ned Kelly ; it won’t be long before you feel the weight of it.’ Tannant then got off the cart and was ordered by Kelly to go and open the gate leading to the home station, Tannant at first refused, but Kelly forced him to comply by putting the barrel of his revolver in his mouth and saying, ‘Now, will you go?’ Tannant afterwards declared he could feel the cold iron between his jaws. Kelly and his mate then drove the men before them up to the huts, and they were consigned to captivity in the storeroom, along with the rest, They took the spring cart and horse with them also. This, with the hawker’s wagon, made two vehicles at the bushrangers’ disposal, to be afterwards utilised in their raid upon the National Bank at Euroa.

On returning to the station, Edward Kelly went to Mr. Macauley and asked him to write him a cheque, but Mr. Macauley refused to do so. It would seem that Kelly’s reason for wanting the cheque was not so much for the sake of the money as for an excuse for going to the bank, for pointing to a drawer, he said to Mr. Macauley, there is a cheque in that drawer for £4. There was such a cheque drawn out and signed, and Mr. Macauley replied, ‘I can’t stop you from taking that, but I won’t sign a cheque.’ Kelly then took the cheque, and left the station with his brother Daniel and Steve Hart, Byrne staying behind to guard the prisoners in the storehouse, Mr, Macauley being put in along with the others. The bushrangers then appear to have gone direct to the township, taking, with them Gloster’s waggon and Casement’s spring-cart.

bcp_00893h — Euroa, VIC (date unknown) Source: State Library of New South Wales; FL1715720; IE1715712

At about a quarter-past four in the afternoon Edward Kelly knocked at the door of the bank office, it being after bank hours, and on its being partly opened by Mr. Bradley, one of the clerks, Kelly said he wanted a cheque of Mr. Macauley’s for £4 cashed. Mr. Bradley said it was too late, whereupon Kelly said he wanted the money, and asked to see the manager, Mr. Scott. Mr. Bradley replied it would be no use his seeing him, as he had locked the cash up. Bradley was still holding the door partly open when Kelly pushed himself in and announced who he was. He and Steve Hart then rushed in and covered Mr. Bradley and Mr. Booth, the other clerk, with their revolvers, and, driving them before them, passed round the counter into the manager’s room, where Mr. Scott was sitting. They ordered Mr. Scott to tell the female inmates of the house who were there not to, make a row. Mr. Scott did so, and Mrs. Scott, With her mother, six children and two female servants came into the passage. The two clerks were also sent there, and saw Daniel Kelly at the back door. Edward Kelly then demanded from Mr. Scott what money was in the bank. Mr, Scott replied that he had not the entire care of it, there being duplicate keys, some of which were kept by Mr. Bradley. Kelly then put a pistol to Mr. Bradley’s head and asked him for the cash, and Mr. Bradley, after much hesitation, had to give up the keys of the safe drawers. Edward Kelly went out and got a gunny bag from the waggon, and, taking the money from the drawers, put it into it, mixing notes, gold and, silver indiscriminately. The clerks here cannot say, in Mr. Scott’s absence, what the actual amount was that was taken, but it is currently stated to have been between £1500 and £2000. Having secured the cash the robbers proceeded to the yard and got ready Mr. Scott’s horse and buggy. They allowed the bank officials to put the books away in the strong room, and then took Mr. and Mrs. Scott, their family and servants, and the two clerks, out by the back way, locked up the premises, and, putting them into the three vehicles, drove them rapidly off towards Mr. Younghusband’s station, Gloster’s waggon leading the way, with Edward Kelly driving, the buggy driven by Mr. Scott next, and the spring cart last.

On arriving at the station they found the other man, Byrne, pacing up and down in front of the storehouse with a rifle in each hand, and they saw all the people who were shut up inside looking through the windows, when they all alighted from the traps. The ladies were allowed to go into the kitchen, and Byrne unlocked the store and let the prisoners go as far as about the door, but they were not allowed to go further. The bushrangers appeared to be well armed, as four rifles were noticed lying in the waggon. Mr. Macauley was allowed to come out of the storeroom, and the horses were then taken to their stables by the station hands, the Kellys keeping guard over them. Ned Kelly took the money from Casement’s cart, and strapped the bag on to the front of his saddle. After that they had tea served in the kitchen. The bushrangers stopped about the premises until near nine o’clock, when they rode away. Before leaving they locked every one up except Mr. Macauley and the women, and told the former not to let any one out for three hours, saying that if they came back within that time and found he had done so he would have to be responsible for the consequences. Edward Kelly distributed a quantity of silver coin among the servants and other women about the station before he left. Mr. Macauley opened the store about a quarter of an hour after the gang had departed in order to let fresh air in and about 10.30 Messrs. Scott and Bradley, with Mrs. Scott and the younger children left the station in the buggy, while Mr. Booth and the elder children walked to the township along the railway line. The robbery was altogether a most audacious one, and at the same time was cleverly planned, for although it was committed in broad daylight, everything was so well managed that the residents of the township had not the slightest idea of what was being done. The outlaws wore to some extent favored by the position of the bank, it being the first house in the township coming from the direction of Faithfull’s Creek station.

The first intimation of the robbery was given when the captives returned from the station ; and Constable Anderson, the only officer stationed at Euroa, went by the night train to Benalla to give information. Superintendent Nicolson, with a body of police numbering about a dozen, in addition to black trackers, left Benalla at midnight on Tuesday by special train, and on arrival at Euroa they at once commenced search operations, which were continued during the day. About eleven o’clock to-night the police again made a start, but were, as usual, very reticent as to the direction they meant to take, as well as whether there were any good reasons to believe that a capture would be effected. All kinds of rumors are afloat as to the locality the Kellys have made for, some saying they have gone towards Murchison, while others maintain that they will be found in their old haunts in the ranges near the scene of the murders. In the meantime, great excitement and a general feeling of insecurity prevails all over the district. A special train left Benalla for Euroa at half-past twelve to-night, with extra police and black trackers. There is no further news to be obtained here.

—

Source:

“FURTHER OUTRAGES BY THE KELLY GANG.” Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 – 1918) 14 December 1878: 21.v

Posted on December 5, 2018February 24, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 3

Steve Hart: An Overview

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when Stephen Hart was once one of the most infamous bushrangers in Australia. Now he is often thought of as no more than an also-ran, an afterthought, the “other Kelly”. According to an article in the Evening News, Sydney, 14 February 1879, “Ned Kelly is looked upon as a hero all over the North-eastern district, and Steve Hart is second only in popular esteem.” So what changed the public perception of one of only four people ever outlawed in the history of Victoria? What led to Steve Hart becoming the forgotten Kelly Gang member?

To understand the story of Steve Hart, we must look at his parents. Steve’s father Richard Hart was transported to Australia as an eighteen year old convict in 1835 on the Lady McNaughton for being a pick-pocket. Earning his ticket of leave on 26 January 1840, he would later gain his Certificate of Freedom on 18 June 1843. In the subsequent years he would be joined by his sister Anne and brother Richard, both were transported as convicts. Richard was employed at Gunning Station at Fish River working for Elizabeth O’Neill, the widow of John Kennedy Hume, brother of explorer Hamilton Hume, who had been murdered by bushranger Thomas Whitton on 20 January 1840. The widow Hume had been left with nine children to care for (she was pregnant with her ninth at the time of the murder) and nobody to protect them, so Richard’s presence was likely very welcome.
Ten years after Richard gained his ticket of leave, recently orphaned Bridget Young, aged sixteen, and her sister Mary, aged twenty-one, travelled to Australia from Galway on the Thomas Arbuthnot as part of the “Earl Grey Famine Orphan Scheme“. No doubt the potential opportunities in Australia were a glimmer of hope as they escaped the crushing existence of being employed at workhouses back in Ireland and trying to stave off starvation due to the Great Hunger, also known as the Great Famine or the Irish Potato Famine. They arrived in Sydney and were stationed at the Hyde Park Barracks for several weeks before travelling to Yass for work, Bridget then became indentured to Mr. Smith of Mingay Station in Gundagai, which was one of the various stations affected by the horrendous flood of June 1852.
One of the young women who had accompanied Bridget all the way to Yass since their initial departure from Galway on the Thomas Arbuthnot was Margret White, who would later move to Goulburn where she would marry Paddy Byrne. These two were the parents of Kelly gang member Joe Byrne. What interaction these women had, if any, remains an unanswered question.

Hyde Park Barracks circa 1850 (detail) [Source]

When Elizabeth O’Neill left Gunning and took up residence at her property Burramine (aka Byramine) at Yarrawonga in the 1850s it is likely that Richard travelled with her. By this time, Richard had met Bridget Young and the pair were raising a family in Gundagai, but a short time thereafter the family arrived in South Wangaratta where they soon established themselves, possibly with more than a little assistance from Elizabeth.

Stephen Hart was born at the Hart property on Three Mile Creek, Wangaratta, on 4 October 1859 to Richard and Bridget Hart (née Young), and baptised on 13 October that year. Steve was one of thirteen children. His siblings were William (who died as an infant in Gundagai in 1852), Ellen, Julia, Richard jr (Dick), Thomas Myles, Esther (Ettie), Winifred, Agnes, Nicholas, Rachel and Harriet – certainly Richard snr and Bridget had their hands full with such a brood. Steve’s was not an overly troubled childhood by the standards of the time and place. In fact the Hart family seemed to be quite well to do with a 53 acre property in Wangaratta on the Three Mile Creek and a larger 230 acre block at the foot of the Warby Ranges. As with all selector’s sons, Steve was expected to work on the selection as soon as he was old enough but he had at least some education and could read and write.

Steve was an able, if not necessarily dedicated, worker. Employed for a time as a butcher boy in Oxley to a Mr. Gardiner, Steve soon ended up working with his father and siblings stumping properties for what would have been around £6 a month. Hardly glamorous work, but honest. No doubt he was frequently roped into doing jobs for the Bowderns who were neighbours to the Harts and close friends.

As a teenager, Steve was a jockey who had a few minor prizes under his belt including the Benalla Handicap. His small frame and natural affinity with horses made him the perfect fit and would come in handy later on when combined with his excellent geographical knowledge of Wangaratta and the Warby Ranges. He was evidently a popular youth, quite likely due to his fun loving nature and eagerness to please. It’s easy to imagine Steve strutting past O’Brien’s hotel with his hat cocked, chinstrap under his nose and a bright sash around his waist accompanied by the likes of Dan Kelly, Tom Lloyd, John Lloyd and, later on, Aaron Sherritt, Joe Byrne and Ned Kelly. His time with the Greta Mob, as they called themselves, was probably the only time Steve felt a sense of belonging, his adolescent mind far more preoccupied with socialising than work. It seems he built a strong bond with Dan Kelly in particular during this time, perhaps drawn in by the self-assuredness and natural charisma the younger Kelly seemed to possess. The Kelly boys were seemingly blessed with the ability to leave a favourable impression on most anyone they met while also projecting a ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe likely forged due to their harsh upbringing. In contrast, Steve’s slender build and delicate features likely made him someone who was far from intimidating, so being around someone like Dan would have been a good move to make him tougher by association. The Greta Mob were larrikins and what Steve lacked in physicality he made up for in horsemanship – a primary interest of the larrikin class. The gang were fond of showing off their skills on horseback and this kept them in the cross-hairs of the local police.

Steve Hart, photographed by W. E. Barnes

Of course, Steve was not exempt from the seemingly obligatory prison stint. On 7 July, 1877, Steve Hart appeared in Wangaratta Police Court during the general sessions charged with stealing a horse from David Green of Glenrowan. Green’s grey mare had gone missing and Sergeant Steele had been tasked with finding the culprit. Going to the Hart property in Wangaratta, Steele interrogated Steve and a lodger named James O’Brien about the horse in the paddock behind them. “What, that grey mare?” Steve asked incredulously. Steele pressed the point and Steve indicated he had been loaned the horse from a man in town. When Steele asked for a name, Steve replied “Have you a warrant for me? I’ll give you no bloody information unless you have.” Steele promptly arrested Hart and O’Brien, who had also gotten Dick Hart implicated in a horse theft at the same time. The initial charge of theft was altered to ‘illegally using a horse’ and Steve was shortly convicted and sent to Beechworth Gaol for twelve months. It was here that he befriended Dan Kelly who was doing time over an incident at a shop where he had gotten drunk and broken in. The freezing winter months and stifling summer heat would have taken their toll on the lad, then just eighteen. Undoubtedly this would have made him seem rather a black sheep in the family by the time he got home, so instead of staying at the farm he left to find work elsewhere, first supposedly shearing in New South Wales and later at a sawmill near Mansfield before he joined the Kelly brothers at their gold claim on Bullock Creek. It was honest enough work and no doubt his body had been bulked up from the hard labour smashing granite with a hammer in Beechworth Gaol for a year. The one known photograph of Steve depicts him as a slender youth, but descriptions of Steve in 1878 painted a different picture.

After Steve’s exit from Beechworth Gaol and all during his time travelling for work, Sergeant Steele had been hounding his family for word on his whereabouts. Steele was convinced he was off duffing stock with the Kellys and even threatened the Harts that if they didn’t tell him exactly where Steve was that he’d be shot. Unfortunately the family had no idea of Steve’s whereabouts.

When Constable Fitzpatrick was assaulted at the Kelly house in April 1878, Steve was not involved. However he was reported to have made the decision to stick by his mates and while working with his father and siblings he downed his tools and took off declaring:

“A short life, but a merry one!”

This phrase not only summed up the youthful impulsiveness of the adolescent Hart, but became a sort of catchphrase for the Kelly gang later on when the meaning had far more sinister undertones. Though, it was usually attributed to Steve, there is some question over the accuracy of the attribution, though it certainly sounds authentic enough to be believable and has become the phrase that is synonymous with him.

Steve was with Dan and Ned in October 1878 when a party of police had entered the Wombat Ranges hunting for the two Kellys. On 26 October Ned Kelly led Dan, Steve and Joe Byrne in an assault on the police party. Three police were killed in the incident, though Steve was not one of the killers. When McIntyre escaped on horseback Dan Kelly had directed Steve and Joe to catch him. They had gone a distance into the bush but could not catch up. They fired ineffectually into the bush. No doubt this episode was traumatic for all involved, but for Steve and Joe, who came from comparatively sheltered lives compared to the Kelly brothers, it must have been doubly so.

The immediate aftermath of Stringybark Creek saw the gang desperate to escape capture long enough to establish a new base of operations. This was where Steve Hart had his chance to shine. Navigating the torrential flood waters that caused the rivers to swell to insurmountable levels, Steve took the gang into his playground. Crossing a secluded bridge he took the gang and their horses safely to Hart territory, successfully evading the police search parties. Steve would prove invaluable to the gang in their next undertaking – the robbery of a bank.

An oft related anecdote is that Steve Hart, dressed as a veiled woman riding side-saddle, would ride into towns close to the Strathbogie and Warby Ranges to gather information about the banks. On one of these reconnaissance missions Steve found the perfect target in the township of Euroa. Disguises were not a necessity for Steve at this stage as he was the only member of the gang yet to be identified.

‘Steve Hart dressed as a girl’ by Sidney Nolan [Source]

Steve’s role in the bank robbery was straightforward but vital. When Ned and Dan set out from Faithful’s Creek, Steve rode ahead on his bay mare. Arriving in town in advance of the others, Steve got a bite to eat while he waited and used the time to assess whether the plan was still viable. When the others arrived he accompanied Dan around the back where he went into the bank manager’s residence and locked Susy Scott, her mother and children in the parlour, but not before being recognised by Fanny Shaw who was employed as a general maid for the Scotts. Steve and Fanny were schoolmates and Steve informed Fanny that he was in the process of robbing the bank before tricking her into joining the family in the parlour. Fanny Shaw’s testimony would finally expose the mysterious fourth member of the Kelly Gang. In the ashes of the fire from the gang’s old clothes was found what was believed to be a woman’s bonnet, but was after revealed to be Steve’s cabbage tree hat with a fly veil. While this would appear to indicate the cross-dressing rumours were no more than that it is very difficult to disprove the initial claim.

With the fourth member of the gang finally identified, a description was published in an effort to help the public recognise the miscreant:

He is described in the criminal records as being 21 years of age, 5ft. 6in. high, fresh complexion, brown hair, and hazel eyes ; right leg has been injured.

When the gang were officially declared outlaws it became much harder to move freely. Steve’s reconnaissance missions ended in favour of his sister Ettie feeding information back to the gang. When the raid on Jerilderie was decided upon the gang crossed into New South Wales in pairs, Ned and Joe heading for the pub where they received intelligence from Mary the Larrikin before meeting up with Dan and Steve the next day.

Steve’s role in the raids seems to have very much been as Ned’s attack dog. He was the only gang member to not don a police uniform after the Jerilderie police had been locked in their own cells. When the bank was robbed it was Steve who found the bank manager Tarleton having a bath (and subsequently made to guard him as he dressed). Witnesses in the hotel would describe Steve as seeming very nervous. While Ned was going about his work Steve stole a watch from Reverend Gribble. The outrage made it to Ned Kelly who ordered Steve to return the watch, which he did under sufferance. It must have seemed a strange paradox to be an outlawed bushranger but not be allowed to steal from people. Once again he and Dan performed horse tricks as they left the town after a victorious raid.

For months the gang seemingly disappeared. More detailed descriptions were offered that appeared to do very little to help identify the gang:

Steve Hart, about 21 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches high, dark complexion, black hair, short dark hair on sides of face and chin, bandy legs, stout build, clumsy appearance, speaks very slowly; dressed in dark paget suit, light felt hat, and elastic-side boots.

Watch parties were assigned to the Kelly, Hart and Byrne properties to stop them from returning home. During this time the banks were guarded by men of the garrison artillery, which made future plans for bank robbery impossible to carry out. But by the beginning of 1880 the gang were making appearances again, this time they were stealing metal to make suits of armour.

At Glenrowan, Steve initially attempted to pull up rails from the train track with Ned but soon became the attack dog again, keeping prisoners under control while Ned found the men who could lift the rails. Steve’s behaviour was typically aggressive, but as he was confined to guarding the women and children in the station-master’s house he became bored and took to drinking and even napped on the sofa with his revolvers resting on his chest. Depending on which account you read, at one point either Thomas Curnow helped Steve remove his boots and wash his feet in warm water to alleviate swelling or Steve ordered some of the women to wash his feet. He was also seen with his head on Jane Jones’ lap while he complained of feeling unwell. When Steve tired of being isolated he took the women and children to the inn to join the rest of the party.
When the police train was stopped and firing broke out, Steve seemed to avoid injury. However later on witnesses claimed he had injured his arm. Some witnesses described him cowering behind the fireplace to avoid gunfire, his initial overconfidence brought about by the armour supplanted by terror. After Joe Byrne’s death and Ned Kelly’s apparent disappearance Steve was despondent. When the prisoners were allowed to exit the inn he was overheard asking Dan Kelly “What shall we do now?” to which the reply was “I shall tell you directly.” Many have interpreted this to indicate a suicide pact. The truth about Steve’s cause of death will never be determined, however, as his corpse was burned beyond recognition in the fire that destroyed the inn. Stories of Steve and Dan surviving the fire are ludicrous and easily disproved.

Steve Hart, portrayed by Philip Barantini in Ned Kelly (2003)

After the fire, Steve’s body was retrieved and Superintendent Sadleir made the controversial decision to hand it over to the Hart family. A coffin was quickly procured and the remains placed inside and buried in a clandestine service in Greta Cemetery next to Dan Kelly in an unmarked grave. Steve’s untimely demise seemed to weigh heavily on the family but manifested in various ways. Ettie Hart appeared in a stage production entitled Kelly Family, whereas Dick preferred to stew over the turn of events and even agitated to form a second gang with Patsy Byrne, Wild Wright, Jim Kelly and Tom Lloyd. The agitation amounted to nothing however. In 1899, Tom Lloyd would marry Steve’s younger sister Rachel.
Over time Steve’s notoriety faded and soon he became “the other guy” in popular culture. Yet, Steve Hart is one of the more tragic characters in the Kelly saga, his youth and poor choices leading to a horrific and untimely death. There is perhaps no better example of the folly of youth than this accidental bushranger who just wanted to back up his mate and ended up one of the most wanted men in the British Empire.

A very special thank you to Noeleen Lloyd whose advice and additional information on the Hart family was invaluable in the compiling of this biography.

Selected sources:
LA citation”STEPHEN HART’S BOYHOOD.” Weekly Times (Melbourne, Vic. : 1869 – 1954) 10 July 1880: 6.

“More Facts About the Kelly Raid.” Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 – 1931) 14 February 1879: 3.

“DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTLAWS.” Weekly Times (Melbourne, Vic. : 1869 – 1954) 14 December 1878: 16.

“THE KELLY GANG” The Kyneton Observer (Vic. : 1856 – 1900) 8 March 1879: 2.

“WHEN GUNDAGAI WAS A TRAGIC SIGHT” The Gundagai Independent (NSW : 1928 – 1939) 1 August 1935: 6.

“Country News.” Australasian Chronicle (Sydney, NSW : 1839 – 1843) 28 January 1840: 2.

https://australianroyalty.net.au/individual.php?pid=I66949&ged=purnellmccord.ged

Image sources:
STEPHEN HART. The Illustrated Australian News. July 17, 1880. SLV Source ID: 1760624

Posted on October 10, 2018October 5, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 2

The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly: Retrospective Review by Gabriel Bergmoser

This entry was written by playwright Gabriel Bergmoser, creator of the musical Moonlite. Gabriel’s passion for bushranger tales is evident in his work and I am very glad to present this personal account to you. ~ AP

It’s impossible to write this without giving a bit of personal context, so please bear with me.
I went to primary school in Mansfield, about a hundred metres from where Sergeant Kennedy, Constable Scanlon and Constable Lonigan were buried after being shot by Ned Kelly at Stringybark Creek. With its relative proximity to the creek itself, Mansfield is a major Kelly Country location, and there is a reasonable thread of fascination with the events in the town.
I was totally Kelly obsessed from the moment I was old enough to have any kind of understanding of the story, and as such I was thrilled when, in primary school, my class spent a few weeks studying bushrangers. To tie in with this theme, every lunch our teacher read us a little bit of the only novel she had on the topic – a book from the 1920s called The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly. At the time, being around ten, I was utterly transfixed by the book, looking forward to the next instalment every lunch, outraged when the book was snapped shut and we had to go and play.
We never finished the book, much to my consternation, and as my teacher’s copy was an antique she wasn’t about to lend it to me, so I resolved to find my own. Every weekend trip to Melbourne I would beg my parents to let me scour second hand bookstores to try and find it. But it didn’t matter how many places I searched (a lot); I never saw the book.

Over the years I kept looking. Not super seriously, eventually more just out of habit. But as more and more time passed, a strange kind of fervour grew. It had to be somewhere, right?
Apparently it didn’t. Even online searches yielded nothing. The book evidently existed, it was just very, very rare.
It wasn’t even like I was driven by genuine memories of how good it was. If you’d asked in the past couple of years, I doubt I could recount any of the book with any accuracy. But the fact that I couldn’t find it was maddening.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was walking through Adelaide when a second hand bookstore caught my eye. I wandered in and set about trying to find the book. No luck. But there were a couple of other gems in the bushranger section and as I took them up to the counter the lady who owned the shop commented on an evident obsession. I mentioned my ongoing search for The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly and the response was immediate; “oh, it’s in that cabinet over there.”
That book was first read to me in 2002. It took sixteen years to finally get my hands on it.

Honestly, after all of that I wasn’t sure if I would even read it. Carrying it out of the store with immense reverence, the idea that the book wouldn’t be worth it was a bit of a concern. But upon flicking through it became evident that I wouldn’t be able to help myself.
Beyond that, I was fascinated by what the book might represent. Originally serialised in the 1920s, a disclaimer in the front of the book says that the names of many of the supporting characters had been changed “for obvious reasons”: the book was written within the life spans of people who knew the Kellys. Ellen Kelly died only a few years before it was published. With that in mind, does this book represent one of, if not the earliest romanticised fiction of Ned Kelly? If so, what, if any, was its role in his growing canonisation? And aside from anything else, is it actually a good book?

Told largely from the perspective of fictional drifter Jack Briant, The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly chronicles his tangential involvement with the gang during the last year of their lives, and… well, actually that’s about it.

The character of Briant, despite some early intrigue regarding his backstory that is resolved in the most toothless, predictable way possible, feels very much like a not particularly subtle stand in for the author. It’s hard to state this with much veracity; I couldn’t find much information on writer Charles E. Taylor, but the character of a wealthy man from Melbourne who wins Ned’s trust, confounds the police and flirts with Kate Kelly seems very much like a way for an author brought up in the aftermath of the Kellys’ time to play out a kind of wish fulfillment. By extension, this makes him an audience surrogate and, perhaps, indicates why the book had such an impact on ten year old, bushranger obsessed me.
As a character however? Briant is kind of annoying. He stands out badly due to the fact that he never existed and yet in the book he is at least tangentially present for much of the gang’s doings. But the fact that he has no real place in the history also means that he’s largely inactive as a protagonist; his contributions to the plot essentially extend to teaching the gang how to conceal their campfires (because that’s exactly the kind of thing a rich bloke from Melbourne would know rather than Ned) and distracting the police once or twice.
Adding to the character’s artificiality is an occasional propensity to remind the audience, via his inner monologue, that Ned is bound for a sticky end and that the police are just doing their jobs and plenty of them are noble. This doesn’t really track with his actions and as such feels like the work of a nervous editor ensuring the book doesn’t glorify the Kellys too much. Even the foreword insists that ‘no attempt has been made to canonise these young criminals’ despite the fact that, well, that’s exactly what the book does.

Make no mistake; this novel exists squarely in the tradition of Ned as a romantic, Robin Hood like figure. He’s presented in the text pretty much exactly how you’d expect; noble, imperious, wily with occasional flashes of larrikin charm. The rest of the gang get essentially one note personalities, with Dan being The Angry One, Joe being The Sad One and Steve being The Other One.
Beyond the gang, Hare and an almost pantomime villain version of Aaron Sherritt, most of the characters are either loose analogues for people like Wild Wright or Tom Lloyd or, like Briant, made up entirely. Weirdly, some of those characters are actually among the book’s most endearing, from crotchety old Kelly sympathiser Sam Jackson to Briant’s love interest, mercurial farmer’s daughter Nita. Even some of the fictional policeman show moments of surprising depth, like one particularly evangelical trap standing silently side by side with sworn enemy Ned at a funeral out of respect for the deceased.
And then there’s the titular ‘girl’. Jim Kelly was apparently outraged by this fabrication in particular, vehemently claiming that Ned ‘had no girl’. As it stands, the character is barely there, a fictional lover of Ned who only appears in the second half of the book and barely warrants supporting character status, let alone the title. The relationship is so thinly sketched that it’s hard to see why it was included at all.

It’s honestly difficult to say what the book is really about. Jack’s fledgling romance with Nita gets the bulk of the attention, but neither of them are the title characters or, y’know, real people. Their will they-won’t they thing is surprisingly engaging, but it ends up being far more dominant than major events like the death of Aaron Sherritt, which happens within a page of Joe discovering he’s a traitor, or the siege of Glenrowan which gets maybe two pages at the end. As it stands, it reads more than anything like the author just really wanted to hang out with these characters.
Except, of course, they’re not characters, they’re real people. The changed names are the most telling aspect; this book was written at a time where the events were not so long in the past as to rightly be considered legend yet. Given those circumstances, it’s hard to see the book as one written in particularly good taste, and it’s even harder to understand why it makes some of its more egregious diversions from history; namely the Siege of Glenrowan occurring several weeks after Sherritt’s murder and Dan dying well before Joe and Steve at the siege itself. You could chalk this up to ignorance, were it not for the afterward that includes many of the correct dates and details.
But look, accuracy is not what makes this book fascinating and nor, realistically, is narrative. What makes it worthy of discussion is the fact that it represents a blithe fictionalisation of the Kelly story written at a time when the events were still very much within living memory. And despite Jim Kelly’s consternation, it would be far from the last. From Our Sunshine to True History of the Kelly Gang; the literary class might have evolved, but the fundamental ethos certainly hasn’t; this story is our defining cultural myth, so writers and artists will always be drawn to create their own version.

I don’t know whether I would attribute much if any of the history’s ongoing romanticisation to this book. The process of consolidating the facts into legend had long since started, but to my knowledge The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly represents the first in a long tradition, the moment when writers started to feel comfortable twisting the story to suit their own ends, in the process creating new versions of the legend that would ensure it was kept alive for generations to come. Whatever your opinion on the practice, that fact alone gives it a place in the canon.
It’s hard, in the end, to know how to feel about this book. I didn’t remember enough of it to be especially nostalgic in reading it. It was certainly entertaining and rarely less than fascinating. But it is very much of its time and as a novel, isn’t much more than mediocre. A forgotten classic this absolutely is not.

Of course, my stake in the whole endeavour always went deeper than simply reviewing a piece of Kelly esoterica. After a sixteen year search, am I glad I finally found and read the thing? Yeah, I’d say so. I would have been immensely surprised if it was anywhere near as good as my 2002 self remembered it so its overall quality didn’t count as much of a disappointment. More than anything, having and holding an original copy of the book dating from the 1920s is really special, and a piece of Kelly history I’m proud to own. But in terms of whether you should embark on your own multi year hunt to track down and read it? Unless you’re a hardcore collector, there are probably better uses of your time.

Posted on September 20, 2018February 24, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 0

Tony Richardson’s ‘Ned Kelly’ – in defence of a maligned film

In 1970 a film was released that has become infamous in Australian pop culture. It was directed by one of Britain’s most acclaimed stage directors, featured music by some of America’s greatest country musicians of the time, was written by a man who would in later years become known as the authoritative voice on the film’s subject (who himself had an illustrious career in Australian television), and starred one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll stars of all time. Yet, despite all of these ingredients that should amount to a legendary film, somehow it created the exact opposite reaction to what was expected and it seems to boil down to two words:

Mick Jagger.

Yes, the 1970 film Ned Kelly has become a byword for bad adaptations of the Kelly story based purely on the unfortunate miscasting of the lead singer of the Rolling Stones as Australia’s favourite bank robber. So is it really as bad as it is made up to be? When compared with other stand alone films the answer may surprise you.

1. Cast

Films usually live or die on their cast and this film is a prime example of this. Any Ned Kelly film is expected to have Ned as a lead match the appearance of Ned in the popular consciousness: tall, muscular, heavily bearded – a bushman fit for the cover of a Harlequin romance. Mick Jagger did not fit the bill. His average height seems diminished by his weedy frame and awkward gait and his trademark pouty lips are far from the thin determined mouth Ned sported in all known images. In reality Ned Kelly stood at around 5’10” to 6′ tall, average by modern standards and tall in his own day, and as demonstrated by his commemorative boxing photo his physique was rather odd. The Ned of history is long limbed and a little pigeon chested with small hands and feet, likely very toned beneath the white long johns and undershirt from years of manual labour but certainly not adorned with washboard abs like most people would imagine (very few men of the time had access to gyms and protein shakes). By comparison, Mick Jagger at 178cm (5’10”) is actually Ned’s height but at around 73kg (161lbs) is much lighter. At the time of the film’s release Jagger was 27 years old, making him the closest in age to Ned at the time of his execution than any actor in the role in a major production so far, most actors being 28 or over (Godfrey Cass who portrayed Ned Kelly in several productions was in his forties the last time he portrayed Ned on screen).

vlcsnap-2018-09-02-00h45m40s843 — Mark McManus and Ken Shorter as Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt.

As for the remainder of the cast, while many are far from the most striking likenesses of the people they play they are generally well acted. Mark McManus as Joe Byrne is a remarkably good likeness for Joe despite being more than ten years older than his real life counterpart was at the time of his death. Allan Bickford is also surprisingly accurate as Dan Kelly with his black hair and blue eyes and a performance that has him being at times forceful, playful and often at odds with his big brother, which is absolutely spot on. Clarissa Kaye depicts Ellen Kelly with gravitas, strength and dignity while presenting her as a witty and fiery force of nature, again just as the role calls for. Other standout roles include Diane Craig as Maggie, Frank Thring as Judge Barry, Ken Goodlet as Nicholson and Martyn Sanderson as Fitzpatrick. While most of the roles are not 100% accurate in terms of appearance and the police characters are often mere approximations of their historical counterparts it is a very strong cast for the time and perform admirably.

2. Production design

Perhaps one of the weaker elements of the film is the production design that tends to be quite inconsistent. The costumes, sets and props feel authentic and look magnificent but are often very lacking in accuracy. The prime example is Ned Kelly robbing the Euroa bank in a black tuxedo and white frilled shirt. No doubt this look, which was featured heavily in promotional material, was meant to represent Ned’s flashness and add a touch of theatricality to the portion of the film which is deliberately farcical, but is rather a jarring direction even for the late 60s. However the costumes worn by Ned in other scenes that usually consisted of dark coloured woolen clothes, grubby shirts, heeled boots and felt hats were far more accurate and were a great improvement over the high waisted moleskins, tall boots, shirts with rolled up sleeves and rumpled hats that seemed to be the extent of the bushranger costume in the majority of films on the topic such as The Glenrowan Affair or When the Kellys Were Out.

The towns in the film felt like real places of the time and they all felt very similar to the locations they were mimicking. The sets felt lived in and grubby without resorting to dim lighting and a desaturated palette to emulate the ambience of a house in the 1870s.

3. Music

Nobody can deny the appeal of the soundtrack to this film. With songs written by the legendary Shel Silverstein (who wrote Johnny Cash’s legendary ‘A Boy Named Sue’) and performed by artists like Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson (though, strangely, the latter’s songs don’t make it into the film, only the soundtrack album), it’s a perfect blend of lyrical cleverness and folksy musical arrangements that perfectly underscore the film. The refrain ‘The Shadow of the Gallows’, the jaunty ‘Blame it on the Kellys’ and the soulful ‘Lonigan’s Widow’ are just a tiny sample of the stunning musical content that accurately reflect the tone of the film.

“Shadow of the Gallows”

“Lonigan’s Widow”

“Blame it on the Kellys”

4. Cinematography

Ned Kelly is undoubtedly one of the best film versions of the story thanks to Gerry Fisher (The Island of Dr. Moreau, Highlander, Yellowbeard). The imagery is full of soulful ambience, texture, colour and contrast from the beautiful silhouetted stock thieving scenes to the eerie, foggy last stand. The tones feel authentic, the earthy colours of the clothing and buildings drab without resorting to desaturating the shots to create a false sense of the dusty, worn out and dreary existence of the characters. Yet there are bursts of colour such as the inclusion of bright green ribbons to signify Kelly sympathisers, which break up the gritty realism. No other Kelly film to date has managed to feature such beautifully cinematic images while remaining authentic to the time and place. This Kelly story is full of fun moments as well as dark and moody ones.

Muted, earthy tones are punctuated with glorious bursts of colour such as in this depiction of Ned’s boxing match with Wild Wright, making the scene vivid and fun to watch.

Perhaps the crowning glory of this film visually is the atmospheric shots of Glenrowan during Ned Kelly’s last stand that show the iron-clad outlaw walking through eldritch mist, monolithic against the swirling plumes of gun smoke and fog as swarms of police descend upon him. This captures the feel of how the event was described by witnesses in a way that no other on-screen version seems to have managed to date. It was also the first film depiction of the last stand to effectively incorporate the helmet interior perspective shots that have become a staple of Kelly films ever since.

vlcsnap-2018-09-02-01h58m10s062 — Ned Kelly’s last stand is eerie and mist-shrouded – the only cinematic depiction of the event to get this detail right.

5. Screenplay

The beats of the screenplay are precisely accurate thanks to the original screenplay having been written by Ian Jones, who would later inspire generations of Kelly enthusiasts with The Last Outlaw as well as his books The Fatal Friendship (aka The Friendship that destroyed Ned Kelly) and Ned Kelly: A Short Life. The dialogue is often very theatrical, probably due to Toby Richardson’s theatre background, and often rather clever but at times this gets lost when the performances or film making are weak. Where it falls down, however, is where it was later tinkered with by the director who reshaped it into more of a depiction of the spirit of the story than a faithful recreation. Yet, despite these rewrites (which includes the addition of an invented love interest for Ned named Caitlin O’Donnell, odd moments such as James Whitty offering Ned work as a stockman and having Ned’s last stand in a railway cutting) it still remains more accurate than the vast majority of other depictions, including the Heath Ledger film. If you can move past the emphasis on condensing characters and events, there’s a decent screenplay in there.

6. Historical accuracy

This film, despite lording over the majority of adaptations in this regard, is prone to historical inaccuracy. As a foreigner, Tony Richardson can be somewhat forgiven for not adhering strictly to history. However there are glaring inaccuracies worthy of pointing out.

The costumes, despite generally having the right feel and look are often wide of the mark. The police uniforms seem to be mostly based on the real deal but with some artistic flourishes to make them look better as costumes. The gang’s apparent fondness for bandoliers has no basis in fact, but rather takes its cues from Westerns. Most of the inaccuracies here are minor and don’t distract from proceedings – except for the outfits the gang change into at Faithfuls Creek that are so loud, gaudy and flamboyant they could only have come from a film made in 1969.

The collapsing of Nicolson and Hare into one “super cop” called Nicholson was likely done to streamline the story for film and was replicated in the 2003 ‘Ned Kelly’ by creating a “super cop” in Geoffrey Rush’s Hare. To include all police in the way many would like is not a possibility in a theatrical release. Sergeant Steele, Captain Standish, Sadleir and Bracken all make appearances but are not always made a point of. It should be noted that emphasis was placed on key aspects of the pursuit that other adaptations glaze over or omit entirely such as the temporary arrest of sympathisers, the watch party at the Byrne house and the black trackers.

vlcsnap-2018-09-02-00h30m06s334 — “Nicholson” is to Jagger’s Ned Kelly as Elliot Ness is to Al Capone in old gangster movies.

The buildings, such as the Glenrowan Inn, look fairly close but are approximations rather than loving recreations as seen in The Last Outlaw a decade later. This is, again, forgivable as despite not being 100% accurate they feel accurate and reflect the sort of environments that the story took place in, a far cry from the mud soaked huts in the bleak. flat and drab environs of Gregor Jordan’s 2003 film.

There are many things woven throughout the script based on oral history and rumours that can’t be qualified such as the Republic, the army of sympathisers in the hills at Glenrowan, the secret wedding on the eve of the execution and Ned Kelly’s girlfriend “Caitlin O’Donnell”.

vlcsnap-2018-09-02-00h27m52s271 — Caitlin O’Donnell appears to be an amalgam of various rumoured girlfriends and wives of Ned Kelly and is used to show the tender side of Ned.

Many of the inaccurate moments are very minor for the most part but done for artistic reasons such as Ned’s last stand taking place on the train tracks in a gully to show the police piling in on him or the gang bailing up the staff at Younghusband station at dinner to expedite the narrative of the bank robbery rather than spend ages having the gang round people up into a shed. It must be remembered that this was meant to be a film that captured the spirit of the story rather than a slavish recreation. Yet despite the occasional divergence from history it fares a lot better than the 2003 film that is so rife with inaccuracy it requires its own article!

7. The Little Things

Repeat viewings of the film reveal small touches that show a surprising level of detail likely thanks to Ian Jones’ influence.

Little moments like Maggie and Tom Lloyd staring lovingly at each other during the party to celebrate Ned’s return from gaol, the camera lingering on Aaron Sherritt when Ellen makes a disparaging comment about “orange men”, or the way that the boys hoot and holler when they take the bull Ned caught to the pound to demonstrate their larrikinism help the film feel that little bit more understanding of the story than overt appearances might portray. There are many lovely nods towards the history that will reward the attentive viewer, such as when Ned sings The Wild Colonial Boy and is cautioned when Constable Fitzpatrick enters the pub because it was prohibited to sing the song in public, then he just keeps on singing (what a rebel!) before sculling a beer.

Maggie’s love for Tom Lloyd is a little nod that could easily be overlooked by the casual viewer.

Conclusions

Ned Kelly is far from a perfect film and wasn’t without its controversies but it is hardly worthy of being the “bad” Ned Kelly film, especially seeing how much it got right in comparison. It looks gorgeous, it has fun and engaging moments, a killer soundtrack and one of the most accurate screenplays on the subject co-written by one of the most important Kelly scholars – all things that should elevate it in popular culture. It is a film deserving of more respect and at least a watch all the way through and all it takes is getting past the fact that Mick Jagger is a little too skinny and awkward to look like Ned Kelly.

At least he doesn’t have a mullet.

https://healthyceleb.com/mick-jagger-height-weight-body-statistics/33142

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066130/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

Posted on September 19, 2018February 24, 2021 by AJFPhelan56 3

“Dan Kelly’s Account of Chesney Vale”

Being a young man with large hands and strong arms you’d think I was perfect for brick laying but alas it was not for me. I tried to help Ned out on a job but the job just wasn’t suited to me. I tried my best to carry the blocks and mix the mortar and to be honest they were overworking me as I was the new fellow. I tried my best but couldn’t keep up, they said I wasn’t fast enough then when I went faster they said I wasn’t careful enough. The other bricklayers had a good old chuckle at my expense and once the job was done and everyone went to the pub to celebrate “Henry the German”, the foreman, bought beers for everyone but me, said I could drink like a man when I could work like a man. I’d have smacked him in his kraut mouth if I’d not have incurred the wrath of the others.

Three weeks I was there helping out and I got a decent pay out of it so I went and got myself new boots. They were good boots and they were the first I remember wearing that hadn’t had Ned’s and Jim’s sweaty feet rotting them to pieces before they reached me. The others at work thought I was a tramp because my shoes were held together with twine. I didn’t care, I had known nothing else. There was one bloke at the job who was called Bluey and he thought my rags was a great joke. If ever I took off my jacket he’d hide it so that the next day I had to come to work in the cold with nothing on but my undershirt and an old crimean shirt of Ned’s that were full of holes. Bluey was a real bastard, would call me the brat and once threw an old dog blanket at me and told me it was better than my coat and more than I deserved. But with my new boots on I felt a million pounds and was strutting about the place like I owned it. Of course the rest of me was a shambles but my feet never looked smarter. They were elastic sided boots, black leather with a tall heel and they fit into my stirrups right splendid. No socks of course – useless bits of cloth in my opinion but the calluses on my feet might have said otherwise.

Where was my big brother Ned through all of this? The one who was told by Ma to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t come into no mischief or get taken advantage of? He got as far away from me as he could. Arm’s length were too close. Here was Ned with his fine clothes with no holes, that fit him like a glove, bought with his felling money (none of that ever reached Ma I might add as he were of the opinion George King would take it and lose it on the cards as he were a lousy gambler) his beard all neat, laying stones like a machine because of all the time he’d done on Success, and here was I his kid brother in the moth eaten wool suit with floppy hair, a fluffy moustache and boots held together with twine trying to carry his own weight in stone to stop the other men from laughing at him. As soon as the job was done I didn’t speak to Ned for a month. I went shearing with Steve and just got away from that whole scene. It were at that time that George in his infinite Yankee wisdom took up thieving with Ned. Ned were so proud of how his skills breaking horses and the tricks for rebranding Power had taught him made him a master thief. He and George daren’t breathe a word to Ma or she’d have cut their bollocks off right there and then. I tried to keep my nose clean but in the off season when there weren’t no sheep to shear and there was only so many logs to split to get an income, one falls into bad habits.

I only helped them on one raid and all I done was to help muster the animals once they was out of the farm and lead them into the ranges, I never stole any. I can rest easy knowing my conscience is at least that clear. Ned were a clever duffer but Jim were thick as two planks and got caught every time. He were a habitual liar our Jim, heart of gold but mouth full of lies. Ma would tell him “your forked tongue will get you into strife someday Jim Kelly” and it was too true. He was in Darlinghurst Gaol after getting caught red handed through a lot of that time. When he helped me on the claim he were a good worker but he were itchy footed. He thought the work boring and hated being surrounded by men so he left us to go and chase girls. He said their sweet scent were summoning him, I told him the only summons he was like to get is one to court if he didn’t behave. I guess I were right on that.

But those boots though. I loved those boots. Over time I pieced together a whole outfit – a whole outfit that were my own and there was no holes or frayed edges or mysterious stains on the trousers. I should point out that my main trousers were an old pair of Jim’s with the knees worn out and a big dark stain over the privates where the clod had spilled grease from his frying pan after a cooking mishap. You can imagine the comments I got about “the brat’s wet himself again” when I was on the site. I can’t ever say that those were happy days. I suppose being a Kelly you’re not allowed to have many happy days. Seems to be our lot in life.

Posted on September 13, 2018March 30, 2020 by AJFPhelan56 0

The Mystery of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s Demise – Part Two

The following is aimed at mature readers.

We continue our two part feature on the mysterious deaths of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart with an overview of the folklore and conspiracy theories about the pair surviving the fire as well as a summary of the evidence that disproves these popular legends. You can read part one here. The subject matter is not for the squeamish and will feature sensitive material as well as imagery some might find upsetting, but this is all in the pursuit of understanding what really happened at Glenrowan and bringing closure to this enduring speculation.

The Conspiracy Theories

Many people have peddled the barely credible stories of Dan and Steve surviving Glenrowan. Most of these people were old swaggies who traded their stories for food and shelter. The basic tropes of the stories are as follows:

1. The boys hid (usually in a cellar) where they avoided being burned.

2. The bodies from the fire were swaggies or some other strangers to the area. Random unidentified casualties in the fire appear in various incarnations of the story.

3. The survivors headed to Queensland and beyond (usually South Africa) but never returned to their families.

4. The claimant insists on the legitimacy of the claims despite deviation from recorded facts.

Here we will look at some of the more notable stories that have done the rounds over the past century.

The South Africa Legends

The earliest legend of the boys escaping stated that they subsequently fought in the Boer War in South Africa. Travelling under assumed names they fought in the war and upon the war ending returned to Australia. Variations of the story are plentiful. In one account the pair used Ned Kelly’s last stand as a diversion for their escape from the fire. They then took a coach to Melbourne, stowed away to India, joined the Imperial Indian Army and were engaged in service in South Africa. Later Dan returned to Australia where he was questioned by police, whereas Steve had drowned in Calcutta harbour around 1917. This version asserts the bodies found in the inn were tramps.

Another variation states that the pair escaped the inn dressed as troopers using uniforms they carried around to use as disguises. They fired back at the inn and avoided detection because no police knew what they looked like. In this version an old shepherd puts them up then they head to Sydney where they take a ship to Argentina, then later fought as soldiers in South Africa before returning to Australia. The Dan Kelly in this rendition was later seen arguing, drunk, in the street alluding to it all being a ruse.

It is claimed by one alleged witness, Ralph Merton, that they worked in a Kimberley hotel where he recognised them and called them out. They subsequently admitted their identities and produced an article about Ned Kelly’s execution as proof. This claimant asserted than Steve Hart was a master pugilist and could hold his own with the best of them. He stated that the pair escaped from Newcastle in a cattle boat headed for South Africa where they were determined to live out the rest of their days but eventually Dan died in South Africa and Steve Hart in California.

Ambrose Pratt even compiled the “memoirs” of one of these impostor Dans in a book simply titled Dan Kelly Outlaw in which Dan survives Glenrowan and sails to America. As can be expected it is riddled with inaccuracies and clear fabrications. These are just some of the variations on the tale reiterated by tramps and swaggies at the turn of the last century. It was estimated that there was no less than a dozen people claiming to be Dan Kelly doing the rounds that time, but none would gather as much attention as the enterprising “Dan” who took his story straight to the press.

“I am Dan Kelly”

Dan-Kelly-and-his-dog-at-Toombul-ca.-1930s.jpg — Dan Kelly and his dog at Toombul, ca. 1930s, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland Neg: 1196305 [Source]

The most infamous Dan Kelly impostor was James Ryan, a swaggie from Queensland who used his dubious credentials to gain popularity in rural communities. Before his unfortunate demise on the receiving end of a coal train, he approached the press in Queensland where his story was covered by The Truth in the 1930s and widely accepted as fact by a public not terribly aware of the facts of the story, eager for any kind of juicy controversy that could distract from the harsh existence they eked out during the Great Depression.

Ryan would boldly claim:

“I rode with Ned. For 53 years I have been a fugitive, with murder on my head. I am here now to prove that I didn’t die in the fire at Glenrowan, and to tell the whole truth before it is too late.”

A hell of a claim to live up to! Of course, it all starts to fall apart when he is pressed on the details. In the narrative, as dictated to The Truth, we are told:

“Ned Kelly had just come out of Berrima Gaol in 1877 after serving a sentence for horse stealing when he was told by Kate [Kelly] of Fitzpatrick’s wooing. As it is related, it is one of the most dramatic episodes in the entire story of robbery and bloodshed. Kate told Ned she had ‘a boy,’ and when Ned learned who it was, and showed anger, Kate dropped Fitzpatrick ‘like a hot spud.'”

Not a word of this is the truth and likely did the rounds of the pubs in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. The Truth make the wise move of pointing out Ryan’s inaccuracies:

“Where his details collide with fact the subject is usually one with which he has become acquainted through hearsay and report; for example, the reward which was placed on the heads of the gang after the sticking up of the Jerilderie bank in February, 1879. His version is that £1000 a head was posted, when actually the offer was £2000.”

James Ryan was no ordinary teller of tall tales. When confronted with the obvious falsehoods he was peddling he simply stated that the “truth” was lies perpetuated to try and defame he and his associates, such as this choice quote regarding the armour being made by a Benalla blackmith named “Jack Quin”:

“He made the armor in the bush outside the town, and he made it of best sheet steel, about three-sixteenths of an inch thick. It is nonsense for people to say the armor was made out of old mouldboards and casl-off pieces of metal. It may be true, as it’s said, that the name of Lemmone, the plough-maker, was found on Ned’s armor after his capture, but you can take it from me that the steel used was new stuff, strong and true.”

But, of course, the most important part of his story has to be the account of how he escaped the fire.

“The other three had their armor on under their coats. My first recollection of trouble was an alarm. We saw suddenly that the place was on fire. The others who were with us rushed to the doors— and found that they were locked. The police had locked them and set fire to the shanty. Somehow, I suppose,they intended to let the others out, but they wanted us badly.
Through the thick smoke that was filling the bar I saw Ned jump for a small window, carrying his rifle. Us three were nearly suffocated. Hart and Byrne were encumbered with their armor, which was their undoing. They couldn’t get out and were burnt alive. It all happened in a flash. As Ned got through the window I heard a crackle, of shots, and realised that the place was covered by many rifles. I had already been scorched by the flames, and I ran into a room off the bar, where the smoke seemed less dense. It turned out to be a bedroom.
A baby was lying on the bed, screaming with fright and pain. Somebody had left it there in the confusion. Flames were filling the room, and I thought the end had come.
The wall of the room suddenly began to bulge, and I saw a chance. One of the boards — It was only a single board place — began to go, and I pushed it outwards with the strength of a madman.
You get pretty excited when you look to have a good chance of being burnt alive. Already I was being caught by the flames, and there was no hope at all for the kid. The fire must have burnt around the board where it was secured to the post for it suddenly gave way as I pushed.
I stuck my head out for air. I thought I might be able to push other boards out and get through. I found instead that my head was caught, and that I couldn’t move it.
The fire gave me some hurry-up for the short time I was stuck there helpless. I writhed in agony as my legs and back and sides came within the range of the flames. Luckily for me, the police were in the front of the place; otherwise I’d have been potted off like a sick dog. I struggled and pushed for all I was worth, and when I was just about ready to give up another board gave way. That will give you an idea of how hot it was in the room!
I got into the open. Pains were shooting through me like the fires of hell. I had no chance of walking. But I could crawl. I crawled slowly down into a bit of a washout beyond the hotel.
Every moment was torture such as I never knew could be possible. I still had ideas of helping Ned. I could see him in the moonlight about 50 yards away from where I lay behind a clump of scrub. He was standing behind a big bloodwood log. I still wanted to help him, but I had no gun.
Ned called out to me to surrender. He could see me, but the police couldn’t. They were firing at him, and he was replying towards their rifle flashes. I couldn’t help him so I shut my mouth. If I had started calling back to him I’d have taken his attention off what he was doing.
They were firing at him at intervals. They started about midnight and kept it up until dawn. He was still wearing his armor, and now and then, when a bullet hit him on a protected part, he’d thump his chest and call them skunks, and cowards. By dawn there must have been a hundred weight of police lead at his feet — bullets that had flattened on his steel coat.
I saw them break Ned’s wrist with a bullet. The revolver dropped out of his hand. I heard him call them again a lot of curs, and then I heard no more I suppose I lost my senses. It was still day when I came to, and the place was quiet.
Nobody came to look for me. The ruins of the pub were still hot. I laid there in the scrub groaning with agony. The pain was almost unbearable. I was there for five days without water or food. It was a hard time. I was burned on the legs, the hips and the back. Of my clothes, all had been burnt off except the collar of my shirt and the waist band of my trousers.
They say Dan Kelly never escaped from the fire! During those five days there were times when I wished I hadn’t. On the fifth day an old cocky came in sight, and I called out to him. I hardly recognised my own voice, and it was so weak that I was surprised that he heard me croak.
He came to me. I told him who I was. He turned out to be a German, Schultz by name. He tended me and put me into his cart.
He was a fine old fellow. Knowing that he would never ‘crack a lay’, I took him right into my confidence. He got me back to Victoria and left me at a farmhouse just outside Benalla. I don’t remember the name of the farmer. If I did, I wouldn’t disclose it, because they did me the biggest turn any man could have asked for, and they may have descendants living around there now.”

How anyone even vaguely familiar with the truth could consider there to be any shred of credibility in this ludicrous tale is beyond comprehension. There is not the slightest chance that this man was who he said he was and a companion piece published by The Truth that attacks the arguments against the assertion that this elderly huckster was Dan Kelly makes for infuriating reading. The utter absurdity of this circus of lies leaves one feeling that even a short summary as this gives the delusion more air than it ever deserved, though there are still some out there who believe it to be true so it warrants inclusion.

The Facts

In order to adequately address the notion of a miraculous escape from the fire we must examine the likelihood of survival in a fire of such a magnitude by hiding in a cellar. The following images of the body of one of the outlaws, likely Dan Kelly, illustrates the gruesome sight that confronted the family and spectators:

As can be clearly seen, the extremities had burned off, the bones had fragmented and there were no identifying marks as a result. While this inability to identify the remains after the fire was seemingly enough to fuel the rumours, it actually demonstrates the number key reasons why such an escape would be impossible. In the event that a cellar did exist, and the boys hid inside it during the fire, the fire would have been too hot to allow survival. The Black Saturday fires demonstrated that hiding in a cellar or underground shelter may seem like a sound idea, and in a few cases it worked, but the deaths from smoke inhalation, suffocating and overheating prove that burning is not the only way an inferno can kill you. The fire in the inn was so hot it liquefied glass bottles putting the temperature of the fire around 1400 – 1600° Celsius (2522 – 2912° Fahrenheit, or 1673.15 – 1873.15° Kelvin). For days after the fire the ruins were still seen smouldering. Two people hiding in a cellar under the inn would have likely suffocated as the fire sucked all the air out to feed itself if the radiant heat hadn’t already killed them through hyperthermia, that is extreme overheating, which starts to become fatal when the body temperature exceeds 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit, 313.15° Kelvin) meaning that the fire in the Glenrowan Inn would have been more than 30x hotter than the temperature needed to cause death. However, if by a miracle the cellar was deep enough and provided enough shelter to protect from the radian heat, they would have suffered severe burns attempting to exit the ruins that consisted of molten glass, hot metal and embers, which were observed almost constantly over the next few days by rubberneckers and souvenir hunters.
The state of the bodies after the fire demonstrates that they had been partially cremated. The descriptions of the flesh bubbling and sizzling, and the fists clenching, and limbs contracting are perfectly in line with the effect of the first ten minutes of cremation in a modern crematorium. Temperatures in modern cremation chambers reach around 1000° Celsius (1832° Fahrenheit, 1273.15° Kelvin). The final product that we see in the photographs of the corpse on a sheet of bark are alike a cremated body would be at fifty minutes into the process (which would usually take a little over an hour) indicating that the back room at least was slightly cooler than the bar room would have been.

This photograph by Madeley demonstrates the huge cloud of smoke from the inn, which was burning hotter than a cremation chamber.

But let’s put aside the science for a moment and consider that maybe there was a cellar that they hid in, is it not bizarre that at a site surrounded by dozens of police and locals as well as the scores of onlookers that had come to gawp and fossick over the course of the siege and following days, that not a single person a) noticed a cellar and b) saw anyone emerge from the wreckage.

Beyond the grisly nature of the deaths, there is the inescapable tragedy of two young lives wasted, their potential snuffed out before it could ascend and two families with nothing to mourn over but the semi-cremated remains. Steve Hart in his youthful ignorance pursued adventure but ended up in Hell. Dan Kelly, ever the subordinate to his impulsive brother, seems to have been led away from a life that could have seen him step away from the difficulties of life as a Kelly and make something of himself, but as instead doomed to barely reach his majority.

Conclusion:

The core of this examination is to put an end to the rumours of an impossible escape from the Glenrowan Inn so that the memory of these young men, little more than boys, can be respected, despite their criminality, and the truth be seen for the tragic waste of life it was. Moreover, it is to impart the importance of examining stories with a critical eye or else risk being taken advantage of and made to be a fool. To perpetuate the idea of an escape is to peddle poppycock that has no value beyond the believer’s own satisfaction that the police didn’t win against the gang, which is obviously what the death or capture of the outlaws would have meant. The notion that two of the gang escaped is no more than an extended middle finger to the authorities. The issue was famously raised to Ellen Kelly in an interview and her reaction is telling:

“Don’t I know that he’s dead? Haven’t I proof of it all these weary years? Do you think I don’t know? I tell you Dan’s dead and gone, many years ago. […] Dan is dead. No one knows it better than I do. Yes; I have the proof. Look! If Dan Kelly was alive all these years, wouldn’t he have come to me? Would he let me want and go hungry, as I have done? Would he have seen me ending my life in this misery and done nothing to help me? Wouldn’t he have told Jim?”

To those family members still alive while the rumours were gaining traction it was a big slap in the face. Not only had they had to endure the loss of loved ones, but now they had strangers claiming that they were not dead or, even more tastelessly, claiming to be them. Regardless of your stance on their criminality, it would be cruel and inhumane to posit that they and their families were not entitled to be treated with some basic humanity. While Superintendent Sadleir was reprimanded for turning the bodies over to the family at the conclusion of the siege, it was this single act of humanity that stopped further escalation at Glenrowan. Tensions were high that day and a refusal to allow the bodies to be claimed for burial could have tipped the scales. If the man who was leading, at least in part, the hunt for these young men who were wanted dead or alive can understand the power of such an act of goodwill, despite what they were known to have done, surely it is acceptable for us as outsiders to respect the families as well, without condoning acts of criminality.

The secret burials in unmarked graves, construed by some as proof of a cover up, was a practicality. These families wanted closure, privacy and to protect the bodies from further indignity. It must be remembered that Dr. Hutchinson had procured a foot from the inn, supposedly Dan Kelly’s, and kept it in a private collection in South Africa (along with a lock of Ned Kelly’s hair). If a respected medical man could not be expected not to stoop to such ghoulish behaviour, what hope was there that the general public would respect the family’s desire to mourn in peace?

The coffins containing the remains of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart sit in the back of the undertaker’s cart in front of McDonnell’s Tavern, Glenrowan.

In the end, the perpetuation of the survival stories is symptomatic of a bigger issue – the triumph of fiction over fact. When a romantic idea takes a grip on the imagination, reality is often the first casualty. A story such as those proposing the survival of Dan and Steve only gain traction through ignorance. By examining the facts and laying the falsehoods to rest we can observe the story for what it really was, a horrific tragedy, rather than merely an exciting yarn to tell your drinking buddies at the pub. If we allow ourselves to be swayed by fiction on matters of history, how well does that bode for our critical thinking about current events? Conspiracy theories peddled by people such as 9/11 and Sandy Hook “truthers” have the ability to cause more harm than good. Incinerating the legend of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s survival is a step in the right direction – towards the truth.

Selected Sources:

“When the KELLY GANG RODE OUT” Truth. 13 August 1933: 1.

“Kelly gang’s Last Stand at Glenrowan” Truth. 27 August 1933: 13.
“RECOGNISED DAN KELLY IN SOUTH AFRICA” The Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 – 1954) 5 December 1930: 7.

“Dan Kelly and Steve Hart in South Africa.” Queanbeyan Age (NSW : 1867 – 1904) 23 July 1902: 2.

“DAN” KELLY. (1919, February 14). Canowindra Star and Eugowra News (NSW : 1903 – 1907; 1910 – 1911; 1914 – 1922), p. 4.

“THE KELLY GANG” The Charleville Times (Brisbane, Qld. : 1896 – 1954)1 October 1948: 6.

“DAN KELLY SOLVES THE MYSTERY.” The Corowa Free Press (NSW : 1875 – 1954) 19 September 1902: 3.

“THE KELLY GANG FROM WITHIN” The Sun (Sydney) 27 August 1911: 9

Posted on August 16, 2018March 30, 2020 by AJFPhelan56 3

The Mystery of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s Demise – Part One

This is a feature aimed at mature readers.

Subject of much speculation is the nature of the death of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart at Glenrowan. Conspiracy theories aside, it’s incredibly difficult to piece together what happened due to the lack of witnesses and the fire that decimated the inn destroying all evidence. Still, there are clues to perhaps piece together what may have happened. In the following two part feature, part one will look at the known events surrounding the deaths and discuss three key theories as to how the boys died, while part two will provide an overview of the folklore and conspiracy theories about the pair surviving the fire as well as an overview of the evidence that disproves these popular legends. The subject matter is not for the squeamish and will feature sensitive material as well as imagery some might find upsetting, but this is all in the pursuit of understanding what really happened at Glenrowan and bringing closure to this enduring mystery.

As It Was Reported

“When the house was seen to be fully on fire, Father Gibney, who had previously started for it but had been stopped by the police, walked up to the front door and entered it. By this time the patience of the besiegers was exhausted, and they all, regardless of shelter, rushed to the building. Father Gibney, at much personal risk from the flames, hurried into the room to the left, and there saw two bodies lying side by side on their backs. He touched them, and found life was extinct in each. These were the bodies of Dan Kelly and Hart. The other gentleman expressed the opinion, based on their position, that they must have killed one another. Whether they killed one another, or whether, both or one committed suicide, or whether both being mortally wounded by the besiegers, they determined to die side by side, will never be known. The priest had barely time to feel their bodies before the fire forced him to make a speedy exit from the room. The flames had then made such rapid progress on the western side of the house that the few people who followed close on the rev. gentleman’s heels dare not attempt to rescue the two bodies. It may be here stated that after the house had been burned down their two bodies were removed from the embers. They presented a horrid spectacle, nothing but the trunk and skull being left, and these almost burnt to a cinder. Their armour was found near them about the remains. There was apparently nothing to lead to positive identification, but the discovery of the armour near them and other circumstances rendered it impossible to be doubted that they were those of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart. The latter was a much smaller man than the younger Kelly, and their difference in size was noticeable in their remains.”

– “ROUT OF THE KELLY GANG: GENERAL NARRATIVE.”

South Australian Register. 29 June 1880: 6.

“THE FIRE SPREAD RAPIDLY.
Still no sign of life appeared in the building, and when the house was seen to be fairly on fire Father Gibbey, who had previously started for it, but had been stopped by the police, walked up to the front door and entered it. By this time the patience of the besiegers was exhausted, and they, all regardless of shelter, rushed to the building. Father Gibbey, at much personal risk from the flames, hurried into a room at the left, and there saw two bodies lying side by side on their backs. He touched them, and found life was extinct in each. There were the bodies of Dan Kelly and Hart ; and the reverend gentleman expressed the opinion, based on their position, that
THEY MUST HAVE KILLED ONE ANOTHER.
Whether they killed one another, or whether both or one committed suicide, or whether both, being mortally wounded by the besiegers, determined to die side by side, will never be known. The priest had barely time to feel their bodies before the fire forced him to make a speedy exit from the room, and the flames had then made such rapid progress on the western side of the house that the few people who followed close to the rev. gentleman’s heels dared not attempt to rescue tho two bodies. It may be stated that after the house had been burned down these two bodies were removed from the embers. They presented
A HORRIBLE SPECTACLE,
Nothing but the trunk and skull being left, and those almost burnt to a cinder. Their armour was found near them. About the remains there was apparently nothing to lead to positive identification, but the discovery of the armour near them, and other circumstances, render it impossible to be doubted that they were those of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart. The latter was a much smaller man than the younger Kelly, and this difference in size was noticeable in the remains.”

– “A DISTRESSING INCIDENT.”
Evening News (Sydney). 29 June 1880: 3.

“[Father Gibney] then came to the back room where he saw two bodies lying stretched at full length on their backs, with bags formed into pillows under their heads. He took hold of each of them and satisfied himself that they were dead. The ceiling and sidewalls were at this time alight. Father Gibney was bewildered when he saw the two beardless youths who kept at bay for so many hours, a large number of armed men. The heroic priest passed out by the back door and when he was seen to be safe by the anxious crowd, they cheered long and loudly. From the position Hart and Dan Kelly were lying in, it is clear that they were not shot by the police.”

– “THE GLENROWAN TRAGEDY.”
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate.
17 July 1880: 8.

Dan_kelly_armour — Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s armour bearing scorch marks from the fire that destroyed the Glenrowan Inn, with Ned Kelly’s shoulder plate, skull cap and carbine.

The Final Hours

We pick up the story on the morning of Monday, June 28 1880. The Kelly Gang have been besieged by police in the Glenrowan Inn since 2:00am. Around 5:00am Joe Byrne was shot dead in the bar room by a police bullet. Dave Mortimer would recall:

“…shortly after 5 o’clock in the morning Byrne was shot. He had just walked into the bar and was drinking a glass of whiskey when a ball struck him in the groin. I heard him fall, and saw the blood spurting from him. I think he died very soon. This seemed to dishearten Dan Kelly and Hart. They had been calling for Ned all night, and they renewed their calls for him. […] Dan and Hart went into the inside room, and I heard one say to the other, ‘What will we do?’ I did not hear the reply; but Reardon said he thought they intended to commit suicide.”

At around 7:15am Ned Kelly was captured 100m away from the inn and taken into custody. A considerable number of the gang’s prisoners remain trapped in the inn by almost unending and indiscriminate police fire, despite numerous attempts to evacuate them. Since Joe’s death Dan Kelly and Steve Hart have been despondent, Ned’s capture has entrenched this feeling of hopelessness.

Now, at 2:00pm the prisoners are released. They are forced to lay belly-down in the grass where they are searched by police. Some of the prisoners are identified as Kelly sympathisers and arrested.

At 2:30pm, from the north window of the hotel near the chimney a shot rings out. Constable Dwyer and Constable Arthur unload their guns in the direction of the shot. They are close enough to hear a sound from inside – a heavy thud and the rattle of armour. “There is one of them inside shot,” Dwyer would boast.
At 3:00pm Dwyer and Constable Dixon hear another thud in the same room and presume the other is shot.

At 4:00pm Johnston sets fire to the inn under a cover of heavy fire. Upon the fire being lit, it spreads very quickly inside. Father Gibney, who had been agitating for some time to gain access to the premises in an effort to encourage Dan and Steve to surrender, rushes the inn and enters the bar room with his hands above his head and his crucifix held aloft, calling out to anyone who may hear.

“In the name of God, men, will you let me hear your confession?”

The canvas lining of the ceiling is aflame and Gibney finds Joe Byrne’s corpse on the floor in a pool of blood, he is quite dead. He rushes into the bedroom and sees Dan Kelly and Steve Hart laying next to a greyhound with their heads on what appears to be bunched bags. They are dead as well. He does not recognise them as he is not acquainted with the gang’s appearances, though he would describe them as “beardless youths”.
“Come up, men, these men are all dead,” Gibney hollers to the police who have rushed in after him.

A floorplan of the Glenrowan Inn demonstrating where the bodies were found.

Constables find Joe Byrne’s body being licked by the flames. The corpse is dragged outside before it can be consumed in the fire. Constable James Dwyer then moves through the building to the bedrooms. Dwyer would later recall during the Royal Commission:

“The four of us ran up, and Constable Armstrong and I took Joe Byrne, who was at the far end in the passage. I took Joe Byrne by the shoulders, and Armstrong by the feet, and lifted him out. At the door Mr. Sadleir, Mr. O’Connor, and others met us, and the priest, in the crowd, said, “Go back, constables, the other two men are on the beds.” We dropped Byrne and went back to the passage. The blaze of fire was coming and we put up our hands. Steve Hart had his feet up on the bed. He was burning down to here—[pointing to his waist]—and his feet were on the bed, and his hands in that position—[indicating the same]—; and his face all burnt and his blood was passing and frizzling like a steak in a pan. Looking again to the left of us, the north end near the chimney, Dan Kelly was lying in this position—[indicating the same]. The left knee was crippled and his hand outstretched. His helmet was off; he had the armour on—the breast-plate; and on his neck and thighs and hand there was blood. I knew him to be Dan Kelly from the low forehead, and the description of them, and that the other must be Steve Hart. […] I knew the man I saw in that position, with the black hair and sallow complexion, was Dan Kelly. […] [They were] about six yards [from each other], the length of the dwelling house, one at one end and the other at the other end. Dan Kelly was at the chimney side, with his feet on the bed, opposite the window. […] The blood I saw along the arms and neck and thighs led me to believe they were shot by the police, and that the heavy thuds we heard was their being shot. Armstrong said, “Come out,” and I said “Yes, we will have to leave them to their fate,” and we had only just left the place where we were standing when the ceiling fell down.”

Theory One: Suicide Pact (death by bullet)

The most popular theory is that when faced with capture by police the boys shot each other to avoid capture. This was an idea that quickly gained traction around the turn of the century and immortalised in the majority of films about the gang. It is certainly a plausible theory insofar as the behaviour of the boys after the death of Joe and the capture of Ned indicated a sense of hopelessness and despondency that may have interacted with a defiance to allow the forces of law and order to do with them as they wished. Some have even gone so far as to suggest a suicide pact was in place so that should they find themselves in a situation without hope of escape from the police they would die before being captured. This romantic idea is certainly not without precedent in bushranging history, with Mickey Burke of the Hall gang doing just this after being mortally wounded in a gun battle. He shot himself in the head multiple times without effect before slowly dying of his wounds. It was a popular idea that the boys would have grown up with when bushranger stories were told to them, but what evidence is there to support the idea?

Alas, there is nothing concrete to base the idea of a suicide pact upon so we must go back to the initial assertion that it was an act of desperation. It must be noted that the descriptions of the bodies make no mention of head wounds or body wounds that would correlate with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Moreover, no firearms were seen within reach of the bodies, which would indicate that they did not shoot themselves or each other.

Carrington_Fire_2 — This illustration by Thomas Carrington depicts the bodies of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart in the burning inn, based on Carrington’s eyewitness perspective.

Another key problem with this theory is the positioning of the bodies. When Father Gibney located the bodies he described them as looking serene, their heads resting on sacking or bags that had been made into makeshift pillows. The bodies were also witnessed by Constable Dwyer and Constable Armstrong as well as sketched by Thomas Carrington as the room they were in was consumed by flames. None of the descriptions or the illustration indicate death by shooting each other or themselves based on the position of the bodies or the paraphernalia surrounding them in the burning room.

Theory Two: Suicide Pact (death by poison)

The position of the bodies and the makeshift pillows implies a slow death that was somewhat prepared for. This would make sense in the event of voluntary poisoning. It is known that Joe Byrne carried poison on his person as a brown paper packet of poison was found in his jacket pocket. In probability this was laudanum, which was a pain killer made from opium and morphine that had been declared poisonous in the 1860s after overdoses became common. Joe likely used laudanum to replace the opium he smoked. Laudanum was highly addictive and as a strong opiate probably brought about a better high than opium smoke would. It was relatively cheap and easy to procure as well, so it’s little wonder that they would have had this in their possession. The “paper packet” is unusual though as laudanum was usually sold in bottles as a tincture, though it was also probably sold in packets unmixed.

Another potential poison would be carbolic acid, which was used as a disinfectant and when watered down was applied to mouth ulcers. This was common in many households and no doubt a woman with many health problems (and boisterous young boys) as Ann Jones did would have some on standby. The effect of ingesting carbolic acid is horrendous, burning the throat and causing the victim to vomit blood and fall into a coma. If either of the boys had been inclined to poison themselves, no doubt this was the most effective way and reasonably easy to find.

The evidence supporting this theory is strong but does not account for the descriptions of the bodies heard hitting the floor after police fired into the inn, nor does it account for the blood on Dan’s neck as described by Dwyer who, apart from Father Gibney, was the closest person to the bodies before the fire took hold.

Theory Three: Two Deaths

The “Two Deaths” theory is essentially that Dan and Steve died separately from each other rather than a murder-suicide or a suicide pact. In this theory Dan Kelly is felled by a police bullet and Steve Hart is left to find his own way out of his situation. This theory is one that has not been presented with due consideration to date, yet based on the descriptions of the events and the bodies is perhaps the most likely.

Police reported that the last shot was fired from a window in the back room of the inn at 1.00pm and was shortly followed by a burst of police fire and a heavy thud from inside the back room. The sound was described as being accompanied by the clatter of armour, which would indicate that, as with Joe Byrne, a police bullet may have struck one of the outlaws in a spot unprotected by the armour. When Constable Dwyer saw the bodies in the back room he described Dan Kelly as wearing his breastplate still, which matches Carrington’s illustration, although some witnesses stated that the armour was found next to the bodies. This is a good indicator, if Dwyer’s description is accurate, that it was Dan Kelly who was shot while still wearing his body armour. Dwyer also described Dan as having blood all over his neck, which is feasibly where he could have been shot if his helmet was off and obviously has a high chance of resulting in a fatal wound between the spine and arteries and the various other pipes and nerves etc. in that small region that can cause death when damaged. These point to the fate of the youngest Kelly brother being that he copped a shot in the neck while his helmet was off, which killed him. Steve may have tried to get Dan comfortable by putting sacking under his head as he died.

So, what became of Steve Hart? Judging by his positioning and the lack of any visible trauma of note it might be fair to say that he committed suicide with poison. Whether he used laudanum or carbolic acid is impossible to say definitively. Potentially a laudanum overdose may have allowed Steve to go peacefully as the opiate high put him to sleep, but without knowing how much he would have ingested we can’t guarantee that he even had access to enough to kill himself. More likely a belly full of carbolic acid would have been fast acting and potent enough to induce a coma. In this case the reality is even more horrendous as it opens up the possibility that he was still alive, though unconscious, when the fire consumed him. In some descriptions Steve’s feet were on a bed, which may indicate that after consuming a fatal dose of poison he fell off the bed, which may account for the second thud Dwyer described.

It seems unlikely that Steve and Dan could be confused for each other, especially as Dwyer was well acquainted with Dan Kelly’s appearance. In the Carrington illustration we see a body encased in body armour (resembling Carrington’s depiction of Joe Byrne’s body in armour – it should be here noted that Dan’s suit was the only suit other than Joe’s to incorporate side plates to join the breastplate and backplate) and a body in shirt sleeves and a vest with a sash poking out from underneath that closely resembles the outfit worn by Steve in the only known studio portrait of him. This helps us to narrow down the identities of the bodies and identify who was likely to have been the one responsible for the thud heard by police outside the inn.

Conclusion

Based on the available evidence it would appear that theory three has the most credibility, based on available evidence. Of course, we can never know for sure as the bodies were effectively cremated (which will be examined in greater detail in part two) thus rendering the bodies unidentifiable and any traces of poison or bullet wounds long gone. Even if the bodies were exhumed there is no way to determine a cause of death from the fragments of bone left in the coffins so we can only judge based on eyewitness accounts and available imagery, as outlined above. As it stands, witnesses reported that Kate Kelly was only able to identify her brother’s remains due to his distinctive teeth and no doubt this is as clear an indication as any that had the police undertaken an inquest as intended the results would have been inconclusive. Had the fire continued even twenty minutes longer, no doubt the bodies would have been reduced to ashes.

In trying to ascertain what had happened, the Royal Commission asked Superintendent Sadleir for his interpretation of the events. He reported:

“It took some time before the remains of the others could be seen, and still longer before we could get them out. It was, perhaps, close upon half-past four when we got the charred remains of Hart and Dan Kelly out on the platform. […] Their armour was lying immediately beside them. I think they died in armour. It is only my impression, and from reflection on the subject since. The armour being beside them was simply that the thongs that held them were burned, and the armour fell off. […] It depends upon how they lay; they would lie on the side, and it might fall off. They were altogether in a lump; the armour and the two bodies were as close as this—[describing by spreading his hands]. I saw the bodies as soon as they were to be observed by anybody. The smoke rose again for a moment I was with Senior-Constable Johnson, and he said, “There they are,” and we could see them, and my impression was that the armour was on them then, but I found that was a mistake—the armour was lying close to them. […] The bodies were brought down to the platform. After the bodies were removed on to the Glenrowan platform, I offered to Isaiah Wright, if the friends wished it, to give them over the bodies of Steve Hart and Dan Kelly. This seemed to please them very much, as an unexpected favor.”

The aftermath of the siege saw Superintendent Sadleir turn the bodies over to the families, Maggie Skillion taking Dan, Dick Hart taking Steve. Tom Lloyd acted as undertaker and two handsome coffins were promptly purchased for the boys who were interred in Greta cemetery in unmarked graves during a secret funeral. Oral history also suggests that the coffins buried in Greta were filled with stones and that Dan was buried on the Kelly farm on 11 Mile Creek and Steve was buried on the Hart farm on 3 Mile Creek. Regardless, the secrecy of the burial location was of extreme importance to the families as the police were endeavoring to get the bodies back and moreover it has become a sad reality that the graves would be vandalised or molested in some way by thoughtless individuals with a chip on their shoulder or a bit too much alcohol in their system as demonstrated by the various items stolen or damaged in locations life Glenrowan.

In recent years there has been controversy when it was discovered that someone had been walking around the purported site of the graves and plunging stakes into the earth in the hope of finding the coffins. No doubt this enterprising researcher had some ideas about how to prove that Dan and Steve had escaped the fire and the bodies were not really buried in Greta at all. Regardless of intention it was ghoulish and disrespectful and further highlights the continued silence on the location of the graves.

Of course, no discussion of the fate of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart is complete without a discussion of the various survival stories and conspiracy theories. To find out about these you will need to stay tuned for part two where we will examine the stories and the evidence that will disprove them.

Read part two here: https://aguidetoaustralianbushranging.com/2018/08/16/the-mystery-of-dan-kellys-and-steve-harts-demise-part-two/

Selected Sources:

“THE KELLY GANG.” Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 – 1907) 10 July 1880: 6.

“GENERAL NARRATIVE.” South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 – 1900) 29 June 1880: 6.

“A DISTRESSING INCIDENT.” Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 – 1931) 29 June 1880: 3.

“THE GLENROWAN TRAGEDY.” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW : 1876 – 1954) 17 July 1880: 8.

Police Commission : Minutes of evidence taken before Royal Commission on the Police Force of Victoria, together with appendices. NK9833. Melbourne : John Ferres, Government Printer, 1881

Posted on August 15, 2018March 30, 2020 by AJFPhelan56 6

A Guide to Australian Bushranging

Discover the intriguing world of Australia's outlaws, rogues and highwaymen

A Guide to Australian Bushranging

Tag: The Kelly Gang

Dan Kelly: An Overview

Ned Kelly (2003): an analysis

Like the Bushrangers of Old: The Kelly Gang in Jerilderie

Spotlight: Further Outrages by the Kelly Gang

Steve Hart: An Overview

The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly: Retrospective Review by Gabriel Bergmoser

Tony Richardson’s ‘Ned Kelly’ – in defence of a maligned film

1. Cast

2. Production design

3. Music

4. Cinematography

5. Screenplay

6. Historical accuracy

7. The Little Things

Conclusions

“Dan Kelly’s Account of Chesney Vale”

The Mystery of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s Demise – Part Two

The following is aimed at mature readers.

The Conspiracy Theories

The South Africa Legends

“I am Dan Kelly”

The Facts

Conclusion:

The Mystery of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s Demise – Part One

This is a feature aimed at mature readers.

As It Was Reported

The Final Hours

Theory One: Suicide Pact (death by bullet)

Theory Two: Suicide Pact (death by poison)

Theory Three: Two Deaths

Conclusion