Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting into strife with the law. His mother Ellen’s family, the Quinns, were another lawbreaking bunch. It would only have been surprising if he hadn’t ever broken the law.
    The Kellys were Irish and Catholic. To them, anyone English was an oppressor and Irish police were traitors. This is important, since in some ways, the Kelly gang formed because of an Irish policeman.
    We’re not certain exactly when Ned was born, but it was in about 1855. When his father died in 1866, his family moved to north-eastern Victoria. They had a farm, but it didn’t earn them much and they probably stole to survive.
    In his early teens, Ned worked with a bushranger called Harry Power. In 1870, the fifteen-year-old Ned was arrested for being Power’s ‘apprentice’. Charges were dropped because they couldn’t be sure he was the right person, but later that year, he got six months in prison for assault and obscene language.
    Ned and his brothers, Dan and James, often got into trouble, but Ned stopped for a while.
    Remember that Irish policeman? His name was Fitzpatrick. He liked Ned’s sister, Kate. The Kellys were never going to roll out the red carpet for him, but when he turned up to arrest Dan Kelly one day in 1878, he had a fight on his hands. Dan wasn’t even there. Ellen, Kate and two others were. Fitzpatrick was lightly wounded. Fitzpatrick claimed that he had been attacked by Ned, Dan, Ellen, a neighbour called Williamson and a Kelly relative, William Skillion. Skillion, Williamson and Ellen were all arrested. Ellen was sentenced to three years in prison for attempted murder. Her judge was Redmond Barry, who ended up sentencing her son to death.
    In October, policemen McIntyre, Kennedy, Scanlan and Lonigan went after Ned, Dan and their friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, who had gone into hiding. In the gun fight that followed, Lonigan was shot dead. Kennedy was wounded so badly that Ned finished him off – out of mercy, he later said. He covered him with a cloak and left.
    They robbed banks in the small Victorian towns of Euroa and Jerilderie. In Jerilderie, they tied up the police and made the rest of the town’s people go to the Royal Mail Hotel, where everyone enjoyed free drinks. There, Ned dictated what has become famous as the Jerilderie Letter. It was the length of a short book. He said he and his family and friends had been badly treated by sons of Irish bailiffs of English landlords.

    Actually, the Kelly gang didn’t do much bushranging. Their whole time as outlaws lasted about eighteen months. There was more murder, when Joe Byrne killed a former friend called Aaron Sherritt, whom he considered a traitor.
    Now the police got serious. A special train was arranged to bring many policemen to Beechworth. Ned knew about this plan. He had plenty of supporters. Some were going to come and fight beside him against the police. The gang ripped up the tracks to derail the train outside the town of Glenrowan. Wearing new armour made from plough parts, they herded the people of Glenrowan into the local hotel – and waited. There was a party. Ned made the fatal mistake of letting the local schoolmaster, Thomas Curnow, take his family home.
    Curnow went to warn the police to stop the train.
    The police besieged the hotel. Ned had gone to warn his supporters. By the time he returned, Joe, Steve and Dan were dead. Their homemade armour hadn’t helped much. Left alone, Ned now fought 34 police and received 28 wounds. Somehow, he survived to be tried for multiple murders in late October, 1880.
    His trial was certainly unfair. Evidence that would have helped him was not used. Modern reenactments, done according to modern law, have found him ‘not guilty’.
    But this was 1880. Redmond Barry condemned him to hang. First, he asked Ned if he had anything to say. Ned said that they would soon meet in a higher court.
    On 11 November, he died with some dignity. His last words were ‘Such is life’. He was twenty-five.
    Interestingly,