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some time, the life of Riley. By 1921, however, he was almost destitute and served a two-month sentence when he was unable to pay a fine. Bradshaw returned to his wife, but was found guilty of stealing from registered mail bags and went back to prison. After his final release, he made a living lecturing about his exploits and selling the books he had written—
Highway Robbery Under Arms
, and
The True History of the Australian Bushrangers
—for sixpence each in the Sydney Domain, and at various hotels and race meetings. In 1930 he successfully sued the
Daily Guardian
for saying he had been lashed while in prison—though many people would have thought that could only add to his reputation.
    When he died, in January 1937, the
Catholic Freeman’s Journal
was enchanted by the circumstances:
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    The facts of human destiny never cease to provide instances of the ultimate triumph of early Catholic training, however far the individual may stray during his lifetime. That Jack Bradshaw, self-styled‘Last of the Bushrangers’, should, after his desperate and dangerous career, end his days in the seclusion of Mount St. Joseph, Randwick, cared for by the gentle Little Sisters of the Poor, is an overwhelming proof of this assertion. At the time of his death , Bradshaw was in his 91st year.
    In 1880 he robbed the bank at Quirindi with an accomplice named Riley, and served a term of imprisonment for this offence. He was on friendly terms with the Kelly gang and knew Ben Hall and Thunderbolt.
    Yet the events of his reckless, lawless days must have seemed very far from him in the months before his death. The Little Sisters speak of him as having possessed an extremely gentle disposition and stated that he was ‘ever very grateful for anything that was done for him’. He received Holy Communion frequently during his sojourn at Mount St. Joseph, and died happily on January 12, having made his peace with his Maker, and received the Last Sacraments from Rev. Father F. Kenny,
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    Bradshaw was outlived by James Kenniff from New South Wales. James and his brother Patrick were cattle duffers and horse stealers. They resettled in Queensland, where they raced horses and lived by bush work and theft. Shortly after Easter 1902, the bodies of Constable George Doyle of the Upper Warrego station and Albert Christian Dahlke, the manager of Carnavon station, who had set out with a tracker to arrest them, were found in Lethbridge’s Pocket.
    On the morning of Sunday 30 March 1902, a police party, including Doyle and Dahlke, had surprised the Kenniffs, who were camping at Lethbridge’s Pocket, and took James into custody, but Patrick managed to escape. Sam Johnson was sent to collect the police packhorses, so they could start in pursuit of him. However, on his return, there was no sign of Doyle and Dahlke, and the Kenniffs chased him as he fled for help. A manhunt began and the brothers were arrested, south of Mitchell, in 23 June that year.
    At the murder trial in Brisbane, both were convicted and sentenced to death. Patrick was hanged on 12 January 1903. His grave in South Brisbane Cemetery is the only one of those hanged at Boggo Road, which is marked with an individual plaque. There was some doubt over James’s guilt and, following an unsuccessful appeal, he was reprieved and released after serving twelve years. Suffering from cancer, he died in October 1940 .
    It is particularly difficult to place women bushrangers in the pantheon. There seem to be only three, and each of them is surrounded by myth and mystery. The earliest would be ‘Black’ Mary Cockerill, who rode with Michael Howe in Tasmania until he was shot and killed in 1818, but not before he had shot her, accidentally or not, and she had given what information about him she could to the authorities. Quite what part, if any, she took in his predations is not clear.
    The second was Mary Ann Bugg, or Yellilong, who, in 1860, met ticket-of-leave