Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly (c. January 1855 - 11 November 1880) was Australian bushranger and outlaw who robbed banks and killed three policemen. He and his gang members are noted for wearing suits of bulletproof amour during a shootout with the police. In 1880, after trying and failing to wreck a police train and kill those onboard, he was captured and hanged at the Melbourne Gaol. One of Australia's best known historical figures, Kelly is championed by some as a folk hero and reviled by others as a bloodthirsty murderer.

Let the hand of the law strike me down if it will, but I ask that my story might be heard and considered.

Quotes

Babington Letter (1870)

Everyone looks on me like a black snake.

Ned Kelly Letter to Sgt. James Babington, 28 July 1870

• Everyone looks on me like a black snake.

Cameron Letter (1878)

Quotes from "The Cameron Letter" at Ironoutlaw.com

• [Fitzpatrick] seems a strapping and genteel looking young man, and more fit to be a starcher to laundress than a trooper, but to a keen observer he has the wrong appearance to have anything like a clear conscience or a manly heart. The deceit is plain lit to be seen in the white cabbage-hearted looking face.

• If I get justice I will cry a go. For I need no lead or powder to revenge my cause, and if words be louder I will appose your laws.

• Had I robbed, plundered, ravished and murdered everything I met my character could not be painted blacker than it as present, thank God my conscience is as clear as the snow in Peru.

• I am really astonished to see Members of the Legislative Assembly led astray by such articles as the Police, for while an outlaw reigns their pocket swells, tis double pay and country girls.

• If the public do not see justice done I will seek revenge for the name and character which has been given to me and my relations, while God gives me strength to pull a trigger.

O'Loghlen Letter (1879)

The Age (1 November 1930), p. 6

• Circumstances have forced us to become what we are—outcasts and outlaws—and bad as we are, we are not so bad as we are supposed to be.

• You are committing a manifest injustice in imprisoning so many innocent people, just because they are supposed to be friendly to us. There is not the least foundation for the charge of aiding and abetting us against any of them, and you may know this is correct, or we would not be obtaining our food as usual, since they have been arrested.

• We will not leave [Victoria] until we have made the country ring with the name of Kelly and taken terrible revenge for the injustice and oppression we have been subjected to. Beware, for we are now desperate men.

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

The Jerilderie Letter (online at Wikisource); though intended for publication, this remained unpublished until 1930. - Images, transcript and audio of John Hanlon's transcript at the National Museum of Australia - Images and transcript at the State Library of Victoria

I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victoria Police and inhabitants but also the whole British army ...

• I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present past and future.

• Mrs McCormack struck my horse in the flank with a bullock's skin it jumped forward and my fist came in collision with McCormack's nose and caused him to loose his equillibrium and fall postrate.

• I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly I straddled him and rooted both spurs onto his thighs he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs ... I used to trip him and let him take a mouth ful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead bullock or a horse.

• The ignorant unicorns even threaten to shoot myself But as soon as I am dead they will be heels up in the muroo.

• It will pay Government to give those people who are suffering innocence, justice and liberty. if not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victoria Police and inhabitants but also the whole British army and no doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump.

• The Police got great credit and praise in the papers for arresting the mother of 12 children one an infant on her breast and those two quiet hard working innocent men who would not know the difference a revolver and a saucepan handle and kept them six months awaiting trial and then convicted them on the evidence of the meanest article that ever the sun shone on it.

• There never was such a thing as Justice in the English laws but any amount of injustice to be had.

• Fitzpatrick shall be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than St. Patrick was to the snakes and toads of Ireland.

• I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain I would manure the Eleven Mile with their bloated carcasses and yet remember there is not one drop of murderous blood in my Veins.

• I could not suffer them blowing me to pieces in my own native land and they knew Fitzpatrick wronged us and why not make it public and convict him but no they would rather riddle poor unfortunate creoles.

• This cannot be called wilful murder for I was compelled to shoot them, or lie down and let them shoot me it would not be wilful murder if they packed our remains in, shattered into a mass of animated gore to Mansfield, they would have got great praise and credit as well as promotion but I am reconed a horrid brute because I had not been cowardly enough to lie down for them under such trying circumstances and insults to my people.

• I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also, who have no alternative but to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords, known as 'officers of justice' or 'Victorian Police' who some call honest gentlemen but I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue.

• A Policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him, in the first place he is a rogue in his heart but too cowardly to follow it up without having the force to disguise it. next he is traitor to his country ancestors and religion as they were all catholics before the Saxons and Cranmore yoke held sway since then they were perse cuted massacreed thrown into martrydom and tortured beyond the ideas of the present generation.

• The Queen must surely be proud of such heroic men as the Police and Irish soldiers as It takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in Melbourne to take one poor little half starved larrakin to a watch house. I have seen as many as eleven, big & ugly enough to lift Mount Macedon out of a crab hole more like the species of a baboon or Guerilla than a man.

• The public could not do any more than take firearms and assisting the police as they have done, but by the light that shines pegged on an ant-bed with their bellies opened their fat taken out rendered and poured down their throat boiling hot will be cool to what pleasure I will give some of them and any person aiding or harbouring or assisting the Police ...

• Any person aiding or harbouring or assisting the police in any way whatever or employing any person whom they know to be a detective, or cad or those who would be so depraved as to take blood money, will be outlawed and declared unfit to be allowed human burial. Their property either consumed or confiscated and them and theirs and all belonging to them exterminated of the face of the earth, the enemy I cannot catch myself. I shall give a payable reward.

• It is foolhardiness to disobey an outlaw as it means a speedy dispatch to kingdom come.

• I would advise all those who joined the Stock Protection to withdraw their money and give it and as much more to the widows and orphans and poor of Greta district where I have spent and will again spend many happy days fearless free and bold as it only aids the police to procure false witnesses to lag innocent men I would advise them to subscribe a sum and give it to the poor of their district.

• It will always pay a rich man to be liberal with the poor and make as little enemies as he can as he shall find if the poor is on his side he shall loose nothing by it.

• I give fair warning to all those who has reason to fear me to sell out and give ten pounds out of every hundred towards the widow and orphan fund and do not attempt to reside in Victoria but as short a time as possible after reading this notice, neglect this and abide by the consequences, which shall be worse than the rust in the wheat of Victoria or the druth of a dry season to the grasshoppers in New South Wales I do not wish to give the order full force without giving timely warning, but I am a Widow's Son, outlawed and my orders must be obeyed.

Statements to the press (1880)

Quotes from "Interview with Ned Kelly", The Age, 9 August 1880.

• I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justifies another, but the public in judging a case like mine should remember that the darkest life may have a bright side, and that after the worst has been said against a man, he may, if he is heard, tell a story in his own rough way that will perhaps lead them to intimate the harshness of their thoughts against him, and find as many excuses for his as he would plead for himself.

• Let the hand of the law strike me down if it will, but I ask that my story be heard and considered.

• People who live in large towns have no idea of the tyrannical conduct of the police in country places far removed from court; they have no idea of the harsh and overbearing manner in which they execute their duty, or how they neglect their duty and abuse their powers.

• I felt more keenly than I can express the unjust treatment meted out to my mother, who was arrested with a baby at her breast and convicted of a crime of which she was innocent.

• If my life teaches the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may not exasperate to madness men they persecute and illtreat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.

Sentencing (1880)

Quotes from the "The Sentencing of Edward Kelley 30th October 1880" at Ironoutlaw.com

My mind is as easy as the mind of any man in this world, as I am prepared to show before God and man.

• My mind is as easy as the mind of any man in this world, as I am prepared to show before God and man.

• Two years ago—even if my own life was at stake—and I am confident, if I thought a man would shoot me—I would give him a chance of keeping his life, and would part with my own; but if I knew that through him innocent persons' lives were at stake, I certainly would have to shoot him.

• ... a day will come, at a bigger Court than this, when we shall see which is right and which is wrong.

• It appeared [based on the evidence given] that I deliberately took up arms, of my own accord, and induced the other three to join me, for the purpose of doing nothing but shooting down the police.

• That charge [stealing over 200 horses] has never been proved against me, and it is held in English law that a man is innocent until proven guilty.

• I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there where I go.
  • To Judge Redmond Barry when told "May the Lord have mercy on your soul" after being sentenced to death by hanging.

Other quotes

Such is life.

• I'm a bushranger.
  • Ah Fook, a Chinese hawker, attributed these words to Kelly after the pair had an altercation in 1869. They are the first publicly recorded words said to have been uttered by Kelly.
  • Molony, John Neylon (2001). Ned Kelly. Melbourne University Publishing, ISBN 9780522850130. p. 37.
• I am the son of Red Kelly and a better man never stood in two shoes.
  • Thomas McIntyre, A True Narrative of the Kelly Gang, unpublished memoir (1900), p. 46
• The country belongs to us; we can go anywhere we like.
  • The Argus (12 December 1878), p. 5
• They are all damned fools to bother their heads about Parliament at all, for this is our country.
  • On the rural people of Victoria, said during a speech to his hostages at Glenrowan.
• I wanted to see the thing end.
  • On why he chose to rejoin the gunfight at Glenrowan rather than escape on his horse in the night.
  • The Argus (29 June 1880), p. 5
• My mates are all gone; it is a sad affair, but of course it can't be helped now.
  • After the destruction of the Kelly gang.
  • The Age (29 June 1880), p. 3
• If they were in my position they would not smile much.
  • Quoted by a policeman who, during Kelly's trial, alerted him to a group of females who were smiling at him from afar.
  • The Herald (11 August 1880)
• Although I have been bushranging I have always believed that when I die I have a God to meet.
  • Coles, Life and Christian Experience (20 October 1880), p. 137
• Oh, what a pretty garden.
  • Passing through a small garden on the way to the gallows for his execution.
• Such is life.
  • Kelly's last words, recorded by two journalists present at his execution. According to two of the other four journalists at the gallows, Kelly's final words were, "Ah well, I suppose it has to come to this", or "Ah well, it's come to this at last". However, according to the goal warden, the man closest to Kelly at the time, his final words were mumbled and could not be heard.

Quotes about Kelly

• The juvenile highwayman and companion of the notorious Power, on being brought before the Benalla bench, ... seemed quite indifferent to the danger of his position. While casting his eyes occasionally amongst the crowd, he smiled complacently and assumed a jaunty air. ... While confined in the lockup, he sang "like a bird," and appeared proud of his position. The misguided youth evidently considers himself a character to be admired.
  • The Herald (11 May 1870), p. 2

• I told [Kelly] that [Sergeant Kennedy and Constable Scanlon] were both countrymen and co-religionists of his own. ... This statement ... was not strictly true, for Kelly was Australian born, but his father came from Tipperary and his mother from Armagh, and I thought he might be possessed of some of that patriotic-religious feeling which is such a bond of sympathy amongst the Irish people. My opinion is that he possessed none of this feeling. On the question of religion I believe he was apathetic, and like a great many young bushmen he prided himself more on his Australian birth than he did upon his extraction from any particular race. A favourite expression of his was: "I will let them see what one native [native-born Australian] can do."
  • Constable Thomas McIntyre, A True Narrative of the Kelly Gang by T. N McIntyre Sole Survivor of the Police Party Murderously Attacked by those Bushrangers in the Wombat Forest on the 26th October 1878, p. 23

• Ned Kelly was descended on both sides from bad stock—his father was an ex-convict and present cattle-stealer. When Ned was born at Beveridge, near Kilmore, Dean O'Hea, of Coburg, sent word that the child must be baptised. [Kelly's father] swore a great oath that no clergyman should come near his place. Dean O'Hea, when he heard this, resolved that the child should be baptised. So he rode one Sunday up the Sydney-road to Beveridge, stopped at Kelly's house, and said, "You have got a child to baptise; bring him out to me immediately." The rite was performed. When, years afterwards, Dean O'Hea told the matured Ned Kelly, then awaiting execution, of the incident, the bushranger "cried like a child."
  • Henry A. White, Crime and criminals, or, Reminiscences of the Penal Department in Victoria (1890)

• In California this man ... would have been dragged out of gaol and lynched. I don't admire the mob for superseding the law, but the spirit in which it is done there contrasts strangely with the exaltation here of Kelly as a hero.
  • The Gippland Times (3 November 1880)

• The resurgence of the Ned Kelly legend ... stresses the enigma of why one of the most decent, law-abiding peoples in the world should make a national hero of one of the most cold-blooded, egotistical, and utterly self-centred criminals who ever decorated the end of a rope in an Australian jail. His frankness in turpitude, his utter vengefulness, his cruelty, his cold-blooded lack of regret at the wiping out of the lives of decent men can only repel even an unfastidious mind. Yet his spirit has been extolled as the spirit of Australia, his animal lawlessness has been held up as a renewal of the spirit of Eureka.
  • Malcolm Henry Ellis, "The Legend of Ned Kelly: A Vicious Arch Bully with Dingo Eyes" (1966), The Bulletin

• He had a rare type of eyes—'alexandrite' eyes that sometimes glowed a startling crimson when he became excited.
  • Sir Charles Ryan, doctor who attended to Kelly after his capture. Ian Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life (2010)

• Ned's story falls on that universal fault line that makes someone a rebel or a freedom fighter to one group and an outlaw or a terrorist to another. He is regularly attacked as a thief and murderer. Much less regularly is it recalled that a government inquiry the year after the Kelly outbreak demoted or suspended most of the police involved. But what makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it's that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night.
  • Martin Flanagan, "Rebels who knew the end was coming, but stood up anyway" (30 March 2013), The Age

External links

• "Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter" in the La Trobe Journal No. 66 (Spring 2000)
• Images, transcript and audio of John Hanlon's transcript of the Jerilderie Letter at the National Museum of Australia
• Images and transcript of the Jerilderie Letter at the State Library of Victoria