Edward Kelly (December 1854 – 11 November 1880) (nicknamed "Ned") was an Australian bushranger, gang leader and police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a homemade suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
Kelly was born and raised in rural Victoria, the third of eight children to Irish parents. His father, a transported convict, died in 1866, leaving Kelly, then aged 12, as the eldest male of the household. The Kellys were a poor selector family who saw themselves as downtrodden by the squattocracy and as victims of persecution by the Victoria Police.
While a teenager, Kelly was arrested for associating with bushranger Harry Power and served two prison terms for a variety of offences, the longest stretch being from 1871 to 1874. He later joined the "Greta Mob", a group of bush larrikins known for stock theft. A violent confrontation with a policeman occurred at the Kelly family's home in 1878, and Kelly was indicted for his attempted murder. Fleeing to the bush, Kelly vowed to avenge his mother, who was imprisoned for her role in the incident. After he, his brother Dan, and associates Joe Byrne and Steve Hart shot dead three policemen, the government of Victoria proclaimed them outlaws.
Kelly and his gang, with the help of a network of sympathisers, evaded the police for two years. The gang's crime spree included raids on Euroa and Jerilderie, and the killing of Aaron Sherritt, a sympathiser turned police informer. In a manifesto letter, Kelly—denouncing the police, the Victorian government and the British Empire—set down his own account of the events leading up to his outlawry. Demanding justice for his family and the rural poor, he threatened dire consequences for his enemies. In 1880, the gang tried to derail and ambush a police train as a prelude to attacking Benalla, the base of police operations in the region. The police, tipped off, confronted them at Glenrowan, where the gang held dozens of hostages in a hotel. In the ensuing 12-hour siege and gunfight, the outlaws wore armour fashioned from plough mouldboards. Kelly, the only gang member to survive, was severely wounded by police fire and captured. Despite thousands of supporters rallying and petitioning for his reprieve, Kelly was tried for murder, convicted and hanged at the Melbourne Gaol.
Historian Geoffrey Serle called Kelly and his gang "the last expression of the lawless frontier in what was becoming a highly organised and educated society, the last protest of the mighty bush now tethered with iron rails to Melbourne and the world". In the century after his death, Kelly became a cultural icon, inspiring numerous depictions in popular culture, and is the subject of more biographies than any other Australian. Kelly remains a divisive figure in Australia, regarded variously as a Robin Hood-like folk hero and symbol of national identity, or as a murderous villain and terrorist. The journalist Martin Flanagan wrote: "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."
Family background and early life
Kelly's father, John Kelly (nicknamed "Red"), was born in 1820 at Clonbrogan near Moyglass, County Tipperary, Ireland. Aged 21, he was found guilty of stealing two pigs and sentenced to seven years' transportation to Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania), arriving in Hobart Town aboard the convict ship Prince Regent in January 1842. Granted his certificate of freedom a year early, Red moved to the Port Phillip District (modern-day Victoria) in 1848 and was employed as a bush carpenter by farmer James Quinn at Wallan Wallan.
On 18 November 1850, at St Francis Church, Melbourne, Red married Ellen Quinn, his employer's 18-year-old daughter, who was born in County Antrim, Ireland and migrated as a child with her parents to the Port Phillip District. In the wake of the 1851 Victorian gold rush, the couple turned to mining and earned enough money to buy a small freehold in Beveridge, north of Melbourne.
Edward ("Ned") Kelly was their third child. His exact birth date is unknown, but was probably in December 1854. Kelly was possibly baptised by Augustinian priest Charles O'Hea, who also administered his last rites before his execution. His parents had seven other children: Mary Jane (born 1851, died 6 months later), Annie (1853–1872), Margaret (1857–1896), James ("Jim", 1859–1946), Daniel ("Dan", 1861–1880), Catherine ("Kate", 1863–1898) and Grace (1865–1940).
The Kellys struggled on inferior farmland at Beveridge and Red began drinking heavily. In 1864 the family moved to Avenel, near Seymour, where Kelly obtained basic schooling and became familiar with the bush. According to oral tradition, he risked his life at Avenel by saving another boy from drowning in a creek, for which the boy's family gifted him a green sash. It is said this was the same sash worn by Kelly during his last stand in 1880.
In 1865, Red was convicted of receiving a stolen hide and, unable to pay the £25 fine, sentenced to six months' hard labour. In December 1866, Red was fined for being drunk and disorderly. Badly affected by alcoholism, he died later that month at Avenel, two days after Christmas. Ned signed his death certificate.
The following year, the Kellys moved to Greta in north-eastern Victoria, near the Quinns and their relatives by marriage, the Lloyds. Several members were implicated in livestock theft, drawing police attention to the clan. In 1868, Kelly's uncle Jim Kelly was convicted of arson after setting fire to the rented premises where the Kellys and some of the Lloyds were staying. Jim was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to fifteen years of hard labour. The Kellys soon leased a small farm of 88 acres (360,000 m2) at Eleven Mile Creek near Greta. The selection proved ill-suited for farming, and Ellen supplemented her income by offering accommodation to travellers and selling sly-grog.
Rise to notoriety
Bushranging with Harry Power
I'm a bushranger.
— The earliest known words attributed to Kelly in public record, as reported by Chinese hawker Ah Fook, 1869.
In 1869, 14-year-old Kelly met Irish-born Harry Power (alias of Henry Johnson), a transported convict who turned to bushranging in north-eastern Victoria after escaping Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. The Kellys were Power sympathisers, and by May 1869 Ned had become his bushranging protégé. That month, they attempted to steal horses from the Mansfield property of squatter John Rowe as part of a plan to rob the Woods Point–Mansfield gold escort. They abandoned the idea after Rowe shot at them, and Kelly temporarily broke off his association with Power.
Kelly's first brush with the law occurred in October 1869. A Chinese hawker named Ah Fook said that as he passed the Kelly family home, Ned brandished a long stick, declared himself a bushranger and robbed him of 10 shillings. Kelly, arrested and charged with highway robbery, claimed in court that Fook had abused him and his sister Annie in a dispute over the hawker's request for a drink of water. Family witnesses backed Ned and the charge was dismissed.
Kelly and Power reconciled in March 1870 and, over the next month, committed a series of armed robberies. By the end of April, the press had named Kelly as Power's young accomplice, and a few days later he was captured by police and confined to HM Prison Beechworth. Kelly fronted court on three robbery charges, with the victims in each case failing to identify him. On the third charge, Superintendents Nicolas and Hare insisted Kelly be tried, citing his resemblance to the suspect. After a month in custody, Kelly was released due to insufficient evidence. The Kellys allegedly intimidated witnesses into withholding testimony. Another factor in the lack of identification may have been that Power's accomplice was described as a "half-caste", but the police believed this to be the result of Kelly going unwashed.
Power often camped at Glenmore Station on the King River, owned by Kelly's maternal grandfather, James Quinn. In June 1870, while resting in a mountainside gunyah (bark shelter) that overlooked the property, Power was captured and arrested by police. Word soon spread that Kelly had informed on him. Kelly denied the rumour, and in the only surviving letter known to bear his handwriting, he pleads with Sergeant James Babington of Kyneton for help, saying that "everyone looks on me like a black snake". The informant turned out to be Kelly's uncle, Jack Lloyd, who received £500 for his assistance. However, Kelly had also given information which led to Power's capture, possibly in exchange for having the charges against him dropped. Power always maintained that Kelly betrayed him.
Reporting on Power's criminal career, the Benalla Ensign wrote:
The effect of his example has already been to draw one young fellow into the open vortex of crime, and unless his career is speedily cut short, young Kelly will blossom into a declared enemy of society.
Horse theft, assault and imprisonment
In October 1870, a hawker, Jeremiah McCormack, accused a friend of the Kellys, Ben Gould, of stealing his horse. In response, Gould sent an indecent note and a parcel of calves' testicles to McCormack's wife, which Kelly helped deliver. When McCormack later confronted Kelly over his role, Kelly punched him and was arrested for both the note and the assault, receiving three months' hard labour for each charge.
Kelly was released from Beechworth Gaol in March 1871, five weeks early, and returned to Greta. Shortly after, he found a horse reported missing by horse-breaker Isaiah "Wild" Wright and took it to Wangaratta. When Kelly rode back into Greta four days later, Constable Edward Hall tried to arrest him on suspicion the horse was stolen. Kelly resisted and overpowered Hall, who, with bystanders' help, eventually arrested and pistol-whipped him, leaving his head "a mass of raw and bleeding flesh". Initially charged with horse stealing, the charge was downgraded to "feloniously receiving a horse", as Wright had borrowed it without the owner's permission. Kelly and Wright received prison sentences of three years and eighteen months respectively.
Kelly served his sentence at Beechworth Gaol and Pentridge Prison, then aboard the prison hulk Sacramento, off Williamstown. He was freed six months early for good behaviour, and returned to Greta. According to one possibly apocryphal story, Kelly, to settle the score with Wright over the horse, fought and beat him in a bare-knuckle boxing match. A photograph of Kelly in a boxing pose is commonly linked to the match. Regardless of the story's veracity, Wright became a known Kelly sympathiser.
Over the next few years, Kelly worked at sawmills and spent periods in New South Wales (NSW) leading what he called the life of a "rambling gambler". During this time, his mother married an American, George King. In early 1877, Ned joined King in an organised horse theft operation. Ned later claimed that the group stole 280 horses. Its membership overlapped with that of the Greta Mob, a bush larrikin gang known for their distinctive "flash" attire. Apart from Ned, the gang included his brother Dan, cousins Jack and Tom Lloyd, and Joe Byrne, Steve Hart and Aaron Sherritt.
On 18 September 1877, Kelly was arrested in Benalla for riding over a footpath while drunk. The following day he brawled with four constables who were escorting him to court, including a friend of the Kellys, Alexander Fitzpatrick. Another constable involved, Thomas Lonigan, allegedly grabbed Kelly's testicles during the altercation; legend has it that Kelly vowed, "Well, Lonigan, I never shot a man yet; but if I ever do, so help me God, you will be the first!" Kelly was fined and released.
In August 1877, Kelly and King sold six horses they had stolen from pastoralist James Whitty to William Baumgarten, a horse dealer in Barnawartha. On 10 November, Baumgarten was arrested for selling the horses. Warrants for Ned and Dan's arrest for the theft were sworn in March and April 1878. King disappeared around this time.
Fitzpatrick incident
Fitzpatrick's version of events
On 11 April 1878, Constable Strachan of Greta heard that Ned was at a shearing shed in NSW and left to apprehend him. Four days later, Constable Fitzpatrick arrived at Greta for relief duty and called at the Kellys' home to arrest Dan for horse theft. Finding Dan absent, Fitzpatrick stayed and conversed with Ellen Kelly.
When Dan and his brother-in-law Bill Skillion arrived later that evening, Fitzpatrick informed Dan that he was under arrest. Dan asked to be allowed to have dinner first. The constable consented and stood guard over his prisoner.
Minutes later, Ned rushed in and shot at Fitzpatrick with a revolver, missing him. Ellen then hit Fitzpatrick over the head with a fire shovel. A struggle ensued and Ned fired again, wounding Fitzpatrick above his left wrist. Skillion and Williamson came in, brandishing revolvers, and Dan disarmed Fitzpatrick.
Ned apologised to Fitzpatrick, saying that he mistook him for another constable. Fitzpatrick fainted and when he regained consciousness Ned compelled him to extract the bullet from his own arm with a knife; Ellen dressed the wound. Ned devised a cover story and promised to reward Fitzpatrick if he adhered to it. Fitzpatrick was allowed to leave. About 1.5 km away he noticed two horsemen in pursuit, so he spurred his horse into a gallop to escape. He reached a hotel where his wound was re-bandaged, then rode to Benalla to report the incident.
Kelly family version of events
Kelly and members of his family gave conflicting accounts of the Fitzpatrick incident. Kelly initially claimed he was away from Greta at the time, and that if Fitzpatrick suffered any wounds, they were probably self-inflicted. In 1879, Kelly's sister Kate stated that he shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had made a sexual advance to her. After Kelly was captured in 1880, he called it "a foolish story", and three policemen gave sworn evidence that he admitted he had shot Fitzpatrick.
In 1881, Brickey Williamson, who was seeking remission for his sentence in relation to the incident, stated that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had drawn his revolver. Many years later, Kelly's brother Jim and cousin Tom Lloyd claimed that Fitzpatrick was drunk when he arrived at the house, and while seated, pulled Kate onto his knee, provoking Dan to throw him to the floor. In the ensuing struggle, Fitzpatrick drew his revolver, Ned appeared, and with Dan seized and disarmed the constable, who later claimed a wrist injury from a door lock was a gunshot wound.
Kelly scholars Jones and Dawson conclude that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick but it was his friend Joe Byrne who was with him, not Skillion.