Kelly Was Their Captain

DESCRIPTION: The singer tells of the "famous outlaw band that roamed this country round. Ned Kelly was their captain...." Ordered arrested by the governor of Victoria, Kelly took to the bush. After long eluding the police, he was betrayed by Aaron Sherritt and taken
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1968 (Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia)
KEYWORDS: outlaw Australia betrayal
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
c. 1855 - Birth of Ned Kelly
1880 - Execution of Kelly. His last words are reported to have been "Such is life."
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia, pp. 203-204, "Kelly Was Their Captain" (1 text)
Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads, pp. 46-47, "Kelly Was Their Captain" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Bill Wannan, _The Australians: Yarns, ballads and legends of the Australian tradition_, 1954 (page references are to the 1988 Penguin edition), pp. 20-21, "Kelly Was Their Captain" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Kelly Gang" (subject)
cf. "Ye Sons of Australia" (subject)
cf. "Kelly Song (Farewell Dan and Edward Kelly)" (subject)
cf. "My Name is Edward Kelly" (subject)
cf. "Ballad of the Kelly Gang" (subject)
cf. "Stringybark Creek" (subject)
cf. "The Kelly Gang Were Strong" (subject)
cf. "The Hat Ned Kelly Wore" (subject)
NOTES [4007 words]: Edward "Ned" Kelly and his gang are perhaps the most famous of all Australian bushrangers. Their history is not as pretty as the songs would imply. Clark, pp. 175-177, gives this account of their famous fight at Stringybark Creek and its aftermath:
"[F]our policemen, Kennedy, Lonigan, Scanlon, and McIntyre, set out from Mansfield in north-eastern Victoria to capture Ned Kelly, Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart, for horse and cattle stealing. On 26 October 1878, when the police confronted the bushrangers on Stringybark Creek, Ned Kelly shot and killed Kennedy, Lonigan, and Scanlon. McIntyre escaped to Mansfield to give the alarm....
"From the day of the outrage a legend began to grow among... [those] who, like Ned, had tried but failed to make a living by lawful means in that hard and bitter country. It was said that Ned, like Robin Hood, was battling only to deprive the rich of their wealth and give it to the poor. So the man who killed three constables was apotheosized into a folk hero....
"After Ned and his gang robbed the National Bank of Benalla in December 1878, and the Bank of New South Wales at Jerlilderie... he boasted that his men had never harmed a woman or robbed a poor man. But by one of those ironies in human affairs it was one of the little men whom he had befriended who brought him down. In June 1880 the gang occupied the hotel at Glenrowan....
"Ned... had conceived the mad plan of destroying a train bringing the police and black-trackers to hunt for him. The gang tore up a stretch of track shortly before the train on which the police were travelling was due. While Ned and the other members of the gang were preparing a ghastly wake for their victims, a schoolteacher slipped into the hotel and stopped the train in time. The police surrounded the hotel and set fire to it. Steve Hart, Dan Kelly, and Joe Byrne were burnt to death, but Ned, mad as ever, put on his homemade armour and shot it out with the police till a bullet brought him down. He was brought to Melbourne, tried, and hanged on 11 November 1880, when, according to legend, his last words were 'Such is life.'" (According to Davey/Seal, p. 243, however, if he said any such thing, the actual words were "I suppose it had to come to this," but when Joseph Furphy wrote a book "Such Is Life," it firmly fixed those words in tradition).
Kelly was not, of course, the last Australian outlaw, but he really did prove to be the "last of the bushrangers" (Boxall, p. 345); indeed, Boxall suggests on p. 353 that this is a key reason for his fame: by his time, bushranging was rare.
Innes, p. 4, suggests that he had a "deep consciousness of an Irish history of oppression," and that he was more conscious, if not of politics, at least of his place in history -- a sort of deliberate showman, perhaps even modeling himself on Robert Emmet (Innes, p. 32). His Jerilderie Letter certainly sounded Irish nationalist themes, as well as advocating generosity to the poor (Innes, p. 26).
He was just 25 years old when he was executed. According to Nunn, p. 143, his father John Kelly (born 1820) was a transportee who arrived in Australia in 1842; his mother Ellen Quinn had come to Australia with her parents in 1841. Ned was born at Wallan in some time between 1854 and 1856 (Davey/Seal, p. 168, and Innes, p. 15, say 1854/1855, but the record sheet printed on p. 20 of Innes says 1856); Jim Kelly followed in 1856 (?), and Ned's future companion in crime Dan Kelly was born in 1861 (Boxall, p. 354).
The family moved around a lot, and intermarried with some rather shady characters (Nunn, pp. 145-146). Father John Kelly had been set free in 1848, but in 1865, was sentenced to hard labor for stealing cattle, and died the next year (Innes, p. 9), possibly in part as a result of the time in prison, leaving Ellen Quinn Kelly with seven children and Ned, just twelve years old, the oldest boy (Innes, p. 16). The family moved to Greta in 1868 (the family residence there being mentioned in "Farewell to Greta," which refers to the place, not to a woman). It was not until 1892 that Ellen Kelly was finally able to purchase the land, which shows how severe the family's tribulations were in their first years on the property.
Kelly probably had some education (Innes, p. 15, says he earned fourth grade certification in reading and writing, but failed grammar and geography; on. p. 45, Innes prints a letter supposedly written in his own hand), but in prison, he did not sign his name, using a mark and having it witnessed (Nunn, p. 146). (I will speculate that he had gotten out of the habit of writing; his longest message, the Jerilderie Letter, was copied down by Joe Byrne, probably because Byrne wrote a beautiful hand shown on p. 54 of Innes -- though the punctuation and orthography are "far from conventional"; Innes, p. 51.)
At first, he was not an obvious criminal; by the time he was ten, he had saved another boy from drowning (Innes, p. 15). But he apparently took to crime at a very early age, coming to the attention of the courts while still in his early teens, or perhaps even younger (Nunn, pp. 148-150, although Manifold, p. 68, suggests that the attention was unfair).
Supposedly he "apprenticed" to bushranger Harry Power (real name: Henry Johnston, and possibly the subject of "Bushranger Jack Power") in 1868/1869 (Innes, pp. 9, 17). Power dumped him soon after, saying he was a coward (Innes, p. 17) -- but the worst part of Power's teaching had taken hold. Kelly was first brought up on charges of assault in 1869, but acquitted because the accusers weren't regarded as credible (I can't help but think that prejudice may have been involved -- the man Kelly attacked was Chinese). In 1870, he was was charged with being an accomplice of Power but released when the witnesses could not identify him (Boxall, p. 354; Innes, p. 10), but he received his first sentence of hard labor later in that year (Innes, pp. 10, 17). In 1871, convicted of stealing a horse, he was sentenced to a three year term (Innes, pp. 17-18). During this time, his mother Ellen took up with a 23-year-old named George King, by whom she promptly became pregnant. They were married early in 1874 (Innes, p. 18).
Apparently Ned made a brief attempt at reform at this time (Nunn, p. 152), engaging in honest work for three years and using boxing as an outlet for his temper (Innes, p. 18).
In 1877, Kelly was taken by police for being drunk and assaulting (or at least insulting) an officer (Nunn, p. 153). He was offered the choice of a three pound fine or three months in prison (Nunn, p. 154). But he promptly escaped.
Nunn, p. 154, quotes a police report which says that the "wholesale system of cattle duffing [changing brands] was carried out extensively. This appears to have culminated in the disturbance at Greta when Constable [Alexander] Fitzpatrick went out to serve a warrant on Dan Kelly for horse stealing." Another version has him courting Ned's sister Kate (Innes, p. 21) -- although Manifold, p. 69, says he was "mauling" her. Clearly there are no objective reports of events. What happened next isn't entirely clear (one version, on p. 356 of Boxall, has the Kellys feeding Fitzpatrick dinner and then assaulting him; Innes, p. 21, says Fitzpatrick decided to arrest Dan Kelly and was assaulted by Ned; Manifold, p. 69, says they shot Fitzpatrick then bandaged him up and fed him dinner), but Fitzpatrick ended up with a bullet wound which he blamed on Ned Kelly -- although he also said that the Kellys treated his injury (Nunn, pp. 154-155; Boxall, p. 357). The Kelly story was that Ned wasn't even there at the time, and didn't find out until he returned to Greta (Innes, p. 21).
Davey/Seal, p. 112, say that Fitzpatrick "allegedly attempted to molest Ned Kelly's sisters in the family home. Ned Kelly (probably) shot Fitzpatrick in the wrist, an act that precipitated the gaoling of Kelly's mother Ellen." Innes, p. 21, says that Ned and Dan Kelly offered to give themselves up in return for releasing their mother, but nothing came of that. (According to Innes, p. 10, Ellen Kelly -- who had a three month old baby -- was sentenced to three years' hard labor.) Several Kelly associates ended up on trial as being accessories to attempted murder, although Fitzpatrick's was the only testimony against them (and Innes, p. 21, says he was known to be a woman chaser who drank a lot). Ned and Dan Kelly apparently then went to the bush (Nunn, p. 158; Innes, p. 10).
Their gang, like many gangs of bushrangers, was very young. Nunn, p. 161, says that at the time when Ned Kelly's age was 23 and Dan Kelly was 17, the third member of the gang, Steve Hart, "a local lad from Wangaratta," was not quite 18 and already a convicted horse thief, and Joe Byrne was a fatherless young man of 21.
The fight at Stringybark followed. According to Nunn, p. 161, the police were not wearing uniforms, although it is not clear how this affected the outcome. Innes, p. 22, says that McIntyre was captured and told to persuade Kennedy and Scanlon to give in, but the Kellys shot the latter two anyway, after which McIntyre snatched Kelly's horse and fled. Nunn, p. 168, notes that the dead policemen's pockets were cleaned out, presumably by the Kelly Gang, after they died.
Ned Kelly claimed all the shooting was in self-defense (Innes, p. 23; apparently he frequently tried to justify his crimes -- see in particular the Jerilderie letter below; there was also a letter, the "Cameron Letter," to MP David Cameron; Innes, p. 24, with the full text transcribed on pp. 46-50 of Innes). But what mattered is that they had killed three policemen. Rewards went up for the men dead or alive. The pursuit that followed reportedly cost some 50,000 pounds (Nunn, p. 171).
The gang lived mostly in the bush, eventually moving to New South Wales, but there are reports of visits to family and a safe house at Greta (Nunn, p. 171). These visits presumably are at the heart of the song "Farewell to Greta." At first, they mostly lived off the locals, but after a couple of years, they robbed a small bank at Euroa, making off with about 2200 pounds (Innes, p. 25; Nunn, p. 175, says 2400 pounds; Boxall, p. 362, makes it 1942 pounds plus loose gold -- and tells of how they tricked the banker into letting them into the bank after hours). Innes, p. 26, suggests that the fact that the Kellys did not hurt anyone during the robbery was one reason why the public supported them.
This caused the price on each robber's head to be raised to £1000 (Nunn, p. 176 -- an interesting economic decision, when you think about it, since it was more than the value of what they had taken). It also resulted in a new commander being placed in charge of the hunt, and new laws and procedures put in place to capture criminals. A number of Kelly relatives and friends were placed in custody as a result (Nunn, pp. 176-178). Later, when New South Wales joined Victoria in placing a price on their heads, the reward rose to £2000 per man (Innes, p. 29).
In February 1879 they raided the bank at Jerilderie, capturing the two local constables and using their uniforms as a disguise (Nunn, p. 179; Boxall, pp. 365-366; Davey/Seal, p. 168). Having cut the telegraph wires, the outlaws occupied the town for three days (Boxall, p. 369), but robbed only the bank. This brought them more than 2000 pounds in cash (Boxall, p. 368). Kelly also tried to get a proclamation printed; this 56-page, 8000 word self-justification came to be known as the "Jerilderie letter." According to Boxall, p. 370, "It was a long, rambling statement, in some parts quite incoherent, and much of it false" (but Boxhall would not have known the whole letter, since it was not published in full, from the original, until the manuscript was donated to a library in 2000; Innes, p. 27. Earlier publications were partial and based on a police copy). There is dispute about whether Kelly composed it, or Joe Byrne, or both (Innes, p. 27), but there seems little doubt that the 56-page document represents Kelly's (somewhat incoherent) views fairly accurately.
For eighteen months, the police never came close to them. (Innes, p. 42, cites an opinion that this was because they were native-born Australians, who understood living in the bush -- and that this was a major reason why the locals did not turn them in: the Australian population supported members of, in effect, their tribe against the British outsiders.) But neither could the gang stop the authorities from harassing their families. So, in early 1880, "Ned Kelly began to plan for a more effective and dramatic challenge to the authorities" (Innes, p. 29).
Apparently the gang at this time decided to adopt armor to stop bullets (Nunn, p. 183). "In March 1880, farmers began to report the theft of their ploughshares," which became the basis for the armor (Innes, pp. 29-30). Nunn, p. 142, has a picture of Kelly's armor. It would be pretty useless for a knight -- it looks like three pieces of tin plate wrapped into a cylinder and riveted. It would certainly restrict the wearer's movements, and I doubt it could stop a round from a serious weapon. Boxall, p. 380, says that Kelly "looked like a tall, stout man with a nail can over his head" while wearing it; he adds on p. 381 that it weighed 97 pounds. There are dents in it which would seem to imply that it kept several pistol balls from penetrating, and one newspaper report claimed that, when bullets hit it, he laughed and tapped his breast to show his scorn for their weapons (Innes, p. 40). However, it also slowed the men down, made it harder for them to shoot -- and made it harder to escape if a gang member were shot in the arm or leg (Innes, p. 33).
As the war with the police escalated, the Kelly Gang became more violent. Nunn, p. 185, suggests that the strain of maintaining himself in the bush began to tell on Kelly after this. On June 26, 1880, the gang came out of the bush and used hostages as they attacked and executed an alleged informer Aaron She(r)ritt (Nunn, p. 185; Innes, p. 30), the one-time brother-in-law of Joe Byrne (Boxall, pp. 373-374).
The motivation behind his final plan cannot be known, but it was both complex and fragile (Nunn, p. 186). The general idea was to lure in a police gang by executing Sheritt and tearing up a railroad track (Innes, p. 30, thinks the gang executed Sherritt to draw the police to the area and the goal of damaging the track was to derail the police train, but others think that the rail-breaking was also supposed to draw official attention). Breaking the rail proved harder than anticipated; the gang was unable to break up the track themselves, and had to take platelayers prisoner and demand their aid (Nunn, p. 186). This meant that their schedule was badly off, plus many people knew about their acts (Nunn, p. 188).
They were forced to keep a great many hostages at the Glenrowan Inn. The goal of the operation is believed to have been specifically to fight the police (Manifold, p. 72 -- although Ned would later claim he wanted to capture the police and exchange prisoners; Innes, p. 30). But the police superintendent Hare had been warned -- a policeman had hidden for many hours, then escaped to report what was going on; later, one of the hostages managed to convince the gang to let him go (Thomas Curnow said he wanted to tell his wife, who was sick, that he was all right; Innes, p. 60; Manifold, p. 73, claims he wanted to put his family to bed). He was able to warn the police of the damaged track (Innes, p. 32). Hare had his men surrounding the Glenrowan hotel as the Kelly Gang armed itself (Nunn, p. 193). Hare himself was at the forefront of the attack and took a wound in the right hand which forced him out of the battle (Innes, p. 33, claims he was hit by Ned Kelly's very first shot)..
The battle was long, and there were civilian as well as police and gang casualties, including the son of the innkeeper (Boxall, p. 380); the police shot into the building before figuring out where the Kellys were (Innes, p. 33). Those who still idolize the Kelly Gang might want to take note of their behavior at this time: Even once they were surrounded, so that keeping prisoners did nothing to keep their position secret, they still kept the locals as hostages rather than let them go free.
The details of what happened next are not entirely clear. Nunn, p. 197 and Boxall, p. 381 seem to think Ned Kelly was outside when the attack came, while the other three gang members were guarding their prisoners; Innes, p. 33, thinks that all four outlaws, realizing they were about to be attacked, turned off all the lights and came outside. But only Kelly went far from the inn. Early in the morning, Kelly, in his armor, attacked the police line from the rear. His armor does seem to have saved him from any fatal wounds, but it also slowed him down. He took wounds in the left leg, the arms, and perhaps other places (Nunn, p. 197; Boxall, p. 381).
Eventually, perhaps around 10:00 a.m., the police ceased firing and allowed ten minutes for the gang's hostages to leave or escape (Nunn, p. 199). Dan Kelly and Steve Byrne apparently allowed them to go (Innes, p. 34). Most did indeed flee; they were ordered to lie down, were examined to make sure they weren't outlaws, and were allowed through the police lines.
Five hours later, the police set fire to the building (Nunn, p. 199, although Davey/Seal, p. 168, says that gunfire ended the action). A large crowd had gathered by then, including two of Kelly's sisters (Innes, p. 34). Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, and Dan Kelly are all believed to have died in the blaze -- at least, three bodies were found, and a Catholic priest who went in before the fires completely burned the building thought they were those of the three outlaws (Nunn, p. 199; Innes, p. 64. The priest, Matthew Gibney, seems to have been a good man; Innes reports that he condemned the indiscriminate police violence and served native Australians as well as Europeans). After the fire, the bodies believed to be those of Hart and Dan Kelly were found to be burned beyond recognition and were buried without an inquest; Byrne (whose body had been hauled out by the priest; Boxall, p. 382) was buried, unclaimed by family (Nunn, p. 200).
It has been speculated, based on the positions of their burned bodies, that Hart and Dan Kelly killed themselves or each other rather than surrender (Boxall, p. 382;Manifold, p. 73). It was initially thought that Ned Kelly would die of his wounds -- his sisters came to bid him farewell, and he was given last rites (Innes, p. 34), but he survived to go to trial.
Ned Kelly's trial began on October 28 (Nunn, p. 202), following a preliminary hearing on August 6 (Innes, p. 35). There were two counts, for the murders of constables Lonigan and Scanlon. The second was never tried as the first resulted in a death sentence. The description of the trial in Nunn sounds completely unfair -- except for testimony from Constable McIntyre, it was all hearsay evidence. Innes, p. 35, suggests that his defense lawyer (who was hired by the family) was incompetent, and adds that Kelly was not allowed to testify (and objected to his lawyer's actions) -- but it's hard to believe there was any doubt about Kelly's guilt. The trial took only two days. The judge promptly sentenced Kelly to death.
Nunn, p. 205, says that were appeals for a change of sentence, based partly on legal grounds (the judge had refused to allow for the possibility of a conviction for manslaughter; the only options given the jury were conviction for murder or acquittal) and partly on a growing opposition to capital punishment (Innes, p. 36, says that more than 32,000 Victorians signed petitions for his pardon). Neither made any difference. Neither did a visit from his mother, who was herself still in prison.
Kelly was executed on November 11, 1880. He was given the sacraments by the very same priest who had baptized him a quarter of a century earlier (Innes, p. 36). Although folklore records his last words as "Such is life," and Innes, p. 37, supports this, Nunn, p. 205, gives his final statement as "Ah well, I suppose it had to come to this."
There was extended acrimony after Kelly's death, as various people sought reward money and investigations looked into police actions. Several reforms were instituted as a result (Nunn, pp. 205-210). In the aftermath, the bushranging impulse finally seemed to die (Nunn, p. 213). There were still robbers, of course, but they didn't go to the bush and they didn't have popular support.
The amount of folklore about Kelly is immense; Beatty, p. 123, cites Clive Turnbull as saying Kelly is Australia's only folk hero. Some examples:
(From Wannan, p. 21): When Kelly was sentenced to death, he was reputed to have told Sir Edmund Barry, the judge who sentenced him, "When I go to the Great Beyond, I will see you there." (Ward, p. 76, reports the words as "Yes, I will meet you there.") Less than a month after Kelly was executed (Innes says twelve days; others say three weeks), Barry died of pneumonia.
Nunn, p. 154, claims that when Kelly made his escape in 1877, he encountered officer Lonigan, who tried to stop the escape. Kelly declared, "I've never killed a man yet, Lonigan, but if I ever do, so help me God, you'll be the first." And Lonigan was indeed his first victim, and Kelly was hanged for it.
Davey/Seal, p. 231, say that Aaron Sherritt, mentioned in the ballad was a "Close sympathizer of the Kelly gang of bushrangers, murdered by Joe Byrne, once his best friend, on 26 June 1880 as a prelude to the Glenrowan Station incident. The gang suspected Sherritt, probably correctly, of being a double agent."
Often the folklore overwhelms the facts -- Boxall (p. 538, etc.) calls Lonigan, the constable Kelly killed, "Lonergan," and refers to Joe Byrne as "Joe Byrnes" (p. 360, etc.) or once "Joe Brynes" (p. 373). There were rumors that Dan or Ned somehow survived (one story even claims that Dan went to the gallows for Ned; that one presumably deriving from someone who read too much Dickens); there were also fears that James Kelly would revive the gang, but after his release from prison in 1881, he apparently kept his nose clean (Innes, pp. 143-144)
Kelly has also become part of Australian language. Ward, p. 75, observes the common phrase "As game as Ned Kelly," and points out that the name "Glenrowan" still has great influence.
The first stage show about Kelly apparently premiered less than two weeks after his death, featuring his sister Kate and brother Jim (Innes, p. 37). Many more would follow. The first printed account of Ned Kelly, The Ironclad Australian Bushranger, followed within months (Innes, pp. 75-76). Those who know the history of, say, the Jesse James legend can probably guess how much of it was factual: The words "Ned" and "Kelly" and not much else. The first movie about him appeared in 1906; "The Story of the Kelly Gang" is said to have been the first feature film made in Australia, although most of it has not survived (Innes, p. 111).
Kelly obviously became a byword in Australia, but the story seems also to have made it to New Zealand; NewZealandDictionary, p. 178, cites the phrases "the cheek of Ned Kelly," "(as) dead as Ned Kelly," and "(as) game as Ned Kelly," meaning respectively "very cheeky," "undeniably dead," and "very game or courageous."
Innes has photos of Ned Kelly on pp. 14 (apparently a mug shot) and 18, plus his death mask on p. 80, as well as his rap sheet on p. 20. There is a photo of police commander Hare on p. 101; excerpts of Hare's tendentious account of what happened are on pp. 102-107. Hare was born in South Africa and came to Australia in 1852, hunting for gold; when that failed, he used influence to gain a police job, and before hunting the Kellys, he had tracked down Ned Kelly's mentor Harry Power. He had also convinced Aaron Sherritt to inform on the Kellys. He may not have been a very good man, but he seems to have been effective. - RBW
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