Black Snake (10 page)

The armour made Ned feel invincible, but it only protected him where it covered his body. His legs and arms were unprotected.

Bloodshed

Ned was soon hit in his left arm and in his right foot. Just as the police leader had been, the Kelly Gang’s leader was seriously wounded in the first minutes of the gunfight.

The police were firing furiously at the inn without a thought for the unfortunate prisoners inside. Women and children were screaming. There were not only screams of fear, but terrible screams of pain. Four civilians were shot in the volley of police fire, including two children. Three of these victims died from their wounds. Joe was also hit in the leg. After Joe was shot, he retreated with Dan and Steve into the inn for cover. Ned, bleeding badly and in a state of shock, continued to wander around outside.

In a lull in the firing, the terrified women and children tried to escape. They called to police not to fire, but their pleas were ignored and a hail of bullets drove them back. A bullet grazed a baby’s head.

Towards dawn, Sergeant Steele arrived from Wangaratta with more police. He leapt off his horse, eager to get into the fight. As the hostages tried again to make their escape, the overzealous Steele fired wildly at them, even though other police tried to stop him. Another civilian, a young man of 18, was wounded.

Ned was losing an enormous amount of blood. He limped back to the hotel and arrived to see his best friend Joe shot dead. Believing that Dan and Steve had escaped, Ned found a horse to make his own escape. Weak from loss of blood and weighed down by his armour, he couldn’t mount the horse.

Death in the Morning

Ned called out to Dan and heard a faint reply from the inn. He realised his mistake. His brother and Steve Hart were still in the hotel. The police continued to shoot at Ned, wounding him again and again as he tried to make his way back to the inn to rescue Dan and Steve. As he staggered to the cover of a fallen tree, the police called out for him to surrender, but he refused.

Finally a shot in the leg brought Ned crashing to the ground. The police rushed to overcome him, grabbing his revolver. With 28 wounds in his body and after bleeding for more than four hours, Ned was unable to fight back. The police took off the helmet and only then realised they had captured Ned Kelly himself. Sergeant Steele moved in to finish him off, but Constable Bracken stopped him. Ned was carried away and into custody.

By this time, Superintendent Sadleir had arrived from Benalla. Surely now, with proper leadership, the police would finish the matter swiftly. But that was not the case. The next morning the last of the prisoners finally got away from the inn. There were now 50 policemen against two outlaws. Still the police waited. Sadleir ordered a cannon to be sent up from Melbourne to attack the tiny weatherboard inn. The inn was silent. Neither Dan nor Steve were returning fire. Still Sadleir waited.

At about three in the afternoon, Constable Johnson ran out of patience with his superior officer. He pointed out that a splash of kerosene and a match would quickly do as much damage as a cannon to the flimsy wooden building. He calmly walked forward and set light to the inn. Timid to the last, the other police still stayed back.

Hundreds of people had gathered to watch the drama unfold. They cheered as a priest strode forward and entered the burning building. He saw Joe dead in the bar. In a back room he found Dan and Steve, also lying dead on the floor. He called out the news to the police who just had time to pull Joe’s body from the flames. The inn, with a calico ceiling and paper-lined walls, was a firetrap. It was destroyed in a few minutes.

The bodies of Dan and Steve were burnt beyond recognition. Whether they were shot by police bullets or whether they shot each other to avoid capture, no one knows.

When Ned’s pockets were searched, they were found to contain a lady’s watch, two gold chains, some ammunition and a threepence.

The doctor tending to Ned’s wounds took off his armour and discovered that around his waist he was wearing a green silk sash with a gold fringe. It was the sash he had been awarded for rescuing Dick Shelton from drowning when he was only 11 years old.

When Joe Byrne’s body was searched, he was found to be carrying a prayer book in one pocket and a brown paper bag of poison in the other. On his fingers, he wore the rings belonging to Michael Scanlon, one of the policemen killed at Stringybark Creek.

Newspaper reporters tied Joe’s dead body to a door so that photos could be taken. Postcards carrying photos of the dead bushranger were sold as souvenirs.

Disaster and Defeat

Ned’s first two bold hold-ups had worked like a dream. His third and final plan had turned into a nightmare. Ned was captured. His brother and best friend were killed. Four innocent townspeople also died.

Just what Ned’s aim was at Glenrowan is hard to fathom. The bushrangers had brought a keg of blasting powder and a coil of fuse with them. Witnesses noticed crowds of armed sympathisers gathering during the night. At one stage, Chinese skyrockets were let off as some sort of signal. There was no bank in the small town of Glenrowan. Whatever they were planning, it was more than a simple bank robbery.

Ned is reported as saying he wanted to send the train and police “to hell”. There is one theory that the destruction of the police train would mark the beginning of a bold plan to take control of the government of North Eastern Victoria and that Ned planned to form a republic, with himself as leader. Another plan may have been to rally their supporters and raid a number of banks in the area. Later Ned said he had no intention of derailing the train, merely stopping it so that he could take police hostages to trade for his mother. Whatever Ned’s intentions, Glenrowan was a disaster. After nearly two years on the run, the Kelly Gang had finally met its end.

After the Glenrowan shoot-out, the suits of Kelly armour became the property of three different organisations and one individual. Historians examined the four suits and found that the pieces of three of the suits were mixed up. In June 2002, the custodians of the three suits—the National Trust of Australia, the State Library of Victoria and the Police Museum—got together and exchanged pieces so that there are now three complete original suits of armour.

Kelly Gang armour. This is the helmet and breastplate worn by Ned.

What if you were there...

The jail’s quiet today. They’re all listening. They want to hear the crash as the trapdoor falls. They hope to hear the crack as his neck breaks. So that they can tell their grandchildren they were there when Ned Kelly was hanged. I’m still working though. Scrubbing at these miserable prison shirts till my hands are wrinkled like prunes. Tomorrow I might be washing Ned’s shirt. The one he died in. There’s no clock here in the prison laundry, but I can see the sun through the one barred window—high up so that none of us women can climb out of it. My poor Ned. I reckon he’s got no more than ten minutes of life left to him. I wish I could be with him to comfort him. I suppose he’s remembering it all now, just like I am, wondering how it might have been different.

I keep seeing him as he was when he was a boy. Always cheerful, always ready to help. And with a way of saying things that would always have us in fits.

We had a happy home up at Greta. It wasn’t much, just a wooden hut. We weren’t rich. We struggled with that patch of land, but we were happy and we had each other. We were content. If the troopers had let us alone, we’d still be there today. But they wouldn’t let us alone. Not for five minutes. They blamed my boys for every bit of mischief from Wallan to Wodonga. It was as if their one aim in life was to see the Kelly boys behind bars.

And the girls, they wouldn’t leave them alone either. Handsome, strong-willed girls they are and there was always some trooper with his eye on one of them. They’d wake us in the middle of the night with a cock and bull story about looking for a stolen saddle. They’d turn us all out of bed and ransack the house just so they could see the girls standing shivering in their nightgowns. That snake Fitzpatrick, he was the worst of them all.

I never touched Fitzpatrick, no matter what they say. I swear before the God I will soon see, I didn’t hit him. Even if I had, he was wearing his helmet. I could hardly have killed him. That’s what made my Ned so angry. And then when they put me in jail, not for a few months but for three years, that was the end of it. Ned wouldn’t rest until I was free. That’s what turned my son into a wanted man. He would have done anything for his sisters and me.

The warder tells me thousands of people are standing outside in the street. Ghouls, I said, waiting like crows for a sick lamb to die. No, he said, sympathisers who were willing to put their names on a petition to save Ned’s life. Imagine that.

It must be nearly time. I’ve prayed for a miracle. Nothing can save Ned now. They’re all watching me, the other women, the warders, waiting for me to cry out or fall in a faint. I won’t give them that satisfaction. I’ll just keep scrubbing these shirts. If I shed a tear, it will mingle with the sweat and the steam. No one will know.

I hope Ned can stay strong and die like a Kelly. God knows his true nature and I pray He will forgive him his crimes and look after him as he deserves.

Mrs Ellen Kelly, Ned’s mother

Captive

Ned recovered from his wounds, though his hands were crippled and his left arm useless. The police made only one charge against him, that of the murder of Thomas Lonigan at Stringybark Creek. The authorities were still afraid of Ned, even though he was safely in jail. He was kept in solitary confinement with a guard outside his cell keeping a 24-hour watch in case he tried to commit suicide. He was not allowed to have any visitors. The police made one exception to this rule—his mother was permitted to see him. It was the first time they had seen each other for almost two years.

The money from the bank robberies had been spent or given away. There was no money for Ned’s defence. His sisters could not raise the required money. Five months after the Glenrowan siege, Ned stood in the dock of the Supreme Court in Melbourne, his case defended by a young and inexperienced barrister whom he had never met. The young man knew less about the case than the average person. He had been out of Victoria for most of what was now known as the Kelly Outbreak.

As he stumbled through his clumsy speech, the barrister called no witnesses to defend Ned. Ned himself, a man known to be good with words, didn’t say anything in his own defence. The Jerilderie Letter, in which Ned explained how he and his family had been wronged, was not read. The trial lasted less than two days.

The judge at the trial was none other than Sir Redmond Barry, the same man who had sentenced Ned’s mother so severely. The jury took less than half an hour to consider their verdict. Justice Barry draped a black cloth over his head, but could not resist speaking to the famous man who had been silent throughout the trial. Ned spoke softly and clearly. He stated that he wished he had spoken in his own defence. Justice Barry pronounced the sentence: death by hanging.

Ned’s last words to the trial judge, Sir Redmond Barry, after he had sentenced him to death were, “I will see you there where I go.” The judge died suddenly 12 days later.

“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 ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.”

Interview with Ned Kelly while in Beechworth Prison, 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 him as he would plead for himself.”