The Jerilderie Letter Read online

  This was the document from which Mrs Devine took instruction while her husband sat in the lock-up. Kelly was not going to take any chances this time with the publication of his letter. Which was why he was so enraged when he found out that the bloke he’d just seen dashing out the back door of the bank was Gill. The editor whiled away the rest of the day crouched in the gully of Billabong Creek, tremulously recalling the editorial he’d written some weeks earlier, giving Kelly and his gang short shrift. No doubt, as the long hours turned into dusk, Gill went over his fine phrases, hoping that if found he’d be given an opportunity to retract.

  Kelly may have read the editorial, but this was not his main concern. He needed Gill to operate his printing press. The printed word was a currency more potent than banknotes, and he wanted access to that power. Recovering from his anger, he marched across town to Gill’s house with bank accountant Living and Constable Richards firmly in tow. Joe Byrne, meanwhile, made a beeline for the telegraph office to make sure that Gill hadn’t dashed there to send an alarm to the next town. Dan and Steve remained with the prisoners who, having been stood drinks since the beginning of their captivity, were now a drunken rabble.

  Only Mrs Gill was home. She came out and was introduced by Richards, who told her, ‘Don’t be afraid, this is Kelly.’

  ‘I am not afraid,’ she replied.

  Kelly’s response was conciliatory. ‘That’s right. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you or your husband. He should not have run away. Where has he gone to?’

  Gathering more pluck by the moment she told him, ‘If you shoot me dead I don’t know where Mr Gill is. You gave him such a fright I expect he is lying dead somewhere.’

  ‘You see, Kelly,’ Living interceded, ‘the woman is telling you the truth.’

  ‘All I want him for is to print this letter—the history of my life,’ persisted Kelly. ‘And I wanted to see him to explain it to him.’

  Mrs Gill, however, declined to take the manuscript. Living’s nerves must have been beginning to fray. ‘For God’s sake Kelly, give me the papers, and I will give them to Gill,’ he exclaimed.

  After some hesitation Kelly handed the precious parcel to Living. ‘This is a little bit of my life; I will give it to you,’ he said, with an air of ceremony. ‘Mind you get it printed.’ Having received Living’s assurance, he continued, ‘All right; I will leave it to you to get it done. You can read it. I have not had time to finish it.’

  Back in the pub, Kelly once again enjoyed having an audience. ‘I want to say a few words, about why I’m an outlaw, and what I’m doing here today,’ he told his listeners, before giving an account of himself that mirrored the themes and sentiments of the two letters. He and his family had been harassed and persecuted to such an extent that it was not suprising he had become a criminal, and Fitzpatrick—that ‘low drunken blackguard’—had, by turning up at the Greta homestead and making trouble, been the real cause of the Stringybark shootings and all that followed.

  There is dispute about who we should consider the ‘true’ author of the Jerilderie letter—Ned Kelly or Joe Byrne—but the similarity between Kelly’s talk and its distinctive phrasing leaves little doubt about the matter. The Reverend John Gribble walked into the Jerilderie pub at the conclusion of Kelly’s speech. He later described how the outlaw, who was leaning against the bar, put his gun next to his glass and announced, ‘There’s my revolver. Anyone here may take it and shoot me dead, but if I’m shot Jerilderie will swim in its own blood.’ It is this extremity of threat, and the rhetoric of blood in particular, that specifically echoes the Jerilderie Letter.

  As the gang members, who had themselves been steadily drinking throughout the afternoon, prepared to leave, Living took the opportunity to escape. According to the interviews given the next day, he rode a fast horse to Deniliquin, taking back-routes and shortcuts, and arrived eight hours later, near midnight. Tarleton left an hour later, having first made sure that a warning was sent to the bank’s other branch in the nearby town of Urana. He took the more conventional route and rode all night, arriving in Deniliquin at 5.45 a.m., just in time to catch the train to Melbourne. After reporting to their superiors, the two bone-weary men narrated the story to a room full of journalists. The Herald ran a special 9 p.m. edition and, as rains bringing an end to the heatwave began to fall, a stunned public received news of the gang’s exploits.

  Contrary to his promise, Living did not have Ned’s letter published in Melbourne. Instead, he gave it to the police, who made a copy. This police copy disappeared from view until 1930, when it was published by the Melbourne Herald. It remained our only available version until December 2000, when the original document was donated anonymously to the State Library of Victoria, where it can now be viewed.

  The Jerilderie Letter gives the impression of a man ready to explode; indeed, it gives us a peculiar insight into the process of that explosion. The episodes and incidents that Kelly recounts are the same as those in the Cameron Letter, the same as in every lecture he ever gave. But now we have a very clear picture of the ferocity and anger that have been mounting in the past ten months of outlawry, in the constant feuding with locals and the police that had for years preceded Fitzpatrick’s disastrous visit. This builds, and builds, until by the closing passages the letter has become a lethal thing. It shoots to kill. It occupies an imagined universe where there will be no hostages exchanged, and no survivors.

  Even now it’s hard to defy the voice. With this letter Kelly inserts himself into history, on his own terms, with his own voice. Even now, more than 120 years after the fact, that voice remains unassimilable. The document makes palpable the experience of being held prisoner overnight, being kept awake by Kelly, and being told, repeatedly, that he had done all the shooting at Stringybark Creek, that the shooting was not murder but self-defence, that Fitzpatrick was the cause of all this. We hear the living speaker in a way that no other document in our history achieves, with its own strange slang, venomous threats, frequently contradictory statements and skewed sense of history. The logic is associational rather than linear, the style both flamboyant and rough. Kelly talks as though his listeners already know all the details, but have failed to understand them.

  The Jerilderie Letter not only prefigures the ambition of modernist literature to make the written and spoken words indivisible, as exemplified in James Joyce’s Ulysses, but also harks back to the warrior’s fiery polemic of Homer’s Iliad, highly personal, dramatic, oratorical, and charged with competitive hostility. This is the reverberative document which inspired novelist Peter Carey’s highly praised reinvention of the Kelly tale, True History of the Kelly Gang.

  If Kelly had found Gill on that fateful Monday in Jerilderie and his letter had been published, what would its readers have made of it? It’s difficult to imagine that it would have been welcomed by the majority of selectors in north-eastern Victoria. Many had already been victims of the ‘wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing’ carried out by the Greta mob, and would have examined the niceties of Kelly’s justifications with a jaundiced eye.

  Kelly’s appeal to Ireland’s oppression, his rhetoric of rebellion, would also have brought little sympathy. Many of the farmers he stole from, not to mention the policemen he killed at Stringybark Creek, were Irish. Apart from the shanty culture that thrived along the remoter stock routes, the majority of Kelly’s neighbours, whether Welsh, Irish, Scottish or English, seem to have done their best to put their northern-hemisphere politics behind them. The imperial imperative gave them notions of a shared identity, the idea of being British. This notion was cultivated in public processions and on fete days, and co-existed with the desire to make one’s way in a colonial world in a sober, industrious and respectable fashion.

  Kelly’s rhetoric of larrikin defiance may have been unassuageable and obviously drew from an established cant—that of the outlaw and Irish rebel—but it was not representative of the experience of most selectors in the region. It was specific to those whose l
ives marched to a different drum. When not in ‘college’ (as Pentridge Gaol was nicknamed) the likes of Ned Kelly expected to have money in their pockets, fast horses to ride, and flash clothes to display. There was more to life, they thought, than the drudgery of farming. ‘I never worked for less than two pound ten a week,’ Kelly declares in the Jerilderie Letter, ‘since I left Pentridge.’

  But Kelly might have found sympathetic readers in the city. An alarmed report in the Herald on Monday 11 November 1878 spoke of the ‘pernicious effect the evil example set by the Kelly ruffians’ had been having on the larrikins of Melbourne. This ‘all absorbing topic’ was being discussed on street corners each day and, to the consternation of the reporter, ‘the opinions expressed have been invariably in favour of the outlaws and against the police’. This culminated on Sunday evening, when a man ‘had collected quite a number of young people, of both sexes, around him in Bouverie Street, Carlton, and was singing a street song, in which the Kellys featured as heroes and the authorities in the light of oppressors and tyrants’.

  It’s hard to imagine how the Jerilderie Letter, with its unforgettable command of an irrepressible species of invective, could ever have become anything but famous:

  The brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splawfooted sons of Irish Bailiffs or english landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police who some calls 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 and a man that knows nothing about roguery never enter the force…

  The letter leaves us with a very different impression of Ned Kelly from the one we are usually given. It tells the story of a violent man living a violent life, yet articulates a highly acute sense of honour and integrity. The letter is punctuated by an urgent need for revenge, articulated through its visceral images, wordplay and metaphors. Its language seethes with menace. ‘By the light that shines pegged to an ant-bed,’ Kelly declares of those who help the police, ‘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.’

  This document provides the emotional blueprint that was to guide the trajectory of Kelly’s outlawry, which culminated, sixteen months later, in the drama of Glenrowan. He attempted to derail a train packed full with police, blacktrackers and journalists. And here, finally, he donned the heavy armour, made from stolen ploughshares, which was to become the iconic signature-piece encasing the myth that was once a man. The seeds of this future event are already apparent in the letter, where it is announced that ‘in every paper that is printed I am called the blackest and coldest blooded murderer ever on record But if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show them what cold blooded murder is but wholesale and retail slaughter something different to shooting three troopers in self defence and robbing a bank…’

  This is the apocalyptic chant of Edward Kelly, a man who has been foolishly disobeyed; these are the words proclaimed by a widow’s son outlawed.

  *

  This edition of The Jerilderie Letter is transcribed from the original held by the State Library of Victoria. While some annotation is necessary to make the document intelligible to modern readers, I have kept it to a minimum, and have tried not to interrupt Kelly’s account of his story.

  The Jerilderie Letter

  Benjamin Gould was born in Nottingham, England. He came to Australia during the 1853 goldrush and became well known as a hawker in the Greta district.

  Senior Constable Edward Hall is pictured in his latter-day incarnation as Sub-Inspector. The man with the unenviable task of maintaining order in Greta, he allegedly tried to shoot Ned while attempting to arrest him on the town’s main street.

  Dan Kelly, the youngest of the Kelly boys, was reputed to admire Ned to the point of hero-worship. Samuel Gill described him as having ‘a sallow complexion, a fine pair of dark eyes, and rather a pleasing look when smiling’. He died at Glenrowan in June 1880.

  The wealthy landowner James Whitty was an Irish Catholic who originally arrived in Victoria without money or education. The theft of eleven horses from his property in Moyhu, in August 1877, resulted in the warrants for the arrest of Dan and Ned Kelly.

  George King, an American only five years Ned’s senior, married Ned’s mother Ellen in 1874. He was involved in the stock theft but made a convenient scapegoat for Ned, having disappeared—leaving Ellen three months pregnant—over a year before the raid.

  The 1881 Royal Commission described Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick as appearing ‘to have borne a very indifferent character in the force, from which he was ultimately discharged’. It concluded further that his ‘efforts to fulfil what he may have considered his duty proved disastrous’.

  Sergeant Arthur Steele led the second police search party that scoured the Wombat Ranges between Greta and Mansfield in October 1878. He had been the policeman in charge at Wangaratta from 1877 and was involved in Ned Kelly’s capture at Glenrowan.

  Joseph Ryan, one of the ‘Greta boys’, was with Dan Kelly on the night of Fitzpatrick’s attempt to arrest him.

  Kate Kelly, sister of Dan and Ned, was the unwilling recipient of the drunken Constable Fitzpatrick’s attentions and, according to her mother Ellen, the real cause of the brawl that injured him and brought about the charges of attempted murder.

  Constable Thomas McIntyre was the only policeman to survive the Stringybark shootings. His testimony at Ned’s trial in October 1880 led to Ned’s conviction and subsequent hanging for the shooting of Constable Lonigan.

  Constable Thomas Lonigan was the first man to die at Stringybark Creek. Ned Kelly was convicted of his murder and executed on 11 November 1880, two years after the event.

  Sergeant Michael Kennedy was the officer in charge of the police search party. He was reputed to be a good bushman and had a thorough knowledge of the country surrounding Mansfield. He was the last man Ned killed at Stringybark Creek.

  Constable Michael Scanlon was an Irish immigrant. He was the second policeman to be shot by Ned Kelly at Stringybark Creek.

  Police at the the site of the shootings at Stringybark Creek where Sergeant Michael Kennedy and Constable Thomas Lonigan and Constable Michael Scanlon were killed.

  Steve Hart, the fourth member of the Kelly gang, was very familiar with the district surrounding the New South Wales town of Jerilderie, from his days shearing sheep and selling stolen horses in the area. He died alongside his close friend Dan at Glenrowan.

  Looking more like bounty hunters than officers of justice, these two policemen engaged in the Kelly hunt give some idea of the frontier aspect that still typified the region in the 1870s. Police search parties were often mistaken for the outlaws by local farmers or other police, and fired upon accordingly.

  A page from the original manuscript of Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter, as transcribed by Joe Byrne.

  Aaron Sherritt, Joe Byrne’s childhood friend, worked with the Kelly gang, while also in collusion with the police. Although his ultimate allegiance remains unclear, most of his actions seem to have been intended to ensure that the gang avoided capture as he siphoned money out of the police purse. He was shot by Joe Byrne in June 1880.

  Captain Frederick Charles Standish, addicted gambler and frequenter of clubs, was singularly unsuited to the task of capturing outlaws. Although in charge of the hunt for the Kelly gang, he left superintendents Hare and Nicolson to lead in the field.

  This photo of Joe Byrne was taken after his death at Glenrowan, his body propped up against a wall in Benalla. He was the most educated of the gang, reaching at least 5th grade, and consistently being placed first or second in his class. Described as having ‘a quiet manner and an at times nervous diposition’, he copied out the manuscripts of both the Cameron and the Jerilderie letters.

  Dear Sir

  I wish to acquaint you with some of
the occurrences of the present past and future, In or about the spring of 1870 the ground was very soft a hawker named Mr Gould got his waggon bogged between Greta and my mother’s house on the eleven mile creek, the ground was that rotten it would bog a duck in places so Mr Gould had abandon his waggon for fear of loosing his horses in the spewy ground. he was stopping at my Mother’s awaiting finer or dryer weather Mr McCormack and his wife. hawkers also, were camped in Greta the mosquitoes were very bad which they generally are in a wet spring and to help them Mr John had a horse called Ruita Cruta, although a gelding was as clever as old Wombat or any other Stallion at running horses away and taking them on his beat which was from Greta swamp to the seven mile creek consequently he enticed McCormacks horse away from Greta. Mr Gould was up early feeding his horses heard a bell and seen McCormack horse for he knew the horse well he sent his boy to take him back to Greta. When McCormack’s got the horse they came straight out to Goold and accused him of working the horse; this was false and Goold was amazed at the idea I could not help laughing to hear Mrs McCormack accusing him of using the horse after him being so kind as to send his boy to take him from the Ruta Cruta and take him back to them.1 I pleaded Goulds innocence and Mrs McCormack turned on me and accused me of bringing the horse from Greta to Goolds waggon to pull him out of the bog I did not say much to the woman as my mother was present but that same day me and my uncle was cutting calves Gould wrapped up a note and a pair of the calves testicles and gave them to me to give them to Mrs McCormack. I did not see her and gave the parcel to a boy to give to her when she would come instead of giving it to her he gave it to her husband consequently McCormack said he would summons me I told him neither me or Gould used their horse. he said I was a liar & he could welt me or any of my breed I was about 14 years of age but accepted the challenge and dismounting when 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 tied up my horse to finish the battle but McCormack got up and ran to the Police camp, Constable Hall asked me what the row was about, I told him they accused me and Gould of using their horse and I hit him and I would do the same to him if he challenged me McCormack pulled me and swore their lies against me. I was sentenced to three months for hitting him and three months for the parcel and bound to keep the peace for 12 months.2 Mrs McCormack gave good substantial evidence as she is well acquainted with that place called Tasmania better known as the Dervon or Vandiemans land. and McCormack being a Policeman over the convicts and women being scarce released her from that land of bondage and tyranny, and they came to Victoria and are at present residents of Greta and on the 29th of March I was released from prison and came home Wild Wright came to the Eleven Mile to see Mr Gunn stopped all night and lost his mare both him and me looked all day for her and could not get her Wright who was a stranger to me was in a hurry to get back to Mansfield and I gave him another mare and he told me if I found his mare to keep her until he brought mine back I was going to Wangaratta and seen the mare I caught her and took her with me all the Police and Detective Berrill seen her as Martains girls used to ride her about the town during several days that I stopped at Petre Martains Star Hotel in Wangaratta, She was a chestnut mare white face docked tail very remarkable branded 'M' as plain as the hands on a town clock.3 The property of a Telegraph Master in Mansfield he lost her on the 6th gazetted her on the 12th of March and I was a prisoner in Beechworth Gaol until the 29 of March therefore I could not have stole the mare. I was riding the mare through Greta Constable Hall came to me and said he wanted me to sign some papers that I did not sign at Beechworth concerning my bail bonds I thought it was the truth he said the papers was at the Barracks and I had no idea he wanted to arrest me or I would have quietly rode away instead of going to the Barracks. I was getting off when Hall caught hold of me and thought to throw me but made a mistake and came on the broad of his back himself in the dust the mare galloped away. and instead of me putting my foot on Halls neck and taking his revolver and putting him in the lock up. I tried to catch the mare, Hall got up and snapped three or four caps at me and would have shot me but the Colts patent refused. This is well known in Greta Hall never told me he wanted to arrest me until after he tried to shoot me when I heard the caps snapping I stood until Hall came close he had me covered and was shaking with fear and I knew he would pull the trigger before he would be game to put his hand on me so I duped and jumped at him caught the revolver with one hand and Hall by the collar with the other. I dare not strike him or my sureties would loose the bond money I used to trip him and let him take a mouthful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead bullock or a horse. I kept throwing him in the dust until I got him across the street the very spot where Mrs O. Briens Hotel stands now the cellar was just dug then there was some brush fencing where the post and rail was taking down and on this I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly I straddled him and rooted both spurs into his thighs he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs and shifted several yards of the fence I got his hands at the back of his neck and trid to make him let the revolver go but he stuck to it like grim death to a dead volunteer he called for assistance to a man named Cohen and Barnett, Lewis, Thompson, Jewitt two blacksmiths who was looking on I dare not strike any of them as I was bound to keep the peace or I could have spread those curs like dung in a paddock. They got ropes tied my hands and feet and Hall beat me over the head with his six chambered colts revolver nine stitches were put in some of the cuts by Dr Hastings And when Wild Wright and my mother came they could trace us across the street by the blood in the dust and which spoiled the lustre of the paint on the gatepost of the Barracks Hall sent for more Police and Doctor Hastings Next morning I was handcuffed a rope tied from them to my legs and to the seat of the cart and taken to Wangaratta. Hall was frightened I would throw him out of the cart so he tied me whilst Constable Arthur laughed at his cowardice for it was he who escorted me and Hall to Wangaratta. I was tried and committed as Hall swore I claimed the mare the Doctor died or he would have proved Hall a perjurer Hall has been tried several times for perjury but got clear. as this is no crime in the Police force it is a credit to a Policeman to convict an innocent man but any muff can pot a guilty one Halls character is well known about El Dorado and Snowy Creek and Hall was considerably in debt to Mr L. O. Brien and as he was going to leave Greta Mr O. Brien seen no other chance of getting his money so there was a subscription collected for Hall and with the aid of this money he got James Murdock who was recently hung in Wagga Wagga to give false evidence against me but I was aquitted on the charge of horsestealing and on Hall and Murdocks evidence I was found guilty of receiving and got 3 years experience in Beechworth Pentridge’s dungeons.4 this is the only charge ever proved against me Therefore I can say I never was convicted of horse or cattle stealing5 My Brother Dan was never charged with assaulting a woman but he was sentenced to three months without the option of a fine and one month and two pound fine for damaging property by Mr Butler P.M. a sentence that there is no law to uphold therefore the minister of Justice neglected his duty in that case, but there never was such a thing as justice in the English laws but any amount of injustice to be had. Out of over thirty head of the very best horses the land could produce I could only find one when I got my liberty. Constable Flood stole and sold the most of them to the navvies on the Railway line one bay cob he stole and sold four different times the lime was completed and the men all gone when I came out and Flood was shifted to Oxley. he carried on the same game there all the stray horses that was any time without an owner and not in the Police Gazette Flood used to claim He was doing a good trade at Oxley until Mr Brown of the Laceby Station got him shifted as he was always running his horses about. Flood is different to Sergeant Steel, Strachan, Hall and the most of Police a they have got to hire cads and if they fail the Police are quite helpless.6 But Flood can make a cheque single-handed. he is
the greatest horsestealer with the exception of myself and George King I know of. I never worked on a farm a horse and saddle was never traced to me after leaving employment since February 1873 I worked as a faller at Mr J. Saunders and R Rules sawmills then for Heach and Dockendorf I never worked for less than two pound ten a week since I left Pentridge and in 1875 or 1876 I was overseer for Saunders and Rule. Bourkes water-holes sawmills in Victoria since then I was on the King river, during my stay there I ran in a wild bull which I gave to Lydicher a farmer he sold him to Carr a Publican and Butcher who killed him for beef. Sometime afterwards I was blamed for stealing this bull from James Whitty Boggy Creek I asked Whitty Oxley racecourse why he blamed me for stealing his bull he said he had found his bull and never blamed me, but his son-in-law Farrell told him he heard I sold the bull to Carr, not long afterwards I heard again I was blamed for stealing a mob of calves from Whitty and Farrell which I knew nothing about. I began to think they wanted me to give them something to talk about. Therefore I started wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing. Whitty and Burns not being satisfied with all the picked land on the Boggy Creek and King River and the run of their stock on the certificate ground free and no one interfering with them. paid heavy rent to the banks for all the open ground so as a poor man could keep no stock, and impounded every beast they could get, even off Government roads. If a poor man happened to leave his horse or bit of a poddy calf outside his paddock they would be impounded. I have known over 60 head of horses impounded in one day by Whitty and Burns all belonging to poor farmers they would have to leave their ploughing or harvest or other employment to go to Oxley. when they would get there perhaps not have money enough to release them and have to give a bill of sale or borrow the money which is no easy matter. And along with all this sort of work, Farrell the Policeman stole a horse from George King and had him in Whitty and Farrells Paddocks until he left the force and all this was the cause of me and my step-father George King taking their horses and selling them to Baumgarten and Kennedy. the pick of them was taken to a good market and the culls were kept in Petersons paddock and their brands altered by me two was sold to Kennedy and the rest to Baumgarten who were strangers to me and I believe honest men. They paid me full value for the horses and could not have known they were stolen. no person had anything to do with the stealing and selling of the horses but me and George King. William Cooke who was convicted for Whittys horses was innocent he was not in my company at Petersons. But it is not the place of the Police to convict guilty men as it is by them they get their living had the right parties been convicted it would have been a bad job for the Police as Berry would have sacked a great many of them7 only I came to their aid and kept them in their bilits and good employment and got them double pay and yet the ungrateful articles convicted my mother and an infant my brother-in-law and another man who was innocent and still annoy my brothers and sisters and the ignorant unicorns even threathen to shoot myself But as soon as I am dead they will be heels up in the muroo. There will be no more police required they will be sacked and supplanted by soldiers on low pay in the towns and special constables made of some of the farmers to make up for this double pay and expence.8 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 Victorian Police and inhabitants but also the whole British army and now doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump. and that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than Saint Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland. The Queen of England was as guilty as Baumgarten and Kennedy Williamson and Skillion of what they were convicted for When the horses were found on the Murray River I wrote a letter to Mr Swanhill of Lake Rowan to acquaint the Auctioneer and to advertize my horses for sale I brought some of them to that place but did not sell I sold some of them in Benalla Melbourne and other places and left the colony and became a rambling gambler soon after I left there was a warrant for me and the Police searched the place and watched night and day for two or three weeks and when they could not snare me they got a warrant against my brother Dan And on the 15 of April Fitzpatrick came to the Eleven Mile Creek to arrest him he had some conversation with a horse dealer whom he swore was William Skillion this man was not called in Beechworth, besides several other Witnesses, who alone could have proved Fitzpatricks falsehood after leaving this man he went to the house asked was Dan in Dan came out. I hear previous to this Fitzpatrick had some conversation with Williamson on the hill. he asked Dan to come to Greta with him as he had a warrant for him for stealing Whitty’s horses Dan said all right they both went inside Dan was having something to eat his mother asked Fitzpatrick what he wanted Dan for. the trooper said he had a warrant for him Dan then asked him to produce it he said it was only a telegram sent from Chiltren but Sergeant Whelan ordered him to releive Steel at Greta and call and arrest Dan and take him into Wangaratta next morning and get him remanded Dans mother said Dan need not go without a warrant unless he liked and that the trooper had no business on her premises without some authority besides his own word. The trooper pulled out his revolver and said he would blow her brains out if she interfered. in the arrest she told him it was a good job for him Ned was not there or he would ram the revolver down his throat Dan looked out and said Ned is coming now. the trooper being off his guard looked out and when Dan got his attention drawn he dropped the knife and fork which showed he had no murderous intent and slapped Heenans hug on him took his revolver and kept him there until Skillion and Ryan came with horses which Dan sold that night. The trooper left and invented some scheme to say that he got shot which any man can see is false,9 he told Dan to clear out that Sergeant Steel and Detective Brown and Strachan would be there before morning Strachan had been over the Murray trying to get up a case against him and they would convict him if they caught him as the stock society offered an enticement for witnesses to swear anything and the germans over the Murray would swear to the wrong man as well as the right,10 Next day Williamson and my mother was arrested and Skillion the day after who was not there at all at the time of the row which can be proved by 8 or 9 witnesses and 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 seems that the jury was well chosen by the Police as there was a discharged Sergeant amongst them which is contrary to law they thought it impossible for a Policeman to swear a lie but I can assure them it is by that means and hiring cads they get promoted I have heard from a trooper that he never knew Fitzpatrick to be one night sober and that he sold his sister to a chinaman but he looks a young strapping rather genteel more fit to be a starcher to a laundress than a policeman. For to a keen observer he has the wrong appearance or a manly heart the deceit and cowardice is too plain to be seen in the puny cabbage hearted looking face. I heard nothing of this transaction until very close on the trial I being then over 400 miles from Greta when I heard I was outlawed and a hundred pound reward for me for shooting at a trooper in Victoria and a hundred pound for any man that could prove a conviction of horse-stealing against me so I came back to Victoria knew I would get no justice if I gave myself up I enquired after my brother Dan and found him digging on Bullock Creek heard how the Police used to be blowing that they would not ask me to stand they would shoot me first and then cry surrender and how they used to rush into the house upset all the milk dishes break tins of eggs empty the flour out of the bags onto the ground and even the meat out of the cask and destroy all the provisions and shove the girls in front of them into the rooms like dogs so as if anyone was there they would shoot the girls first—but they knew well I was not there or 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 Superintendent Smith used to say to my sisters, see all the men all I have out today I will have as many more tomorrow and we will blow him into pieces as small as paper that is in our guns Detective Ward and Constable Hayes took out their revolvers and threatened to shoot the girls and children in Mrs Skillions absence11 the greatest ruffians and murderers no matter how deprived would not be guilty of such a cowardly action, and this sort of cruelty and disgraceful and cowardly conduct to my brothers and sisters who had no protection coupled with the conviction of my mother and those men certainly made my blood boil as I don’t think there is a man born could have the patience to suffer it as long as I did or ever allow his blood to get cold while such insults as these were unavenged and yet in every paper that is printed I am called the blackest and coldest blooded murderer ever on record But if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show them what cold blooded murder is but wholesale and retail slaughter, something different to shooting three troopers in self defence and robbing a bank. I would have been rather hot-blooded to throw down my rifle and let them shoot me and my innocent brother, they were not satisfied with frightening my sisters night and day and destoying their provisions and lagging my mother and an infant and those innocent men but should follow me and my brother into the wilds where he had been quietly digging neither molesting or interfering with anyone he was making good wages as the creek is very rich within half a mile from where I shot Kennedy. I was not there long and on the 25 of October I came on Police tracks between Table top and the bogs. I crossed them and returning in the evening I came on a different lot of tracks making for the shingle hut I went to our camp and told my brother and his two mates me and my brother went and found their camp at the shingle hut about a mile from my brothers house, saw they carried long firearms and we knew our doom was sealed if we could not beat those before the others would come as I knew the other party of Police would soon join them and if they came on us at our camp they would shoot us down like dogs at our work as we had only two guns. we thought it best to try and bail those up take their firearms and ammunition and horses and we could stand a chance with the rest We approached the spring as close as we could get to the camp as the intervening space being clear ground and no battery we saw two men at the logs they got up and one took a double barreled fowling-piece and fetched a horse down and hobbled him at the tent we thought there were more men in the tent asleep those being on sentry we could have shot those two men without speaking but not wishing to take their lives we waited. McIntyre laid the gun against a stump and Lonigan sat on the log I advanced, my brother Dan keepin McIntyre covered which he took to be Constable Flood and had he not obeyed my orders, or attempted to reach for the gun or draw his revolver he would have been shot dead. but when I called on them to throw up their hands McIntyre obeyed and Lonigan ran some six or seven yards to a battery of logs insted of dropping behind the one he was sitting on, he had just got to the logs and put his head up to take aim when I shot him that instant or he would have shot me as I took him for Strachan the man who said he would not ask me to stand he would shoot me first like a dog. But it happened to be Lonigan the man who in company with Sergeant Whelan Fitzpatrick and King the Bootmaker and Constable O. Day that tried to put a pair of handcuffs on me in Benalla but could not, and had to allow McInnis the miller to put them on,12 previous to Fitzpatrick swearing he was shot, I was fined two pound for hitting Fitzpatrick and two pound for not allowing five curs like Sergeant Whelan O. Day Fitzpatrick King and Lonigan who caught me by the privates and would have sent me to Kingdom come only I was not ready and he is the man that blowed before he left Violet Town. if Ned Kelly was to be shot he was the man would shoot him and no doubt he would shoot me, even if I threw up my arms and laid down as he knew four of them could not arrest me single-handed not to talk of the rest of my mates, also either me or him would have to die, this he knew well therefore, he had a right to keep out of my road, Fitzpatrick is the only one I hit out of the five in Benalla, this shows my feeling towards him as he said we were good friends & even swore it but he was the biggest enemy I had in the country with the exception of Lonigan and he can be thankful I was not there when he took a revolver and threatened to shoot my mother in her own house it is not fire three shots and miss him at a yard and a half I don’t think I would use a revolver to shoot a man like him when I was within a yard and a half of him. or attempt to fire into a house where my mother brothers and sisters was. and according to Fitzpatricks statement all around him a man that is such a bad shot as to miss a man three times at a yard and a half would never attempt to fire into a house among a house full of women and children while I had a pair of arms and bunch of fives on the end of them that never failed to peg out anything they came in contact with and Fitzpatrick knew the weight of one of them only too well, as it run against him once in Benalla. and cost me two pound odd as he is very subject to fainting. As soon as I shot Lonigan he jumped up and staggered some distance from the logs with his hands raised and then fell he surrendered but too late I asked McIntyre who was in the tent he replied no one. I advanced and took possession of their two revolvers and fowling-piece which I loaded with bullets instead of shot. I asked McIntyre where his mates was he said they had gone down the creek and he did not expect them that night he asked me was I going to shoot him and his mates. I told him no. I would shoot no man if he gave up his arms and leave the force he said the police all knew Fitzpatrick had wronged us. and he intended to leave the force, as he had bad health, and his life was insured, he told me he intended going home and that Kennedy and Scanlan were out looking for our camp and also about the other Police he told me the N.S.W. Police had shot a man for shooting Sergeant Walling I told him if they did, they had shot the wrong man and I expect your gang came to do that same with me he said no they did not come to shoot me they came to apprehend me I asked him what they carried spenceir rifles and breech loading fowling pieces and so much amunition for as the Police was only supposed to carry one revolver and 6 cartridges in the revolver but they had eighteen rounds of revolver cartridges each three dozen for the fowling piece and twenty one spenceir-rifle cartridges and God knows how many they had away with the rifle this looked as if they meant not only to shoot me only to riddle me but I dont know either Kennedy Scanlan or him and had nothing against them, he said he would get them to give up their arms if I would not shoot them as I could not blame them, they had to do their duty I said I did not blame them for doing honest duty but 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. but they will rue the day ever Fitzpatrick got among them, Our two mates came over when they heard the shot fired but went back again for fear the Police might come to our camp while we were all away and manure bullock flat with us on our arrival I stopped at the logs and Dan went back to the spring for fear the troopers would come in that way but I soon heard them coming up the creek.13 I told McIntyre to tell them to give up their arms he spoke to Kennedy who was some distance in front of Scanlan he reached for his revolver and jumped off, on the off side of his horse and got behind a tree when I called on them to throw up their arms and Scanlan who carried the rifle slewed his horse around to gallop away but the horse would not go and as quick as thought fired at me with the rifle without unslinging it and was in the act of firing again when I had to shoot him and he fell from his horse. I could have shot them without speaking but their lives was no good to me. McIntyre jumped on Kennedys horse and I allowed him to go as I did not like to shoot him after he surrendered or I would have shot him as he was between me and Kennedy therefore I could not shoot Kennedy without shooting him first Kennedy kept firing from behind the tree my brother Dan advanced and Kennedy ran I followed him he stopped behind another tree and fired again I shot him in the armpit and he dropped his revolver and ran
I fired again with the gun he slewed around to surrender I did not know he had dropped his revolver the bullet passed through the right side of his chest & he could not live or I would have let him go had they been my own brothers I could not help shooting them or else let them shoot me which they would have done had their bullets been directed as they intended them. But as for hand-cuffing Kennedy to a tree or cutting his ear off14 or brutally treating any of them is a falsehood, if Kennedy’s ear was cut off it was not done by me and none of my mates was near him after he was shot I put his cloak over him and left him as well as I could and were they my own brothers I could not have been more sorry for them 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 certainly their wives and children are to be pitied but they must remember those men came into the bush with the intention of scattering pieces of me and my brother all over the bush and yet they know and acknowledge 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 has no alternative only 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 which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police who some calls 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 and a man that knows nothing about roguery would never enter the force an take an oath to arrest brother sister father or mother if required and to have a case and conviction if possible any man knows it is possible to swear a lie and if a policeman looses a conviction for the sake of swearing a lie he has broke his oath therefore he is a perjurer either ways. 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 a traitor to his country ancestors and religion as they were all catholics before the Saxons and Cranmore yoke held sway since then they were persecuted massacred thrown into martyrdom and tortured beyond the ideas of the present generation, What would people say if they saw a strapping big lump of an Irishman shepherding sheep for fifteen bob a week or tailing turkeys in Tallarook Ranges for a smile from Julia or even begging his tucker, they would say he ought to be ashamed of himself and tarand-feather him. But he would be a king to a policeman who for a lazy loafing cowardly bilit left the ash corner deserted the shamrock, the emblem of true wit and beauty to serve under a flag and nation that has destroyed massacred and murdered their forefathers by the greatest of torture as rolling them down hill in spiked barrels pulling their toe and finger nails and on the wheel. and every torture imaginable more was transported to Van Dieman’s Land to pine their young lives away in starvation and misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself all of true blood bone and beauty, that was not murdered on their own soil, or had fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day, were doomed to Port McQuarie, Toweringabbie Norfolk Island and Emu plains And in those places of tyrany and condemnation many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke, Were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains but true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddys land What would people say if I became a policeman and took an oath to arrest my brothers and sisters & relations and convict them by fair or foul means after the conviction of my mother and the persecutions and insults offered to myself and people Would they say I was a decent gentleman, and yet a policeman is still in worse and guilty of meaner actions than that The Queen must surely be proud of such herioc 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 actually come into a court house and swear they could not arrest one eight stone larrakin and them armed with battens and neddies without some civilians assistance and some of them going to the hospital from the affects of hits from the fists of the larrakin and the Magistrate would send the poor little Larrakin into a dungeon for being a better man than such a parcel of armed curs. What would England do if America declared war and hoisted a green flag as it is all Irishmen that has got command of her armies forts and batteries even her very life guards and beef tasters are Irish would they not slew around and fight her with their own arms for the sake of the colour they dare not wear for years. and to reinstate it and rise old Erins isle once more, from the pressure and tyrannism of the English yoke. which has kept it in poverty and starvation. and caused them to wear the enemys coat. What else can England expect. Is there not big fat-necked Unicorns enough paid, to torment and drive me to do thing which I dont wish to do, without the public assisting them I have never interfered with any person unless they deserved it, and yet there are civilians who take firearms against me, for what reason I do not know, unless they want me to turn on them and exterminate them without medicine. I shall be compelled to make an example of some of them if they cannot find no other employment