The Jerilderie Letter Read online

  4 Ned started his sentence in Beechworth Gaol, where he had spent six months after the Gould incident. In February 1873 he was transferred to Pentridge Gaol in Melbourne, then to the prison hulk Sacramento, and finally to the Battery, at Williamstown. The prisoners worked in chain gangs, in quarries or constructing roads.

  5 Judge Redmond Barry, when sentencing Ned to death, reprimanded, ‘You have actually had the hardihood to confess to having stolen two hundred horses.’ Ned immediately replied, ‘Who proves this?’ This distinction between bragging about a crime and being caught committing it was for him entirely meaningful.

  6 Ned’s sister Annie Gunn died with her new born daughter in 1872. Her husband had been in prison—Ernest Flood was thought to be the child’s father. Six years later at Stringybark Creek, Ned told Thomas McIntyre, ‘At first I thought you were a bugger called Flood…if you had been, I wouldn’t have shot you, I’d have roasted you on that fire.’

  7 In January 1878 Premier of Victoria Graham Berry had sacked over two hundred public servants, including magistrates and judges, and had made further ominous noises about paring back the police force in similar fashion.

  8 Captain Standish, Chief Commissioner of Police, provided a curious parallel to this reasoning in his evidence to the Royal Commission in 1881. ‘There is not the slightest doubt,’ he claimed, ‘that there was an enormous number of tradesmen in the district who were so benefited by the large increase of the police, and by the consequent expenditure, that they were only too glad that this unpleasant business was protracted for so many months.’ So, depending which side of the law you were standing on, either the police or the locals were benefiting from the outlawry of the Kelly gang.

  9 Having failed to arrest Dan for horse stealing, Fitzpatrick claimed that Ned had shot him in the wrist. The doctor who attended to him admitted this was possible, but remained doubtful that the wound had been caused by a bullet. He noted Fitzpatrick reeked of brandy.

  10 Ellen Kelly, in an interview in 1911, gave her version of the Fitzpatrick affair: ‘He came over to our place…and said he was going to arrest Dan. He started the trouble. He had no business there at all they tell me—no warrant or anything. If he had he should have done his business and gone. He tried to kiss my daughter Kate. She was a fine, good looking girl, Kate; and the boys tried to stop him. He was a fool. They were only trying to protect their sister. He was drunk and they were sober…Why did he want to interfere with my girl? He stayed there to make trouble; and there was trouble.’

  11 Ned’s sister Maggie was married to Bill Skillion.

  12 In September 1877 Ned interrupted his stay on the King River for a brief, riotous visit to Benalla—he was arrested for drunkenness and put in the cells overnight. The next morning Sergeant Whelan and Constables Lonigan, Fitzpatrick and O’Day were told to escort him across the street to the courthouse. Whether through petty vindictiveness or actual fear, Fitzpatrick tried to handcuff Ned for the journey. Ned shoved him violently to one side and ran into a nearby bootmaker’s shop. In the aftermath of the ensuing brawl, he is reported to have said, ‘Well, Lonigan, I never shot a man yet. But if ever I do, so help me God, you’ll be the first.’

  13 Ned consistently attempts to shield associates from any judicial scrutiny. McIntyre asserted that all four men bailed up the police camp, not just the Kelly brothers. This is similar to Ned’s statement that only he and George King had anything to do with the Baumgarten case.

  14 Sergeant Kennedy’s body was found in thick scrub some days after the shootings. The loss of his ear had been blamed on the Kelly gang but was more likely caused by animals.

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