According to the list in Appendix IV of
George Farwells 1970 book “Ned Kelly” – such an original title! – these are the
Arrests and Convictions of Daniel Kelly
:
1871
Illegally using a horse Wangaratta Discharged
1877
Stealing a saddle Beechworth Discharged
1877
Wilful Damage Benalla 3
months
1878
Murder and Outlawry SBC Died
at Glenrowan
According to modern day Kelly sympathisers,
these charges against Dan Kelly came about
because he was picked on by the
corrupt police, who hounded and persecuted his whole family and their
associates, turning them into Police-made criminals.
In a series of Posts I have been testing these claims, looking for the
evidence of the corrupt behavior and persecution by the Police that the Kelly
sympathisers talk about. So far my close
inspections of the criminal records of Ned Kelly and his brother Jim Kelly have
found precious little evidence of this. In fact I have presented evidence that
even though in those days the system was harsh, and there were times at which
Police behaved badly – as indeed they still do on occasion today – in the main
the system treated them appropriately and in response to deliberate acts of
criminality and violence.
Mike made a very telling observation in the
discussion about Jim Kelly, pointing out that if the Kelly explanations of why
they came into contact with the Police were true, when he changed his name to
James Wilson and went to NSW, one would expect that in NSW Jim would be left
alone, but of course he wasn’t. In fact
Jim quickly came to the notice of the Police for selling a stolen horse and
saddle, so it would be absurd to suggest that his arrest was an example of
Kelly clan persecution because the NSW Police didn’t know he was a Kelly.
Sharon told us that it wasn’t until much later that Jim Wilson was exposed as
Jim Kelly. So are the modern Kelly supporters going to propose that he was only
ever a criminal in NSW, and was innocent in Victoria? How do they explain Jims behaviour?
So lets look now at Daniels record. The
first entry on his Charge sheet relates to an episode that I wrote about in
relation to his older brother Jim. One Saturday they took a horse each, the
owner complained and they rode off when told to stop. They were chased down,
taken to Wangaratta Lock-Up and
discharged by the Magistrate on the Monday morning ‘on account of their age’
Dan was 10 and Jim 12. Is it persecution for Police to try to recover stolen
property? Of course not! Was it overkill
and persecution to lock them up? Probably not in those times, when rigid
discipline and corporal punishment of
children was regarded as a Christian duty. But yes, today it would be overkill, in my
opinion.
Dans next court appearance was in relation
to a saddle that had been reported stolen from a Benalla Hotel in May 1876. It
was located on Dans horse but in Court he produced a receipt for £1 that he
paid to ‘a man called Roberts’. Ned claimed to know this man, Roberts , and
tried to find him, “alas, to no avail” as Peter Fitzsimons so regretfully tells
it!
Once again we have the marvelous resource
of Troves digitized newspaper Collection to thank for an exact copy of the
Court report in the local newspaper:
Ovens and Murray
Advertiser
Thursday March 1st
1877
Beechworth General
Sessions
Wednesday 28th
February
Before his Honor Judge
Hacket
Mr Armstrong appeared as
Crown Prosecutor
LARCENY.
Daniel Kelly was charged with stealing a saddle
at Benalla, and pleaded not guilty.
Mr F. Brown appeared for the defence.
The following jury were sworn
Robert Rae (foreman), John Carew, R.Douglass,
Edward Keogh, J. Stephens, Christopher Kibble, Edwin Ansell, Geo. Cross,
William Duncan, Henry Wiseman, Thomas Sutherland, and John Ewing.
Sidney Smith, a woolstaker, residing at
Benalla, Deposed that he had a saddle on the 4th of May last. Left it in the
back kitchen of the Liverpool Arms
about seven o'clock in the evening. Shut the
door, and missed it the next morning. Identified the saddle produced by a seam
which he had objected to on
purchasing it, and by other marks.
Edward Shortell, a saddler at Benalla, deposed
that he sold the saddle produced to prisoner over two years ago.
Mounted-constable Robinson deposed that he was
at Benalla on the 30th of December, but was stationed at Richmond at present.
Saw prisoner that day with the saddle produced. Asked him about the saddle. He
first said he had bought it from one man, and afterwards from another.
By Mr F. Brown : It was five months from the
time witness heard of the saddle being stolen until the arrest. Prisoner did
not refuse to go with witness to see about the saddle. Prisoner gave two
different accounts of how he came by the saddle. He produced a receipt
subsequently at the police court.
This closed the case for the prosecution.
John Lloyd lived on the Kilfera road, and knew
the accused and was present at Eleven Mile Creek, where he dealt in a saddle
with a man named Roberts.
Prisoner gave Roberts a saddle and £1,and got
another saddle in exchange. This happened at Skinner's.
Witness was one of the witnesses to the receipt
produced.
By the Crown Prosecutor : Skinner was
prisoner's brother-in-law. Witness was prisoner's cousin.
Wm. Skinner knew the accused. Remembered a
transaction about saddles at his house between the accused and Roberts, and
they exchanged saddles,
prisoner giving Roberts £1 to boot. Roberts
wrote the receipt. Edward Kelly, brother of the accused, knew Roberts, and had
tried to find him for the purpose of this trial. Was present when the saddles
were exchanged, and saw a receipt like the one produced,
drawn out.
His Honor, in charging the jury, said he did
not see why the prisoner was there at all. He had given a perfectly valid
account of how lie had come to be in pos
session of the saddle, and
the whole of the evidence corroborated that account.
Verdict : Not Guilty.
The accused was discharged
What this remarkable report shows is the exact
opposite of the Kelly myth about the poor Kellys being persecuted by an unjust system! Instead we
have a Court process that is scrupulously fair, even when the defendant changes
his story, the witnesses for the defense are the relatives and friends of the
accused, and the mysterious Mr Roberts has disappeared without trace. But there never seemed to be any doubt that Sydney Smiths saddle was stolen and it ended up on Dan Kellys horse. I am not sure what a ‘woolstaker’ is but somehow I think Sidney Smith wasn’t a squatter but an ordinary member of the poorer working class, the sort of people Ned Kelly was supposed to be the champion of. Nobody knew it then, but Ned Kelly in 1877
was a major crime figure in the region, fully engaged in his ‘wholesale and
retail’ horse stealing racket, an
activity that treated the Law with contempt and involved the creation of false identities, false documents
and forged signatures, the very techniques that I would guess he employed here to get Dan off the hook. Who suspects that he and Ned and the other witnesses perjured
themselves, that Mr Roberts was a fantasy and the Receipt for £1 was a Forgery?
Peter Fitzsimons obviously does! And so
do I, but of course without evidence, who can be sure? And so, Dan was found Not
Guilty! His treatment was better than fair, it was lenient and generous in the face of considerable doubt.
You know, this case shows how deeply
hypocritical it was for Ned Kelly to claim in the Jerilderie Letter that ‘there
was never such a thing as justice to be found in the English Laws but any
amount of injustice’, and suggests how very wrong this entire Kelly myth about Police
and Judicial corruption and persecution is.
Here is a case, in 1877 of the Police and the Judicial system abiding strictly and
perfectly to the letter of the Law, in a case that if the 'persecuted Kellys' story were true would have been the easiest of all to turn into a conviction
and a prison sentence. In fact the
corruption was Ned Kellys, the perjurer
and the forger of signatures and fake documents, the self confessed thief, a
thoroughly dishonest villain who gamed the system to circumvent justice being
meted out to his brother. And lets also not forget the hypocrisy of the man who claimed to be the champion of the poor, here aiding and abetting his brother stealing from the poor,and escaping Justice. And just over a year later these proven thieves, liars, forgers and hypocrites were proclaiming Fitzpatrick was the crook and their sweet innocent selector selves were being maligned and vilified unfairly.
The closer I look at the Kellys and the
historical truths about the Outbreak, the more the Mythology is revealed as a flimsy cover-up and I see a villain and a brood of criminals.
Is there ANYONE who wishes to defend them ? So far it seems almost nobody dares.