The Greatest of the Kelly Myths Part 2 : 1866-1871

Ned Kelly often robbed people at gunpoint : its a terrifying experience for the victim. 

I ended the last Post with these words “What has to be accepted, because that is what all the evidence shows, is that at least while Red Kelly was alive, his family were not the victims of Police persecution, or being “exasperated to madness by ill treatment.” I then wrote that in this post I would examine what happened between the Police and the Kellys after Red was gone: “Maybe there we will find the proof of what Ned claimed...So in this Post I am going to continue to examine what we actually know about the interactions between the Kellys and the Police, and see what evidence exists for Ned Kellys claim that it was ill treatment by Police that drove him to do what he did.

Red died at the very end of 1866. Up until then, apart from that lapse in the last year of his life, neither he nor any member of his growing family had been in trouble with the Police. However within two months of Reds death, on February 19^th 1867 Ellen Kelly was convicted  of assault and fined 40 shillings with 5 shillings costs. In mentioning the case, Ian Jones reports an ominous detail about the sentencing Police Magistrate: 12 years earlier he had cut down ‘an innocent and helpless digger named Henry Powell after the  Eureka Stockade battle’ So is this the person who began the Police persecution of the Kellys ?

In fact the case was mounted by Ellen Kellys sister-in-law, Anne Kelly, and was an entirely domestic issue. I wonder why Jones included the irrelevant detail about the Magistrate - was it to introduce a subtle hint of something corrupt going on and to encourage the myth to grow? A few months later Ellen was before the court yet again in yet another civil matter – this time she was convicted of using abusive and threatening language - but again it was nothing to do with Police, but a dispute with her landlord and even though Ellen was fined another 40s, (£2) the Landlord was fined £5, and both were ordered to keep the peace for six months; again, nothing here to support the myth of Police and the privileged such as landlords, persecuting and corruptly oppressing the Kellys.

Ellens next appearance was a long three years later, in 1870, at the Wangaratta Police Court on May 9^th when she was charged with selling ‘sly grog’. William Thomas was a ‘Liquor License Inspector’ who told the Court that he went to Ellen Kellys house and paid 2s for a glass of Brandy. Ellen, needless to say, did not have a Licence. Surely, if there was a campaign of police harassment and persecution against the Kellys, here was a perfect opportunity to catch her out? In fact, when questioned Mr Thomas “would not swear that the woman in court was the woman who served him with liquor” and so the case was dismissed. Justin Corfield says in his Kelly encyclopaedia that ‘of the 8 people charged for selling alcohol illegally that day, Ellen Kelly was the only one acquitted’ This case can only be regarded as evidence that at least in 1870 there still was NOT a campaign of Police persecution of the Kelly family – if there had been, the informer wouldn’t have hesitated to identify her, and she would have been convicted and punished along with the other 7 who were. But no such thing happened – she went home a rather lucky and free woman, no harassment, no ill treatment just due process by a Court that treated her by the book. And yet there was no doubt someone had taken 2s off the Inspector for a glass of Brandy served to him at Ellens place. So did the Inspector mount a campaign of harassment and repeated visits till he finally trapped her again? Theres no record anywhere that he did. No harassment. No ill treatment.

By this time, May1870, her son Ned had also begun making appearances in Court.  Lets look at them and see if they are the exasperating 'ill treatment' that made Ned Kelly into a criminal.

The first one in October 1869 related to an altercation between Ned Kelly, now aged 14 and a Chinese Hawker named Ah Fook.  Following Ah Fooks complaint  that he had been beaten and robbed the Constabulary arrived the following day to arrest Ned, but he bolted out the back door and headed for the bush- as any innocent person would!  He was chased down and arrested. In court, the three witnesses were Neds sister Annie, a future brother in law, and an employee of Ellen Kelly! One can hardly have expected these witnesses not to back Neds version of events but because they all contradicted Ah Fooks version the charge was dismissed, though according to Ian Jones “with apparent reluctance". Ian Jones quotes Beechworths “Advertiser” which wrote:“ It is impossible to avoid coming to any other conclusion that the charge of robbery has been trumped up by the Chinaman to be revenged on Ned Kelly, who had evidently assaulted him”. Jones than adds: “That may well have been true though it means that the Kelly witnesses also lied” Jones also quotes the Benalla Ensign: “The cunning of Ned and his mates got him off”

So just to be clear about it, this was an argument between Ned Kelly and a Chinese hawker who complained he had been assaulted and robbed by Ned, but when it went to Court, the charges were dismissed on the evidence of witnesses with a rather obvious conflict of interest.  Is there a reader who thinks anything at all about this case looks like Police ‘ill treatment’ of Ned? If anyone got a raw deal it looks to me as if it was the poor chinese hawker. (The sinister end to this story, pointed out recently by Peter Newman is that Ah Fooks body was found a few years later, ‘strangely mutilated. An inquest jury returned a verdict of willful murder’  The murderer was never identified)

The next charges on Ned Kelly’s record are three counts of Highway Robbery in the company of Harry Power, an escaped prisoner on the run. As even Kelly sympathisers agree, Ned became his accomplice in mid 1869 for a short time and then again for a few months at the beginning of 1870.  His first spell as Harrys assistant ended in humiliation for Ned when they were discovered and shot at, and as a result of Ned panicking, they were nearly caught. A clue to why Ned accompanied Harry in the first place, and why despite the humiliation he returned a few months later is provided by Ian Jones who says that after the first episode Ned “returned empty handed to the winter world of boggy tracks and swampy paddocks and the day-to-day drudgery of 88 acres”

In truth working a selection was a long, difficult backbreaking slog, there was no glamour or excitement in it, and it was almost impossible to make a living from it, especially in the early years. By contrast, Bush ranging had much to offer a young man - a glamorous wild life on horseback, easy money, short hours, travel, excitement...and of course some risks that certain personality types would be attracted to. 

In the end, after a few more months Ned gave it away for the second time. As Powers 'apprentice' Ned Kelly had learned how to intimidate people and take what he wanted off them by sticking a loaded gun into their faces, but he left before he had learned the subtleties of the art, of how to intimidate sufficiently to obtain submission but not so much that he would provoke retaliation and precipitate a murderous gunfight. (As a result his first attempt to put into action what he had only partly learned from Power was the disaster at Stringybark Creek) He left because Harry was too difficult a person to live with, and he returned to his mothers place.

However the police were ready for him and he was arrested in a dawn raid and  three charges were laid against him in May 1870. Does anyone think it is harassment or persecution or ill treatment for the Police to arrest and charge someone thought to be involved in highway robbery of innocent travellers at gunpoint?  And does anyone think Ned was being badly treated and persecuted when the first charge, Robbery in company at Kilfera was dismissed because the witness could not clearly identify Ned; or when the second, Robbery under arms at Seymour was also dismissed when the Police could not locate the principal witness, or when after a couple of remands the third was also dropped because it seems Ned provided the Police with information about Harry Power? Where is the Kelly sympathizer who thinks this is the sort of ‘ill treatment’ by Police that would drive a man to madness, who thinks this episode is what drove Ned Kelly to become a criminal? Later, the Police lent Ned Kelly money to pay for hotel accommodation and expenses and though he promised to repay it, he never did. In addition, according to Ian Jones an offer was made to help Ned resettle out of the district and away from the criminal environment of his extended family – on what planet is any of this harassment and persecution? Surely if the Police were engaged in a corrupt campaign of harassment and persecution of the Kellys, witnesses could have been ‘found”, deals for providing information could have been made and then broken once the necessary intel had been extracted, convictions would have been obtained one way or another and certainly free hotel accommodation and loans would not have been provided.

By now Ned Kelly might have been tempted to start thinking he could get away with anything. I find it curious that these various episodes of fair and lenient treatment by the Police are never mentioned by Kelly in the story he told of his life in the Jerilderie letter, but the next one, just a few months later in 1871which results in his first conviction is recounted in great detail as Ned tries to explain away his guilt. He was found guilty of  the assault of another hawker and handed a sentence of three months imprisonment. There was also a £10 fine or an added three months hard labour for Sending an Indecent Letter and sureties totaling £60 to pay. This incident was called ‘a grubby adolescent lark’ by Peter Fitzsimons, and ‘a silly squabble’ by Ian Jones, but both of these authors glossed over the fact that it was actually an entirely gratuitous violent assault by an impudent youth on a man whose wife he had earlier insulted in a most offensive manner. It is also an early example of the type of person Ned targeted : a ‘hawker’ is not a rich gentleman landowner, a squatter,  or a member of the upper class but a working class salesman – Ned targeted everyone.

Read my earlier post about it this ‘grubby lark’ HERE and realize yet again that there is nothing in this incident that could be regarded as ‘ill treatment’ by Police. Instead it’s the sort of thuggish behavior that Ned had been observing, and now copied as he grew up in the extended family of his mother, the Quinns and their associates. Red Kelly, Neds father had  tried to shield his children from the negative influence of these people, and it was much more likely that it was their example and their influence on Ned rather than that of the police that caused him to go ‘mad’ and become a career criminal. None of them offered to help the poverty stricken Ellen with Ned’s £10 fine, not even his uncle Jack who had recently been paid £500 for dobbing in Harry Power, so Ned had to do the extra three months.

So Ned went to prison for the first time, into the Beechworth Gaol exactly 10 years to the day before he was finally hanged for murder, and as a further sign of how much the Authorities wanted to oppress Ned Kelly and of how corrupt they were, they let him out 5 weeks early, on March 27^th 1871 – and not only that, he received a genuinely friendly visit back at home, from Constable Bracken, apparently in a vain attempt to encourage Ned to mend his ways.

At this point in the Kelly story, 1871, its very plain what the problem the Kelly defenders now have in relation to their core belief about the origins of Ned Kellys criminality. They say, and so did Ned Kelly himself that the Police drove him to it, that he had to take a stand because he couldn’t take any more of their corruption, their persecution their ill treatment of himself and his family. The massive problem the Kelly apologists have in early 1871 is that up to this point, all recorded incidents were the result of acts of lawlessness deliberately undertaken by the Kellys themselves, and none of them involved any kind of police harassment or persecution. Furthermore, in responding to these acts of lawlessness, the evidence is that the Police and Judiciary were lenient and more than fair. How can any sympathizer say otherwise when he knows for a fact that Ned was Harry Powers accomplice, and DID participate in numerous armed robberies with him, and yet he went free.

The idea that Ned Kelly’s family was persecuted, so he turned to crime is contradicted emphatically by the actual historical facts that show that long before there was anything that could in any way be termed Police persecution, Ned Kelly was immersing himself in a world of active criminality and lawlessness.  There are no ‘alternative facts’; these are the ACTUAL facts, not a version or an interpretation or a theory but the actual historical reality.

Is there any Kelly apologist, Kelly descendant or Kelly keyboard warrior who reads these words who would dare to still assert that Ned Kelly turned to crime because the Police drove him to it? The only people who could continue to assert that would be people who are ignorant of the historical facts. If there are relevant facts about Kellys life up to 1871 that Ive missed, please point them out.

But there are more to come in Part Three.