Copyright in brief

Firstly, the correct spelling is COPYRIGHT - how many times do we have to point this out to the NKF Key Master?

Secondly, as I am banned from commenting on their Facebook Page, and no doubt even if I tried I would not be permitted to be a Member of the Forum itself - or would have been expelled like Bill and Carla were - I have nowhere to respond to their commentary except here.

Thirdly I want to point out that they are doing exactly what I predicted they would, attacking and abusing me rather than discussing the issue, or defending their hysterical over-reaction to that newspaper article. Apparently I am a faceless twisted gutless serial troll, and a sad excuse for a human being! But still no comment about Morrisseys PhD thesis, no news about the phantom New Years Day Benalla Races....

Lastly, the Key Master clearly doesn’t understand “Copyright”, if he writes nonsense like this “No doubt it will comment on this post on its Blog and if so a complaint will be made as it doesn’t have permission to.” He needs to better inform himself and his Members in regard to Copyright, because his example is leading them to post things like this “I don’t recall giving permission to show my statement on Dees website” .

The reality is this : copyright does not mean you can deny the right of anyone else to comment on, critique or make fun of your material, or from referring to it directly or quoting small parts of it. permission is not needed for that. What permission needs to be obtained for is use of the entire work, or substantial parts of it, particularly for commercial use . For more information go to www.copyright.org.au

Instead of wasting your time complaining to blogger, why not defend your point of view, make the case for what you believe in, point out where I have got it wrong. Attack ideas, not people, which is what fanatics do.

Neducator, Banker.

Ten days ago I predicted on this Blog  that this year the Kelly fanatics would mostly preoccupy themselves with attacking me rather than  responding to any of the issues that I was going to be raising. Sure enough, after I posted my discussion about  Morrisseys PhD thesis they proved me right by having another mad go at me, and posting personal attacks that I had to remove. They still haven’t made any attempt to discuss the Morrissey paper.

In my next post, after I had been accused of being a Fanatic I discussed the two features that define what it is to be a fanatic : beliefs that are extreme, and that are uncritical. To illustrate what I meant by uncritical I  wrote this :

The second important difference between enthusiasts and the fanatics is the way in which the belief of fanatics is uncritical. For example if someone were to suggest Ned was only ever kind and polite to women – that would  immediately be accepted.  No evidence would be needed to justify such a statement, because in the mind of the Kelly fanatic, its self evidently true. On the other hand, if someone were to suggest that on the contrary Ned was a bully and threatened and frightened women and children, that claim would immediately be rejected as Police lies, or the opinion of newspaper men who were in the employ of the rich and powerful Squatters. Furthermore the motives, family connections and identity of the person making that suggestion would be attacked. This is fanaticism, and I have been the focus of much of it for more than a year.

Much to my amazement, the very next day they proved me right again, providing us all with a perfect example of this aspect of their fanaticism, their craven uncritical acceptance of anything that fits their fixed beliefs and their prejudices.

This little gem began with the publication in the Wangaratta Chronicle on January 7^th of an article describing the discovery of a couple of letters, purported to have been written in 1879 by a Banker at the Benalla branch of the Colonial Bank of Australasia, in which various remarks were made about the Kelly gang and about the Police. The letters themselves were not published, and indeed the article states at the outset their origin remains to be established, but you wouldn’t guess that from the way the anti-MacFarlane Facebook page Kelly fanatics have managed to explode the few direct quotes  in this tantalizing article into a full-blown disproof of  Ian MacFarlanes  book. The way in which a few quotes from these letters have been used to justify all manner of claims about the author of the letter, the Kelly gang and Ian MacFarlanes book is an awesome wonder to behold, and a perfect example of how utterly these fanatics fail to understand anything about scholarship, about research, about objectivity and the critical use of reason.

“What amuses me  the most is these letters debunk many of MacFarlane’s theories” one breathless “amused” fanatic exclaims! That fanatic is the one who I think coined the term “neducation” and who has a webpage where he declares “Its time the facts were told” but here he betrays how little regard he really has for facts. Instead like the classic dangerously uncritical fanatic, he swallows a possible hoax hook line and sinker, for the simple reason that it fits his preconceived prejudices about Police and the Kellys . And he finds it amusing!! Someone else suggests theres no way there would be “cross referencing of this article on Dees blog…” 
and the response is: 
“No I don't think so Bob. Dee will just stick her head in the sand and pretend they are not real.”

Got that wrong too I am afraid – I know you all read my Blog but your memories must be poor: in case you missed my Post entitled “Fanaticism is a scourge”  or have forgotten what you read heres a quote from it to remind you:

"There is no webpage or book or You Tube article, or Kelly “thing” or place of any kind that I could get my hands on that I wouldnt read, photocopy, download, visit, buy or borrow if it was at all possible. That’s because I am not a fanatic with a fixed inviolable belief, but an enthusiast, and I am interested in what the truth about Ned Kelly really is, not in defending a fixed predetermined Creed about Saint Ned. Unlike Fanatics I cant tell if a book  has something to teach me, or if I like it or not until I have actually read it.”

The important point here is nothing to do with the letters – I will discuss them soon enough – the important point here is the use of reason and the need to be objective and critical in relation to historical evidence. What we actually have here is a newspaper article containing a journalists selected quotes from a couple of anonymously donated unpublished documents of uncertain provenance and authorship, and all of it channeled through a “self declared Kelly Tragic”  – and that is all. We do NOT have the letters, so it is very premature for anyone to be making claims, based on this one article from a provincial newspaper, that the letters somehow debunk anything, or provide “proof” of any particular view. People leaping to conclusions and making these mad claims are just demonstrating their complete failure to understand the nature of evidence and how historical research is done, or are just desperate and clutching at straws. A whole lot of research needs to be done before anyone can start making claims about the letters such as that they debunk anything.

But what of the letters? From what we know of their actual content rather than the extravagant claims made for them by the fanatics, they contain nothing that’s new, just the recycled opinions of a man, possibly a Banker, commenting on things that he has heard and read about. Anyone who would describe them as “undoubtedly a first hand account” is also talking nonsense – they are not, even if the letters are genuine, “first hand accounts” of anything : they are gossip.  

Now, being gossip doesn’t render these letters useless, or devoid of interest altogether because there may be truth in gossip, and even when there isn’t, it can be informative to know what people are gossiping about, and how and why rumours and urban mythology is growing and spreading. However, clearly this Banker would have no first hand knowledge of the Fitzpatrick incident, and he wasn’t at the Races himself to observe the Kelly gang and their racehorse, or witnessing Police conversations about their responses to reports about where the Kellys were. Instead he is said to be quoting to his mother things he has read in the newspaper, and so to say for example that “there was great dissatisfaction at the movement of the Police in the matter of the Kellys” is not any sort of revelation to anyone either then or now. The writer of the article introduces the word “cowardice” but I don’t see it in any of the quotes.

There are in fact a number of good reasons why anyone making use of this document needs to be rather careful, before jumping to conclusions, but these are red flags the Kelly fanatics have so far ignored. For a start, access to the document is controlled by a “self confessed Kelly tragic” who has so far failed to release the document for everyone to read in its entirety.  Would such a person release quotes that undermined the Kelly mythology? Hardly - so perhaps he is concealing those? Who would know?

Secondly the article says the letters are “misdated” to January 3^rd 1878 – because events recalled in them hadn’t occurred in January 1878, and therefore it is assumed it was simply an 19th century  “typo". Fair enough, an easy mistake to make at the turn of the calendar, perhaps even for a Banker , a person we would normally expect to be meticulous in his record keeping – but then, if the letters were not genuine could that be a clue to an error made by someone perpetrating a hoax and getting his dates all mixed up? Its possible.

Also VERY curious in my opinion is that a Banker, writing only three weeks after a sensational Bank robbery apparently makes no mention of it at all, but instead discusses a New Years Day horse race? Really? And again, the second letter written  a mere four DAYS after the second equally sensational Jerilderie hold up, again fails to mention it. Instead he discusses events from months before. One would have thought Bank robberies would feature big in the mind of a Banker, but if a forger had his dates mixed up then perhaps that would better explain such absences. 

To me, this letter has “Hoax” written all over it, but I am not going to jump to conclusions just yet. It may be genuine but if so, it adds almost nothing to what is already well known and accepted as either true or part of the popular understandings of the time about the Kelly outbreak.  The bit about the Kellys being at the races and running a horse sounds very much like urban myth making to me, and I will be surprised if that ever turns out to be true. To find out for sure we will have to wait till the letters are released , and the “Kelly Tragic” announces the results of his investigations. I don’t recall reading anything about the Kellys racing a horse, but that doesn’t mean much - maybe others have and can full us all in.

Finally, I note a prominent “ Member” on the Ned Kelly Forum, claims to have been doing his own investigations on this for a couple of days but so far has drawn blanks. God alone knows what hes been doing for two days : I discovered in half an hour something that might explain why he keeps drawing blanks, and which seriously adds to the odour of “Hoax” about these letters : there is no record in the Argus or anywhere else that I can find of a race meeting at Benalla on January 1st; the race meeting discussed in this letter is almost certainly a fantasy! On New Years Day there was a big race meeting at Flemington, but according to the Argus the Annual Benalla Race Meeting occurred on Friday 28^th February and Saturday 1^st March, 1879. According to the news report it was well attended.

Now THAT is amusing!

Fanaticism is a scourge

In a Comment following my Post about Morrisseys PhD thesis,  “Brendan” makes a number of  statements that I would like to respond to. Firstly, he asks this question:

“You keep calling people who sympathize with Ned Kelly ' Kelly fanatics ‘, but aren't you (Dee) a Kelly fanatic yourself?

That’s a fair question, and this is my answer: No, I am not a fanatic; Instead I would call myself an enthusiast, as would many people on both “ sides” who are interested in Ned Kelly and the Kelly story.  Brendan thinks I am a fanatic because  he says I have spent all this time “posting on and creating Blogs about Ned Kelly” but if you look at a definition of the word “fanatic” you will see its not enough just to spend a lot of time on something or have a passionate interest in something to be a fanatic:

FANATIC : “a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.”

There are two main  differences between an enthusiast and a fanatic, and the first is the intensity with which a belief is held – it has to be “extreme”. In my view, extreme Kelly enthusiasts are the ones who elevate Ned Kelly to the status of a national icon, who wreath images of him with flowers and kisses, who attribute to him lofty sentiments worthy of a Saint, and a reformer, who see him as an inspiration, a role model and unique Legend.  Their extreme enthusiasm is further demonstrated by the aggression and hostility with which they defend their views against all comers, regarding every person who has an alternative opinion as “anti-Ned”, as someone to be silenced if at all possible,as someone to whom no respect or courtesy is due.

The second important difference between enthusiasts and the fanatics is the way in which the belief of fanatics is uncritical. For example if someone were to suggest Ned was only ever kind and polite to women – that would  immediately be accepted.  No evidence would be needed to justify such a statement, because in the mind of the Kelly fanatic, its self evidently true. On the other hand, if someone were to suggest that on the contrary Ned was a bully and threatened and frightened women and children, that claim would immediately be rejected as Police lies, or  the opinion of newspaper men who were in the employ of the rich and powerful Squatters. Furthermore the motives, family connections and identity of the person making that suggestion would be attacked. This is fanaticism, and I have been the focus of much of it for more than a year.

No, Brendan I am not a fanatic. I don’t attack people who disagree with me, or by devious methods seek to have their web sites closed down and removed from the internet, because I am an enthusiast not a fanatic, and I support the right of people to have different opinions to mine. I listen to, read about and seriously consider viewpoints that are not necessarily my own, and it doesn’t concern me if other people have alternative opinions. I would not, for example ever have an extremist Facebook page devoted to attacking the author and supporters of a book that I didn’t agree with even before I had read it:thats extreme and fanatical. I might write a Post about what I don’t like about a book or where I disagree with its conclusions, but I wouldn’t advise people to use it for toilet paper or make mad racist remarks about its author because I am an enthusiast and not a fanatic.I think of Bill, Sharon and Brian as enthusiasts as well: we share an interest in the Kelly story but are not haters of people who hold other views ( and before you start jumping to conclusions the only connections i have with these people is what is Posted on the Internet) 

Now, next Brendan comments on my claim that, as he puts it “sympathisers  are not facing the 'truth' about Ned, deliberately avoiding articles and books that aren't ' pro Kelly’” 

He says that I do “the exact same thing” 

and that I avoid “anything which is not negatve about Ned Kelly” 

( without the double negatve it becomes “I avoid anything POSITIVE about Ned Kelly” – which is easier to comprehend)

Well, I have to simply deny that absolutely. Have I not recently read Max Browns Australian Son?  There is no webpage or book or You Tube article, or Kelly “thing” or place of any kind that I could get my hands on that I wouldnt read, photocopy, download, visit, buy or borrow if it was at all possible. That’s because I am not a fanatic with a fixed inviolable belief, but an enthusiast, and I am interested in what the truth about Ned Kelly really is, not in defending a fixed predetermined Creed about Saint Ned. Unlike Fanatics I cant tell if a book  has something to teach me, or if I like it or not until I have actually read it. 

Lastly you say this :

"People who sympathize with Ned Kelly and his gang always will; no matter what you or anyone has to say, that will not change. We have all read what you have read and more; you views will not convert anyone."

As a definition of what a Kelly Fanatic is, that statement pretty well says it perfectly, and its worth reading it again:  “People who symapthise with Ned Kelly and his gang always will ; no matter what you or anyone has to say, that will not change” Given this view of yours I am left to wonder about why you read my Blog. If nothing I write could possibly change your mind, why are you wasting your time here? Is it just to stir?

My final comment is to repeat something I have written several times before, that I am not interested, and have never been interested in converting the fanatics. I would be very happy for them to stay away from my Blog and hide away out of site in the Ned Kelly Forums secret Members Only hideout and leave me alone. It’s a pointless waste of energy and time to try to “convert” people whose minds are already made up., and who say that no matter what anyone says, they won’t change, as you do. No, my interest is in all the other enthusiasts and interested people searching the net for ideas and information and opinions about Ned Kelly, and in making sure that the fanatics aren’t the only people who have a voice.

PS : Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts, but do you realize you did exactly what I was saying Kelly fanatics do? Instead of talking about Morrisseys PhD thesis, which was the topic of the post, you were ignoring it and  having a go at me!

Morrisseys Brilliant PhD Thesis : A Commentary

You might remember that I wrote in my most recent Post “Ned Kelly : Stock Thief” that you wouldn’t find references to Ian Jones books in Doug Morrisseys PhD thesis, because the Jones books weren't  written till 5 or more years after the PhD thesis was. But then I wondered, would I find references to Morrisseys PhD thesis in Ian Jones books?  Surely, I thought, such a  rare and rigorous piece of  scholarship, an impartial insight and perspective on the world of the Kelly Gang would have been an important resource for anyone attempting to document the entire Kelly story, as Jones was clearly setting out to do?

Now, Ive complained  before about the unhelpful way Jones has listed his sources, as footnotes to each chapter  of  “A short Life” but without an alphabetical Bibliography. This means that to find out if and where he may have consulted Morrissey one has to laboriously trawl through 25 pages of tiny closely spaced notes looking for any mention of his name – and to my surprise, the only thing I could find was a single reference to the article from the Victorian Historical Journal of 1995, but nothing about the PhD Thesis. 

In the Notes to Chapter One Jones appears to name the Morrissey article as the source of his statements about acquaintances of the Kellys from Wallan moving to the north east to settle near Benalla. Ominously, he doesn't follow this citation with a bracketed "hereafter.." to imply later uses of this citation - as for example he wrote for the next citation: "Minutes of Evidence taken before Royal Commission on the Police force  of Victoria 1881 (hereafter Commission)" so we are left to ponder why it is that from an authoritative article about Kelly criminality, the only information Jones finds worth referring to is an irrelevant piece of trivia. It reminds me of the scene in the Monty Python film "The Life of Brian" when several heavily armed and uniformed Romans enter a tiny house looking for Brian  - who along with several of his rebel supporters are "hiding" inside by crouching down and pretending to be furniture  among other hopeless attempts to conceal themselves - and the Centurions  emerge saying yes they found something, a spoon!

However I couldn’t find reference to the Thesis anywhere, in two such searches. Its possible I may have missed it – if I have, I expect Sharon will let me know pretty soon, and that would be fine -  but it would seem Jones either wasn’t aware of this Thesis when he wrote the book in the early 1990’s, or else he deliberately chose to ignore it. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he hadn’t heard of it. 

But what are we to make of the fact that in 2003, when he revised and republished “ A Short Life” it still isn’t mentioned ?  By then, Morrissey’s work had certainly been known about in the Kelly world – its mentioned for example by Alex McDermott in his commentary to The Jerilderie Letter published in 2001. But in the Preface to the second Edition, dated March 2003 Jones writes “its encouraging that, since 1995, nothing has emerged to demand any significant change to the portrait I then presented” Nothing! He lists and thanks innumerable people who assisted him with the second Edition, naming people I recognize from the Ned Kelly Forum, from the Iron Outlaw site, even people who contributed to my own Forums earlier in 2014, but yet again there is no mention of Morrisseys Thesis.  He did however have time for and list “Ned Kelly died for our sins” a work I admit to not having read yet, but which somehow I suspect hasn’t a great deal to contribute. Its hard to imagine these omissions, these glaring omissions are from ignorance, but when the book is revised a third time, in 2008, it becomes impossible.

I can only conclude that Ian Jones deliberately chose to ignore Doug Morrisseys landmark research into Kelly history and culture – and it can only be for one reason : it didn’t match the story Ian Jones wanted to tell. In fact it turned it on its head, but after decades of Kelly “sympathy” Jones wasn’t for turning. Neither was he about to let the cat out of the bag, to let it be known such a work existed, even just to criticize it. 

My next thought was "Well why has NOBODY criticised it, why has no Kelly sympathiser been willing to front up to Morrisseys work and challenge it - I am assuming they don't agree with it of course - even though they have known about it for at least 20 years? Could it be they simply don't have an answer to it and so have developed a conspiracy of silence around Morrisseys “Inconvenient truth”? Are the Kelly devotees hiding stuff from us?"

And  after a little more searching about, I have to tell you, the answer is yes. And this is my evidence:

Well firstly there is the Jones book. Ian Jones clearly knows the Kelly literature intimately, and has an obvious burning passion for the Kelly story. I am sure he keeps his eyes peeled for every mention and contribution, no matter how small to the Kelly literature. I simply cannot believe he just missed seeing the Morrissey paper, that it slipped in under the radar. Its absence from his bibliographies is a telling omission that needs an explanation. I would guess he knows all about it but doesn't like it. In the same way I am sure he knows all about Ian MacFarlanes book, doesnt like - indeed, hates it -  and advises anyone who will listen, such as Peter Fitzsimons to ignore it, as he himself did with Morrisseys. Not a good look.

Next, I looked at the other popular sources of Kelly information, namely books and the Web. I used the “Search” feature on the Ned Kelly Forum for “Morrissey”. They recently boasted a million hits, but Morrissey didn’t come up once. However, I did come across a post that provided links to two online articles from the Victorian Historical Journal. One of the links was to the Morrissey article I wrote about previously, “Ned Kelly and Horse and cattle Stealing” and the other, from 2004 was entitled “From Eureka to Ned Kelly: A Police force out of step with Society” The only indication that anyone read these articles came from a single response, an NKF member commenting on the negative article about the Police force: they love to read anything negative about the Police! – but regarding the Horse and Cattle stealing article : an embarrassing silence!

I used the “Search” feature on the worlds greatest Kelly website, one that’s been going for more than a decade, and boasts 8.5 million "hits" annualy: ONE hit – a mention, an aside really in a long article about the Jerilderie Letter; certainly no discussion about it. Remember months ago I reviewed the blurb for the Iron outlaw Brad Webbs i-Book "Ned Kelly"? If you read that blurb again now, the massive hole in the story left by taking out all reference to horse stealing and the Kelly criminality leaps out.Its a glaring omission.

I did a search on my Kindle copy of Peter Fitzsimons 2013 biography of Ned Kelly: not one mention – and, by the way not one mention of another landmark publication, The Kelly Gang Unmasked. We know that Ian Jones warned Peter Fitzsimons not to read or reference the Kelly Gang Unmasked , saying that he hated it– I wonder if he warned him off Morrisseys article too? Two very curious omissions indeed.

I checked the Bibliography of McMenomys Ned Kelly (1984): the PhD thesis isnt mentioned, but “Ned Kelly Sympathisers” by Doug Morrissey, 1978 is listed.

I checked the Bibliography of Ian Shaws “Glenrowan” : the PhD thesis isn’t mentioned but  “Ned Kellys World” 1984 by Doug Morrissey is listed.

Its listed in The Kelly Gang Unmasked – of course!

And finally, to my great delight,  and perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised but when I searched “11 Mile Creek” I discovered Brian Stevenson had written a wonderful 5 part review of the entire thesis! The first part was Posted in 2010 and the last in 2012.  It attracted a couple of Comments from Sharon, a couple from our dear friend Anonymous who wondered why the huge rewards posted for the Gang were never  claimed by the ordinary folk of Kelly Country, and there was a Comment from "Lisa" who rubbished Morrisseys work claiming it was based on reading a couple of newspaper articles from the time! Other than that, not a word of challenge or dispute.

I suggest everyone go to the site and enter “Morrissey” into the search box top left of the Eleven Mile Creek Home page, and you will be able to read his commentary for yourselves. What a pity the document itself hasn’t been published somewhere so we can all read the original document as well - its a document of rare quality and importance in the vast largely uncritical chaos of Kellyana, that nobody should ignore. For the time being though, we have Brian Stevenson to thank for making the effort to get a copy and post a really useful discussion about it. 

So what are we to make of the way in which this significant and insightful document has been responded to by the Kelly sympathizers?  The Morrissey Thesis rests like a massive unexploded bomb in the engine-room of the kelly sympathisers steamboat -  what they have done is pretend it doesn’t exist, ignore it, try not to draw anyones attention to it, and tiptoe about it hoping it won't go off and sink the ship.  Any of them who may have read it, or even the essays derived from it like the one I have been reviewing will have realized the devastating impact knowledge of this analysis inevitably will have on such a large part of the Kelly myths, particularly the one about the Kellys being more or less innocent victims of a corrupt Police force – it more or less destroys that fantasy completely!

And they know it – which is why they refuse to  discuss it, just like they dont discuss the fact they know Ned Kelly lied about his  participation in the Fitzpatrick incident, and just like they know his claim to have fired once and killed Lonigan is wrong. The dominant theme of criminality and the centrality of industrial scale stock theft in the Kelly story is just one more of the many truths Kelly fanatics  don’t want anyone else to know about, but which will no longer be dirty little sympathizer secrets. The truth is definitely coming out.

Ned Kelly was just a stock thief

A Happy New Year to one and all, and Welcome to my first Post for 2015. 

Given the way interest in this Blog has been  rising at such a rate, and the way in which other Kelly related sites seem to be in serious decline, I have high hopes for the continuing success of this Blog in 2015. By success, I mean increasing the readership and thereby the public understanding of how comprehensively the Kelly myth makers have misrepresented the truth about the Kelly outbreak, about Ned Kelly and his gang. Success will also be counted by further exposure of the bullying and threatening tactics used by desperate kelly fanatics struggling to prevent publication and discussion of alternatives to their mythology. In the last month, they have posted Comments on this Blog threatening and abusing named individuals who they disagree with, and warning me that "2015 is going to be a massive wake up call" so I expect this sort of sinister anonymous thuggery will continue and probably intensify as the year goes on, as they find themselves further and further threatened by the continuing presence of this Blog. I predict all their efforts will be directed at silencing me and almost no effort will be directed at answering the critical issues that I will be presenting. Their method is not to defend their mythology directly, but to attack anything and anyone threatening it. So we shall all watch what they do with interest.

As for me, I am not taking a backward step, and heres my first Post for 2015: enjoy!

NED KELLY WAS JUST A STOCK THIEF:


“Selectors Squatters and Stock thieves : A social history of Kelly Country” is the title of the PhD thesis written by Dr Doug Morrissey over 25 years ago. Sadly, the entire thesis seems not to be accessible on the Internet, but fortunately  an article derived from it is freely available on the  web site of the State Library of Victoria. Its an article originally published in the Victorian Historical Journal in 1995 but which has since been digitized, and its titled “Ned Kelly, and Horse and Cattle Stealing”.

I downloaded it some months ago but have only just got round to reading it.

The important point about this work is that it’s from a PhD thesis. This means that it’s a piece of original research that has been undertaken with academic rigour, with attention to detail and to historical accuracy, and has been submitted for serious scrutiny by Morrissey’s examiners who would most likely have been history professors with expertise in Australian history.  If it was rubbish, Morrissey would have been failed and he would not be a Doctor. This doesn’t automatically mean that whatever his conclusions are, they must be correct, but it does mean that his findings and conclusions need to be taken serious note of. Importantly, as with any decent academic research, Morrissey backs up all his assertions with references to his sources, and these are listed in the notes at the end. His sources range from the Jerilderie Letter to the Report of the Royal Commission, and through to modern writers such as McQuilton and McMenomy. However, you wont find a reference to Ian Jones anywhere – why?  - because this work was published in 1987, 8 years before “A Short Life!”

What Morrissey shows is that Ned Kelly was above and before anything else, an “aggressive professional stock thief”.  If there was a book about Ned Kelly that finished two and a half  years before he died, it would only have been about his life as a thief. There would be nothing to suggest that one day he would come to be regarded as Australias Robin Hood, no hint that he would be lauded as a champion of the poor, nothing to suggest he ever thought  about a Republic of north East Victoria or about  “suffering innocents”. The only possible narrative would be about his life as a member of a criminal family and its associates, and his exploits as a notorious stock thief.  Kelly devotees may well want to deny this, and express outrage at such a suggestion, but this claim should not be news to any but the most ignorant Kelly devotee. The unfortunate truth for the Kelly devotee is that Ned Kelly made that precise boast about himself in the Jerilderie Letter , declaring that his stock theft was not a casual and occasional incident but a major undertaking on an industrial scale: 

“Therefore I started wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing”

  

and 

“....no person had anything to do with the stealing and selling of horses but me and George King”

and 

“ Flood..is the greatest horse stealer with the exception of myself and George King that I know of”

Morrissey documents the long history of stock theft by the Kellys, Quinns and Lloyds, and other local families that they associated with, going back to 1856 when they were linked to “cattle duffing” in the Wallan and Donnybrook areas. He describes how mobs of stolen horses and cattle were driven along well established high country stock routes that passed the Glenmore Run, the Quinn stronghold in the King Valley, and from there were hidden in the dense bush or  driven across the Murray into New South Wales to be sold. Stock “acquired” in NSW was brought back on the return journey. Morrissey points out the networks made up of the many friends and known criminal associates of the Kellys who happened to live near these stock routes and who would have provided safe haven for the horses on back paddocks as well as intelligence about Police activities in the area. He also describes the various methods used to dispose of horses, by altering their branding, by releasing them to be impounded and then bought back cheaply, and by the creation of falsified documentation and Bills of Sale. It seems to be common knowledge that Ned Kelly used the Alias of “ Mr Thompson” in these transactions.

Something I hadn’t realized, and which shocked me when I read it, was that Ned Kelly was quite willing to do deals and work with Squatters – his supposed enemies. Much worse, however was his willingness to steal from selectors, the poor people of the districts whose cause these days he is said to have championed. In fact, what Morrissey shows is that Kelly stole from anyone he could, but this was typical of the way these criminal gangs and alliances operated, stealing from the rich and the poor whenever the opportunity arose, and even from each other. Morrissey names several selectors who suffered because horses were stolen from them by the Kellys; no doubt they weren’t the only ones:

Morrissey writes:

  “Even after he became an outlaw Ned Kelly continued to steal livestock belonging to the districts poor selectors. In 1879 the Kelly Gang stole a horse belonging to William Cass a Glenrowan selector in poor economic circumstances. The Lands Department saw Cass and family as “ rather unfortunate selectors” and said of William that he “is the only son who has been able to keep a roof over his poor old fathers head” The Kelly Gangs theft of one of the poor mans few horses only added to his considerable difficulties”

Later he writes

 “ Occasionally the thieves would return to the scene of the crime “to laugh at the poor people for making such a fuss about their bloody old horse” In some cases Steele said “ the ruffians have taken the only pair of draught horses a farmer has”

These depressing revelations demonstrate that Ned Kellys claims in the Jerilderie Letter  and elsewhere to be against the squatters and on the side of the poor to be lies and hypocritical posturing, and further expose the nonsense of modern Kelly devotees claims that Ned Kelly was Australia’s  Robin Hood: Ned Kelly didn’t rob from the rich and give to the poor – he robbed from the rich AND the poor, kept what he wanted for himself and his family, and paid off anyone who assisted him. This of course is precisely what one would expect of a Psychopath- contempt rather than empathy or pity for the struggles of the poor selector.

Clearly, stock theft was something about which Ned Kelly himself was very proud, and it was a central and dominant feature of his  adult life and of the social networks that he was part of until he disappeared into the Bush after the “Fitzpatrick Incident". Curiously though - but understandably - this important and overriding feature of the life of Ned Kelly rates hardly a mention in the Kelly literature: Nobody wants to go there, perhaps because they don’t like to dwell on the disappointing truth that their icon was actually a stock thief.  I would suggest more importantly they don’t want to go there because its there that the origins of the Kelly outbreak are found, and that’s not where the Kelly devotees want them to be. They want the outbreak to have sprung from police corruption and the oppression  and victimization of  the innocent poor,  the abuse of power by authority hand in glove with rich landowners, from police lies and drunkenness, from anything at all as long as it directs our attention away from Ned Kellys longstanding and extensive ties to criminal networks and self confessed immersion in “wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing”, his thefts from rich and poor, squatter and selector alike. Ned Kelly, and his sympathisers then and now want to pretend that the “outbreak” is a story of innocence  being denied justice and liberty, when in fact, as Morrisseys careful scrutiny of the historical record shows, it arose from a particular stock thieving operation that went wrong.

The operation that went wrong was known as “ The Whitty Larceny”.  In the Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly openly admitted that it was he who had stolen 11 horses, from Mr Whitty and several other Squatters in the Moyhu district in August 1877.  They were worth  £170 (more than $30,000 in todays money according to Ian Jones in 1995!) so this was not mere petty theft! Additional horses stolen later, not from squatters but from selectors around Greta were added to the mob , part of which was subsequently sold  across the Murray river, and the remainder kept out of sight  on a selection owned by the Baumgarten brothers, who wrote out a cheque for  £18  to “Mr J Thompson”. To cut a long story short, what went wrong was that as the Police accumulation of evidence proceeded and pressure was applied to various minor characters in the crime, some of them cracked, and became police informers. Warrants were issued for the arrest of  Ned Kelly and Dan Kelly,  and it was in relation to these warrants that Constable Fitzpatrick found himself going to the Kelly household to arrest them. The rest  you might say, is History, because as everyone knows, the Kellys reacted to this attempt with violence and fled into the bush, where six months later 3 policemen were killed and the gang was outlawed. But a little over two years later it was all over – they were all dead.

As Morrissey points out, the significance of the Whitty larceny, and the Kelly brothers involvement in it quickly became lost in the more serious events of the Kelly Outbreak. The Legal case he describes as a “landmark” because it “systematically exposed for Public scrutiny the complex network and the shady world of horse and cattle thieves”

What Morrisseys work has shown is that Ned Kelly was first and foremost a horse and cattle thief. His short-lived career as a Bushranger was a reaction to “heat” that was applied to him and his family by Police investigating stock theft, rather than as a political campaign arising from a wider dissatisfaction with the administration of Justice, or anything to do with innocent poor people being bullied by the rich, which of course is the way Kelly apologists like to tell it. 

(Further reflections on this topic to follow in my next Post)