Ned Kelly : Drunk and Resisting Arrest

So, while Ned Kelly may have worked  in legitimate employment of various kinds after his release from prison in 1874, he wasn’t “going straight” as the Kelly myth would have us believe. Instead, he was flying under the radar and avoiding detection.

Ned Kelly nearly came unstuck in 1876 with the Lydeker case, but in the end he escaped a conviction because the Judiciary acted correctly, rather than because Ned was necessarily innocent.  That Ned and Tom were almost certainly guilty of the theft was evidenced by the behavior of Tom Lloyds family in compensating Lydeker with a horse and calf, so that Tom at least wouldn’t face court. This action was described as “very like compounding a felony” according to a local News report (unnamed quote in Morrissey)

But whatever they might say about 1876, Kelly enthusiast and fanatics alike agree that in 1877 Ned Kelly abandoned all attempts at making an honest living and began life as a full time stock thief. He was now 22, and had less than four years to live, but as Ned himself bragged, he would never be convicted of stock theft.

I wrote about Neds next brush with the Law in my review of the Jerilderie lletter last year. Please read it here. Oddly, it was not in relation to his full-time retail and wholesale stock theft but a minor incident relating to drunkenness that Neds stupid immaturity escalated into a violent brawl. What happened was that Ned was arrested for drunkenness and riding a horse on the footpath. He spent a night in the Cells and then in the morning resisted the handcuffs , made a run for it, was chased, caught and eventually subdued but only after a violent brawl. Upon conviction he was fined a total of 61 shillings according to McQuilton (£3/1/-) and 86 shillings according to Jones - but only 1 shilling was for the original offence, of being drunk and disorderly. The other 60  shillings ( or 85 ) were for resisting arrest and assaulting the Police, a charge Jones says Ned pleaded guilty to “cheerfully”

Leaving aside the laughable excuse Ned made that his drink was spiked, there is nothing in this episode that suggests Police or Judicial harassment or corruption or persecution of the Kellys. If Ned had chosen to simply front up like a man and accept he had been drunk and ridden on the footpath he would have been fined 1 shilling. Instead because of his own stupid behavior, and not because of anything done corruptly by the Police or the Courts, he ended up with a punishment 60 times worse than it needed to be. He has only himself to blame for it.

This was September 1877, and with all but three years of his life behind him, so far I haven’t seen anything in Ned Kellys brushes with the Law that support the Kelly Mythology about Ned being persecuted and hounded by corrupt Police and vindictive Judges. Every case we have reviewed so far were encounters created and following on from decisions and actions of Ned Kelly and the Kellys themselves – Ned’s assault on Ah Fook, Ned’s decision to be Powers mate, Neds decision to continue the argument with the McCormicks, Ned’s plan to try to sell a horse he got from Wild Wright, Ned’s involvement in the Lydeker incident, Neds drunkenness and his violent refusal to be handcuffed.  Often, it was clear that Ned was guilty and his protestations of innocence were lies – does any Kelly sympathizer doubt he was Powers “mate”? Does any Kelly sympathizer doubt he gratuitously involved himself in the McCormick affair or honestly believe that he really had no idea that Wilds mare was a stolen horse? Where is the Kelly sympathizer prepared to argue that Ned Kelly was not involved in the disappearance of Lydeker’s horse and foal? Which Kelly sympathizer wants to argue against the impression that Ned’s violent re-capture came about entirely because Ned stupidly wouldn’t allow handcuffing? Which Kelly sympathizer wants to commend Ned in his poverty for wasting 3 or 4 pounds defending his foolish “flashness” when it could have been much better spent elsewhere? As far as Police and Judicial behavior is concerned what we have seen from the record was mostly scrupulous adherence to the rule of Law such that cases were dismissed on the basis of corrupt behavior by Kelly people and sympathizers, Police sympathy towards Ned Kelly was expressed in attempts to encourage a less criminal life, and sentences were remitted significantly for good behavior . Constable Halls behavior was reprehensible, undoubtedly, but his actions were not typical of the treatment Kelly received and not supported by Halls superiors.

Oh yes, sympathisers love to quote Superintendent Charles Nicolson who talked of bringing offenders to justice even for a paltry crime and sending them to Pentridge to take their flashness away, but the record of Ned Kelly is what actually happened. For many paltry crimes Kelly was NOT convicted or sent to Pentridge.

Another thing we haven’t seen is the slightest evidence of Ned Kelly the Icon, the Champion of the Poor, the defender of the rights of the  downtrodden and the "suffering innocents”. All we have seen is violent stupid behaviour, indecency, theft, lies and indifference to the effects his “flashiness” was having on his mothers and his families poverty. 

This is how I ended my first discussion about the arrests for drunkenness:

No doubt, as usual, there will be silence from the pro-kelly mob. 

I was  right - there was silence then and will probably be again now. Have they got NO answers?

Ned Kelly Fails to go Straight

Ned Kelly was released from Pentridge Prison in February 1874, having received six months remission off his three year sentence for receiving, yet another fact which contradicts the Kelly claim that the Authorities were out to get them at every opportunity.  If they had been, wouldn’t they have come up with an excuse to keep him there the full three years? Another fact which might suggest imprisonment had actually been good for Ned Kelly is the claim by Kelly sympathisers that for the next three years Ned Kelly “went straight”.  I cant imagine that for one second the Kelly sympathisers would concede the possibility that Neds Imprisonment might have been instrumental in his rehabilitation, but how else are they going to explain this apparent near miraculous transformation?

On his return Ned found his mother had a new baby fathered by George King, a man Ned Kelly described as “the greatest horse stealer” - along with himself of course; his brother Jim was in prison for stock theft and Dan was later charged with theft of a saddle.  Ned also discovered his oldest sister Annie had died after childbirth, and the baby had also died, outcomes which Ned blamed on Earnest Flood, a Policeman who had an affair with 18 year old Annie while her own husband was in prison for – you guessed it - stock theft! It seems odd that a young man with an extensive criminal record of his own would live in such an environment of criminality and yet remain on the right side of the Law,  but  if the Kelly mythology is to be believed, Ned Kelly “went straight” for the next three years, working at a sawmill and at various other jobs such as fencing, ploughing and shearing.  Eventually though, by his own admission in the Jerilderie letter of 1879, Ned returned to the criminal way of life.

McMenomy says about Neds return to a life of crime:

“The reason Kelly left a lucrative and responsible position remains one of the biggest mysteries of his career. After nearly three years of apparently honest work Ned Kelly returned to the life that led him to  Gaol six years earlier”

As we shall see, McMenomy was right to describe those years as “apparently” honest, but I woudnt have thought that there was much that was mysterious about the allure of easy money when trying to understand why a young man might prefer crime to the daily grind of working the land. Ned claimed in the Jerilderie Letter that his change of career  came about because he had been accused of various stock thefts that he had not committed:

“I began to think they wanted me to give them something to talk about. Therefore I started wholesale and retail cattle and horse stealing”

Blaming others for his decision at the age of 22 to engage in stock theft is at the level of the school kids excuse “The dog ate my homework”. Not only was this excuse pathetic it was almost certainly a lie, and not the kind of behavior one might expect from a future “Icon” and Role Model.

In fact, as Doug Morrissey details in his recent book “Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life”, there is good reason to believe that Ned returned to Stock Theft well before 1877 because in early 1876 Ned and his cousin Tom were formally charged with stealing a mare and foal from farmer Henry Lydeker.  He saw the cousins acting “suspiciously” around his horses the evening before they disappeared. Lydeker isn’t mentioned in either Max Browns or John Molonys biographies of Ned, Peter Fitzsimons mentions the incident simply as a charge of horse stealing which was dismissed “thanks to the testimony of several witnesses” and the usually thorough Ian Jones mentions the case but calls it all “a simple misunderstanding”.  He writes that Ned and Tom thought the horses belonged to Jack and Jimmy Quinn, and simply returned them to their rightful owners. However, the most superficial scrutiny shows that Jones explanation couldn’t be correct because the horses were never seen again.  They had either been sold, or perhaps killed, but with their disappearance the search for evidence was prolonged and it took the Police six months to execute the warrants. By then Lydeker had been given a horse and a calf in compensation by Toms family, and despite being the person who originally laid the charges against Ned, when it finally got to Court Lydeker refused to co-operate with the Police. The witnesses mentioned by Fitzsimons were “Quinn clan associates” and so not unexpectedly the case collapsed.

So while it may be true that for three years Ned Kelly was not convicted of any further criminal acts, its not true to say therefore that he was not engaged in criminal acts and was “going straight”. In fact the idea that he went straight for three years is simply another mistelling of the Kelly story, part of the Mythology of Ned – its not true;  he didn’t go straight for three years.  This furfy is believed in no small part by modern sympathizers because of the airbrushing and photo-shopping of the truth by almost all Kelly writers, as I have demonstrated above, and as recently as 2013 by Peter Fitzsimons.  But this case demonstrates not only the lies that Ned Kelly told, and the willful mistelling of the story by modern writers, it also once again shows the Judiciary functioning in accordance with the Law and fair play, conduct that is completely at odds with Kellys claims then, and sympathizers claims now that the Law was out to get them at any cost.

Another Kelly myth crumbles.

"A Terror to Evil Doers"

“Exploding the Kelly Myth” is the sort of line I could have written,  but the line that grabbed my attention was on the front of The Good Weekend Magazine. I could hardly believe my eyes – and tried not to get my hopes up as I turned to the article entitled “The True History of the Kelly Victims” on Page 14.

Frankly I am getting sick and tired of self-promoting Solicitors and poorly informed so-called journalists and Gallery Curators who cant be bothered asking the hard questions about the Kelly Myth, who just churn over the same tired old lines, rehash the propaganda and unreliable family traditions that glorify Ned Kelly and the Gang. My stomach turned when I watched the Senior Curator of the Bendigo Art Gallery on You Tube say of Ned Kelly the boy 

“ I think he was a boy who experienced really tough times in his life”  

- oh really? And was that saying something important about him? It would be like being asked for a few words about the life of Adolf Hitler and saying he struggled as a young Artist and his water colours never received proper recognition – completely missing the essence and the truth of the man. And even though there is a small noisy group of fanatics who think Hitler was a Hero, I  don’t recall ever seeing a Journalist asking random people on the street “Adolf Hitler- hero or villain?” When are they going to wake up to the fact that the question has already been answered for Ned Kelly too? And no doubt the self-promoting Mr Suta hasn’t gone running back to the  slack Journo on the local Rag to announce why the much hyped letters that he promoted and we discussed here in January have NOT been included in the BAG Exhibition.

So what of this latest Kelly Article? Well, I wasn’t disappointed – in fact I was pleased to read something from a Journalist who for once wasn’t prepared just to regurgitate the old villain-hero rubbish but instead look a bit deeper into the story, and say something important.   The victims being referred to are of course the good Policemen who were killed at Stringybark Creek, and I was delighted and surprised – but I guess I shouldn’t have been, given the location – to read references to “the Melbourne based Stringybark sleuth”, Bill Denheld! Yes, our Bill! The Stringybark Sleuth has a nice ring to it Bill! 

“ I just want to see things right” he is quoted as saying. Exactly!

The article is about yet another Victorian Lawyer, Leo Kennedy the great great grandson of Sergeant Michael Kennedy, the Irish Policeman chased through the bush and killed by Ned Kelly with a bullet fired at Point blank range into his chest. The article says that “for decades Kennedys family maintained an outraged silence as Ned Kellys folk hero status grew. That changed in 2012….” 

One important thing I learned from this article was that originally the so-called Kelly Tree had the names of the slain Policemen carved into its trunk.  Leo Kennedy used to be taken there by his father as a kid to see them – but quite some years back they were concealed by a replica Kelly armour that was fixed over the top of the names. What a disgrace! Such disrespect – but how typical of Kelly fanatic behavior that continues to this day, hiding the truth and denying the murderous reality of the Kelly Gang.

Even in Mansfield where the Policemen are all buried, Kelly fanatics had somehow persuaded local authorities to direct tourists to the graves with signs sporting Kelly armour.  Imagine signage to ANZAC War Graves with Swastikas on them! Disgusting! Leo and his family protested and in 2013 the signs were changed, the graves tidied up and rededicated.

And the fightback continues, as Leo has been working with Bill to “find and mark the path of his great grandfathers final flight, and the place where he died” This ties in with Bills other great quest, to have the authorities acknowledge that his Two Huts site is in fact the true site at which the other two Policemen were murdered, and the place where Kennedys flight began. Leo, Bill and members of  “an International network of History specialists, the Past Masters” are hoping to persuade Heritage Victoria to approve a proper archaeological survey of the site and establish its bona fides once and for all.

So, as the article says, things started to change in 2012, which was also the year that The Kelly Gang Unmasked was published. Perhaps the book added to the Kennedy family’s resolve to end their “outraged silence” but change has continued, the tide is turning and the Kelly fanatics domination of the story is gradually being rolled back. Since then Morrisseys book has been published ( Ned Kelly : A Lawless Life), the Mc Cormick book has been published (Ned Kelly Under the Microscope) and the terminal decline of the worlds greatest Kelly website  (Iron Outlaw) and of the Ned Kelly Forum has continued into irrelevance – a quarter of the year has gone and except for the Ned Kelly Forum members being forbidden to discuss this Blog, literally NOTHING has happened on either of them. I might also modestly hope that despite that, this little Blog is also contributing in some small way, as visitor numbers continue to climb, Posts attract lots of comments and the Fanatics have all but given up their futile attacks on it. This Good Weekend article is a further advance in the Truth telling about the Kelly Outbreak.

Meanwhile, despite the abuse of the Kelly fanatics Bill  continues his relentless search for the truth and for justice for Leo and the other Policemen at Stringybark Creek. Well done guys!

Hall arrests Ned Kelly

Morbid Obesity ought to disqualify someone from being in the Police Force

As Sharon pointed out similar names keep cropping up in the Kelly story, and “Hall” is one of them – theres “Brave Ben Hall” the bushranger that was gunned down by Police when Ned was 10, and who quite possibly was some sort of inspiration for Ned in later life. Theres also George Wilson Hall, an English immigrant, journalist and noted Kelly sympathizer and Police critic who was one of the first writers to make a buck out of the Kelly story with his pamphlet “The Kelly Gang, or The outlaws of the Wombat Ranges”. He was also a Politician and in that capacity, despite his known anti-Police sentiments and his Kelly sympathy was appointed to the Royal Commission into the Kelly Outbreak – and thereby rendered its findings suspect.

The third Hall is Constable Edward Hall, an Irish born Senior Police Constable in the Victoria Police, stationed at Greta in 1870 and 1871. He was said to be “hot tempered” and by all accounts was morbidly obese. He was the man that arrested Ned over the McCormick incident, when Ned had said that he would punch anyone who accused him of stealing McCormicks horse and to Hall “I will do the same to you if you challenge me”

From that and earlier encounters, Hall was familiar with the Kelly temperament, and so when he saw Ned riding a horse that he thought might have been stolen, he told lies to Ned to trick him into getting off his horse so that he could arrest him. Ian Jones reports Ned saying later that if he had known what Hall was up to he would have ridden off, so Halls instincts about how Ned would react  were on the mark. However what he didn’t count on was that once he knew what was happening, Ned had no intention of going quietly. When Hall grabbed at Ned as he  dismounted and declared he was being arrested for horse stealing, there was a struggle in which Hall fell to the ground and Ned took off after the horse which had bolted. The “hot tempered” Hall now aimed his pistol at  Ned and called on him to stop - which he did and then dared Hall to shoot:

“Shoot and be dammed”

he calls and that’s exactly what Hall does, from 25 yards  away. 

Fortunately for Ned the gun misfires three times as Hall walks  forwards and then when close enough Ned leaps forwards and attacks him, throwing him onto the ground, leaping onto his back and digging his spurs in, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand and repeatedly throwing him back to the ground whenever Hall manages to struggle to his feet – an unfit obese Policeman is no match for an enraged angry and powerful  young man toughened  by three months hard labour. Hall is being thrashed as a crowd gathers and in the end it takes seven men to subdue Ned who refuses to give up even when Hall uses his pistol as a club to bash him on the head making it bruised and bleeding. Hall now locks Ned up and sends for a Doctor to come and stitch up the head wounds. It was April 20^th 1871.

In his account written some 8 years later Ned Kelly describes this disgraceful brawl in great and gleeful detail, bragging about how thoroughly he humiliated Hall, and says of the seven men who assisted the Constable to subdue him “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” 

Ian Jones seems to find it all a bit of a joke and calls Neds account  “undeniably colourful, a classic of its kind” but frankly I think Jones has got this one very badly wrong.  This man, Ned Kelly reveling in violence and the humiliation of  Hall, was 24 by the time he wrote this, and just as in his boastful recollections of the McCormick incident he once again demonstrates an utter and complete lack of any sort of insight, remorse or regret about what happened. Ian Jones says Ned had shown “considerable courage and formidable physical powers in his clash with Hall” but I would have called it violent thuggery and foolish youthful bravado. Its not brave to stand in front of an armed policeman and dare him to shoot - its stupidity and because of it, he ended up in Prison and reduced his struggling mother to abject poverty as she put up as sureties her last £60. But all her psychopathic son remembers and cares about 8 years later is how he bullied bashed and humiliated a Policeman. Ned of course, and the sympathizers claim he was innocent but I ask Why, if he was convinced of his own innocence did he make such a desperate attempt to resist arrest?

Kelly sympathisers love to hate Hall, and never cease to point to Halls behavior as evidence of their belief that the Police were out to get the Kellys. I agree with them that Halls behavior was appalling - not only had he tried to kill Ned, and used excessive force once the tables had been turned, Hall later lied in Court about seeing Documents that hadn’t been issued when he said he had seen them. The Chief Commissioner of Police, Frederick Charles Standish got to hear about Halls behavior  and described it as “hasty and injudicious”. But Halls behavior is not evidence of a conspiracy to get the Kellys – its evidence that Constable Hall was not a particularly good policeman, maybe even a really bad one. Perhaps he should have been dealt with more harshly, perhaps his notorious “hot temper” rendered him unsuitable for the work he was engaged in, but in the event he remained in the Force, transferring out of the District shortly after this episode.

Ned Kelly meanwhile went back to prison for receiving, this time for three years. Nothing heroic or iconic about any of that episode. From anyone.

3 Years Hard Labour for Receiving

After having received the benefit of the doubt in relation to the charges that resulted in his first two appearances in Court, on the third occasion Ned Kelly wasn’t so lucky and he was sentenced to six months hard labour at Beechworth Prison, for Assault and for Indecent Behaviour.  His mother paid out £60 in sureties and had nothing left, but if his extended family had been able to come up with a further £10 he would only have needed to serve half that time. Unfortunately for Ned, as I pointed out in my previous post, even though an uncle had recently received a huge reward for helping the Police catch Harry Power, neither the uncle nor any other member of his large extended family was prepared to help him out.

The Day he entered prison for the first time, for assault and indecent behavior, November 11^th 1870 was exactly 10 years before the date of his execution in another Prison, for murder. But though his family didn’t seem to care enough to spend £10 to minimize his exposure to the prison environment at the age of 15, the prison authoritites did, and he was set free 5 weeks early, on March 27^th 1871. Peter Fitzsimons writes “Having just come from working at Beechworth Gaol where he had come to know Ned a little, Constable Bracken makes a point of visiting the Kelly home – for he is a kindly soul- and, on this occasion chats “with the family in the hope that they would alter their way of living and become law abiding citizens”  

Jones on the other hand, more intent perhaps on promoting the Kelly line that the Police were out to get them, ignores Brackens visit and instead writes 

“ His (Neds) return was undoubtedly noticed by Hall or drawn to his attention by one of his toadies” 

Pure, and somewhat paranoid speculation! But once again I ask, where is the evidence of Police corruption and a hostile determination to oppress and to keep the Kellys behind bars for as long as possible and at every opportunity? Yet again, we are not finding it - indeed we are finding evidence to the contrary: remission of sentences, home visits. 

I described Neds behavior in the McCormick incident that resulted in his first jailing, as “smart arse” behavior, and sadly neither his time in Prison nor Brackens support afterwards seem to have affected his attitude towards society and the Law because within a few weeks of his release he was arrested in possession of a stolen horse. Ned, as do all suspects accused of receiving, protested that he was innocent and that nobody told him the horse had been stolen. “ Yeah, right” was my response to that when I first discussed it last year in my review of the Jerilderie Letter where Ned wrote about this incident. Ned claimed that the horse had been lost by “Wild” Wright, who, after borrowing a replacement from Ned told him that if Ned should find the lost mare he should keep it until such time as Wright returned. Ned, and Kelly sympathisers ever since have insisted that Ned wasn’t told that in fact Wright had “borrowed” the horse from the Mansfield Postmaster.

Now, at this point I stop to ask Sympathisers to put their hands on their hearts and swear that they too believe Ned hadn’t the slightest idea that this horse was stolen. I doubt anyone but the most willfully blind fanatic could do so - it is much too much of a strain on credulity to accept the idea that it didn’t even occur to Ned that this apparently magnificent animal was legitimately owned by a man known as “Wild” for good reason, a man with a reputation for drinking and fighting as well as stock theft, and all in an environment where stock theft was common.

Doug Morrissey sheds much needed light on this episode in his 2015 work, “Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life” and shows Neds claim was indeed a lie. A Police informant named James Murdoch revealed that Ned had tried to involve him in a plan to sell that horse along with some others: Ned knew it was stolen, he planned to sell it and who knows if Wild Wright was planning to come back for it. Ned again caught out telling lies!

In Court, Neds protestations were rightly dismissed and he was convicted of Receiving and sentenced to three years hard labour. Wright by contrast was sentenced for “Illegally Using”, rather than theft, and received only eighteen months, a sentence which according to the Kelly sympathisers is clear evidence of the judiciaries determination to be unjustly harsh in its dealings with the Kellys. Why else would Ned Kelly get double the punishment for receiving a stolen horse than the person who stole the horse in the first place? In the Kelly sympathisers mind no other explanation is possible, but in fact there is an alternative quite straightforward one, provided by Morrissey who answers that question like this:

“In the first instance, the mare was not stolen but “Borrowed” from the Mansfield Postmaster….Wright had borrowed the Postmasters horse on previous occasions and returned it, knocked up and the worse for wear. The Postmaster, knowing Wrights character did not report it, but after several weeks without a horse he did report the latest “borrowing” to the Police”

and later

“The crucial distinction to be made here is between Borrowing without permission – “Illegally Using” -  and “receiving" which legally implied theft. It’s the difference in modern terms between joy riding for fun and car stealing for profit”

In Australia today, the maximum sentence for Joyriding is five years, and for Stealing a car is ten, so for these equivalent offences to “using” and “receiving” a horse, the penalties are tougher now than they were in Neds time. Kelly sympathisers claim of course that Ned was harshly dealt with but the evidence suggests otherwise.

This simple clarification also helps to explain why Wright didn’t come to the defence of Ned, as the Kelly sympathisers complain he should have. In fact Wright was double crossed by Ned, who had decided to sell the horse rather than give it back it to him when he returned, which was the original plan. No doubt “Wild” was enraged to learn of Neds duplicity, and so, much later with old scores to settle this very issue was said to be the reason for a famous 20 round Boxing match between them. As it happened, “Wild” lost the fight, but must have felt honor was done, as they went on to become close associates.

There is one other aspect of this case which has to be discussed, and that is the circumstances of Neds arrest by Constable Hall, the same Policeman who had arrested him in relation to the McCormick affair. That can wait till next time.