Why Ned Kelly hated the Police

On Facebook I have been accused by Bob of failing to mention the truth about why Ned Kelly hated the Police. Bob lists three examples of incidents that he regards as reasons for Neds hatred of police : his arrest when Hall tried to shoot Ned, the fracas when he refused to be handcuffed and was subdued by Lonigan using the ‘squirrel grip’ – a handful of nuts – and the death of his sister Annie giving birth to the child fathered by Constable Flood. Bob, like many Kelly sympathisers  believes these and other incidents justified Neds hatred of Police, that it was the Polices fault that Ned Kelly hated them.

Contrary to Bobs claim, I have not ‘hidden away’ from the bad behavior of Police, and in the post “Hall arrests Ned Kelly”– which everyone should re-read to refresh their memories of exactly what happened – I wrote of Halls behavior that 'it 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’ .  I also wrote about the incident involving the squirrel grip in a post in August 2014 ‘Reflections around the crown Jewels’ and I recommend that Post also be read again to refresh everyones memory of the entire incident.

I admit however that I haven’t ever discussed the relationship between Annie and Flood, though a really indepth analysis would probably not be something Kelly symapthisers would want to read, because undoubtedly it will expose the ambiguous relationship that existed between the Kellys and the Police. Kelly sympathisers like to think of this relationship as a cartoon style ‘goodies vs baddies’, Kellys on one side, Police on the other, but as Morrissey and others have shown, it was much more fluid than this, there were friendships across this imaginary divide that resulted in such things as the young Ned running to the Police station for protection from an uncle, the Kellys using the Courts to pursue personal disputes, uncles co-operating with the Police to dob in Harry Power and collect  massive financial reward, the friendship between Ned and Fitzpatrick, and of course a sexual liaison between Flood and Neds sister. But  its quite ridiculous to blame Flood for Annies tragic death in giving birth to the child that resulted from the relationship. The relationship was consensual, as far as we know, and Annie would have been well aware of the possibility of pregnancy resulting from it. Its not usual anywhere, except perhaps in the Kelly world to blame the man for the  tragic death of his partner in childbirth, but death in childbirth was not such an uncommon feature of life in the bush in the 19^th century. No doubt it was a tragedy and a terrible loss, but to blame Flood for it is ridiculous.

Never-the-less Bob may well be right that the three incidents he lists, and others, were reasons Ned Kelly might have given for his hatred of the Police. But having reasons for hating the Police doesn’t have to mean the hate is justified or  that the Police deserved to be hated. So was it justified, and did the Police deserve to be hated?

Certainly, if Ned hated Flood for what happened to his sister, his hatred was irrational and unjustified. And exactly how reasonable or rational was Neds hatred of Police for responding in kind to the violence of Neds resistance to being arrested or to being handcuffed? If he had gone quietly and still been bashed and beaten, then hating them might be reasonable but thats not what happened - Ned Kelly created a massive violent brawl and no doubt inflicted some pretty painful injuries on several of the Police trying to  subdue him.  I doubt very few of us would have much sympathy for a fellow who abused and attacked Police trying to do their duty, and who in the melee he started, came off second best. We might be tempted to say “ you asked for it mate, be a man and suck it up” But thats not what Ned Kelly ever did - right to the end he refused to accept responsibility for the consequences of his own actions, and was forever looking for someone else to blame for how things turned out. The reality of Neds hatred for the police, when you examine its possible causes closely is that it was out of all proportion to the actual events that may have given rise to it, it was extreme, irrational and unreasonable. Nothing the Police ever did to the Kellys justified in any possible way his murder of three innocent Police at SBC, or his plan to kill many more at Glenrowan - his reactions were way beyond reasonable, proportional or justifiable. Thats why Ian Jones said Neds plan for Glenrowan was madness - completely out of touch with any kind of reality, reason or logic, based on absurd overreactions to incidents largely originating in the behaviour, not of the Police but of the Kellys themselves. And you see this madness when you read the crazed hysterical outburst known as the Jerilderie Letter.


I agree with Bob that Neds motivation was hate rather than some higher noble political ambition about the poor and the rights of selectors, as Ian Jones would prefer.  Rather, for Ned it was an intensely personal thing, and hatred is an intensely distorting and blinding emotion, a prism that Ned looked though and could only see a need for horrendous ‘suicide bomber style’ revenge.

But there is another more important, often overlooked source of Neds hatred for Police : his parents. I am not referring to what happened to his parents but to the values they instilled in him, the things they taught him from the youngest age, and the attitudes prejudices and resentments that he absorbed from them and the wider community of Kellys and Quinns that he grew up in.  Ned was taught to hate, to disrespect and have contempt for the British authorities, for Irish who co-operated with them, for squatters and the wealthy. Being taught to hate, when your brain is wired for psychopathy is playing with fire. Sadly though, being taught to hate wasn’t unusual then, and its not unusual now. Its a common and horrible fault of many parents all over the world to this day, where children grow up being taught to respect only their own, to believe utterly in the rightness of thier own cause and to hate and perpetuate hatred war and resentments against the rest, against Jews, Palestinians, Blacks, Muslims, Aborigines, Catholics, Asians, gays, Communists, asylum seekers ….and in Neds case the British and the Police. This is where Ned learned not to take responsibility for his own behavior but to blame his misfortune on the British, on the Police, on the Courts, the squatters, the wealthy…this is where Ned learned such an arrogant regard for his own righteousness that he was later able to write in the Jerilderie letter : “I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain, I would manure the eleven mile with their bloated carcasses and yet remember there is  not one drop of murderous blood in my veins”

As Peter Fitzsimons put it of the young Ned Kelly: “Ned takes hatred of the English with his mothers milk and his fathers every rant”

And the end result of this hatred? -  his brother and three friends dead, three Police dead, three hostages dead and Ned Kelly on death row. These are the poisonous fruits of intergenerational hate, and therein lies the one lesson that Ned Kellys life could teach all of us in these troubled times : here was a fine strong good looking intelligent witty and hard working young man brought down and destroyed by all consuming hate. For Gods sake stop encouraging people, and especially your kids to hate one another. It always ends badly. 

Be like Captain Jack and love everybody.

Peter Careys Ned Kelly Fantasy

This book has become part of the modern Kelly story for many people, not just in Australia but throughout the world. Additionally, it also has an important place in the annals of Australian literature, its special qualities earning its author a  rare second Booker Prize, and elevating Peter Carey to the status of truly great Australian writer. It is therefore a novel that should appeal to everyone interested in writing and literature, but to Australians especially as its about one of our own, written by one of our own.

Despite this , I had never made reading this book a priority, because it’s a novel, and my interest is in Kelly history not fantasy. However quite recently I saw an aged and  sun-browned copy in a second hand bookshop that was a mere $8, so I bought it and now  that I have finally finished reading it, I realize it was money well spent.

Peter Carey says it took him three years to research and write this novel, and says in the Acknowledgements, among other things “..it is Ian Jones I am most particularly obliged to. It was to his works I turned to, almost daily when I was lost or bewildered or simply forgetful of the facts”  Therefore it is  no surprise that Careys vision of Ned Kelly is much the same as Ian Jones : an honest poor and persecuted selector, a devoted son becomes a ‘Police made’ criminal because of the corrupt Police and Judiciary,  and at the end, the leader of some sort of failed rebellion.

The title is doubly misleading because the story told is neither especially true nor much about the Kelly Gang, which only comes into existence in the final quarter, when the Police ambush at Stringybark Creek is described. The novel is a mock autobiography, in which Ned Kelly relates his life story for the benefit of a daughter that he never knew. Its chapters are called Parcels, each ‘parcel’ an invention of Careys clever mind purporting to be one of a bunch of  ‘13 parcels of stained and dog eared papers, every one of them in Ned Kellys distinctive hand’ that Ned gave Thomas Curnow  at the Ann Jones Inn, close to the end of the siege. Needless to say no such parcels exist, Ned Kelly has no known descendants and the girls mother, Mary Hearn never existed.

Carey cited the Jerilderie letter as his inspiration for a style which gives the novel its special charm - its comparative lack of punctuation, its long sentences and colourful  at times hilariously witty language, written in the first person as a stream of consciousness from Neds mind onto the paper. The Ned Kelly that emerges has an even greater wit than the Ned of the Jerilderie letter, and in other repects is quite different  - this new Ned Kelly has a much greater sense of humour and of fun, he is open hearted and lacks the arrogance, the intense blood thirsty hatred and anger so apparent in the Ned Kelly of the Jerilderie letter, he is long-suffering and polite and tries not to give offence, by referring to things as ‘adjectival’  and by writing swear words as “b…d” and “b…..r”. This Ned Kelly is likeable and accessible as a human being. 

“I seen Fitzpatrick pull my sister roughly onto his knee that were the last adjectival straw as far as I were concerned I showed myself plainly at the door”

“I seen Cons Hall descend from the Pub like a glistening old spider gliding down from the centre of its web’

Readers who are really familiar with the Kelly story will get a lot more out of it than most, because historical names places and events  appear at unexpected places, language we are familiar with from the Jerilderie letter and elsewhere appears in a different context, and events people and developments we know are invented  appear, but they are mostly believable and certainly interesting - the idea that Neds father and Steve Hart were cross dressers is a wild one, but Ned having a permanent girlfriend and becoming a father is believable and humanising, as is the suggestion Ellen had an affair with Harry Power and the place where the inspiration to wear armour came from is cleverly introduced. Mary Hearns relationship to Neds step father is a shock!  Anyone unfamiliar with the Kelly story would not notice these clever inventions or smile at the artful way Peter Carey has inserted them into the story.

The overall result for me was a fascinating and enjoyable read that I would commend to everyone who lkes reading and especially to Kelly fans.

Oddly enough though, ‘The True History of the Kelly Gang’ seems to have had little appeal to the sad individuals with a peculiar obsession with Ned Kelly like readers of this Blog and I have. This is suggested by the almost complete absence of any serious discussions about it on Kelly related websites, Blogs and Facebook pages - I fully expected to find a review at the Eleven Mile Creek site, but the search drew a blank. However this book was the original catalyst for Sharons interest in Ned Kelly – and I would imagine that could be true for many people - but apart from a cursory mention on the Iron Outlaw book reviews pages, there was nothing about it on Iron Outlaw or in the Ned Kelly Forum.

However I was pleased to find on the web archive of Bail Up something that I had decided I wasn’t going to do, a catalogue of the ‘fictions’ presented in the book along with the relevant ‘facts’. Heres a couple of  examples:

‘Fact - Ellen did have an intimate relationship with Bill Frost, and later had an illegitimate daughter to him. He abandoned her, and she sued him for child support and won (having established in court that he was her only lover).

Fiction - There is no evidence that Ned threatened to shoot Bill.

Fact - The Kelly gang did use the majority of the stolen bank money paying debts and sympathizers. 

Fiction - None of it was stolen from the gang (by M.H.), however they did use up the sum quite quickly

I thought about  doing something similar myself but decided that such a catalogue, at one level made no sense, because the book, despite its title is NOT a “true” account but an imagining, a fantasy, an emotional creation only loosely attached to the cold facts. The spirit of the novel is only appreciated by a willingness to momentarily suspend disbelief and live in the fantasy, to ignore the places where reality clashed with the narrative, where history contradicted the story and known facts were dismissed. Never-the-less, knowing that Ned Kelly was real and many of the other people and the places mentioned were actually real, I knew there would be people who would wonder exactly where the truth ended and the fantasy  began, and how much of what was told was historical and what wasn’t. So at Bail Up, an attempt was made to define the borders between the two (HERE ) 

This is the perennial problem of the historical novel, a form which simultaneously invites you to accept what you’re reading as true but refuses to take responsibility for any of it as being historical reality. The reader can neither dismiss it all as make-believe, because the historical setting is real, nor can the reader catalogue all of it in their memory as fact because the book identifies itself as a Novel. The truth though is that this book is a novel and it was never meant to be a text about historical truth but rather a story about emotional truth, about the experience of being Ned Kelly as Carey imagined it could have been. But the Bail Up writer has produced a means by which certain fictions and the truths in the story can be separated, and the books true fiction and true history identified for anyone who wanted to know.

The Bail Up analysis however fails to identify the biggest fiction of them all - the likeable witty and friendly character created in this clever novel is called Ned Kelly but he is its greatest fiction. Sadly such a Ned Kelly never existed. 

Why are we waiting?

Whose eyes are these?

I am amazed at how little response there has been to the excellent interview Matt Shore gave to NKCentral. Announcing that nobody will be able to be 100% sure its Ned seems to have stunned the fans who were obviously hoping for something better than that. From whats been made available publicly so far, my feeling is still that it probably IS Ned, but as I keep saying, I am going to be guided by the forensics. 

As this Photo is not going to be on Public display for at least a couple more MONTHS according to the Interview, the only place where there will be anything interesting happening in the Kelly world until then will be on my Blog.Ive been very busy with work and school holiday stuff this week and haven’t had enough time to complete my latest Post - but its on its way. Its a book review. I have several other posts in the pipeline actually, but the BIG one is going to be about SBC, which is still a couple of weeks away.And I am still waiting for Mark Perrys promised review of the life of Sir Redmond Barry, a man whose memory is ignorantly maligned as a rogue on the Iron Outlaw site. This is another Kelly myth that has to be corrected.

The Ned Kelly Photo Gallery

Ned Kelly aged 16 : Harry Power, Ah Fook and McCormick incidents already behind him

Like everyone interested in the Kelly story, I am looking forward to seeing the photo that is being prepared for public display at the Ned Kelly Vault in Beechworth. The Vault have been talking up this photo for several months now, beginning in April with an invitation to Facebook readers to guess what it was they had just been offered for exclusive display at the Vault, something they were claiming was the most important Kelly find in the last 50 years.  People whose interest was aroused, including me made various suggestions but in the end the Vault didn’t reveal anything; instead they removed that entire thread from their Facebook page and left everyone in suspenseful ignorance. Next they released a short tantalizing Video suggesting they had acquired a previously unseen image of Ned Kelly. Eventually after more teasing and frustrating provocation they gradually let it be known that yes indeed the mystery object was a previously unseen photo of two people, one of whom they believe to be Ned Kelly. This long  marketing campaign has successfully raised the profile of the Vault, generating several newspaper and radio articles that are now describing this photo as the Kelly find of the century, and created a level of excitement about the photo that’s approaching hysteria among the Vaults Facebook followers. There’s no consideration given amongst all this hype and hoopla that the photo, if of  Ned Kelly, is a picture of a psychopath and police multiple murderer – instead the overwhelming mood is of celebration of a hero, and the image of the Vault on Facebook is being subtly transformed into less of a museum about the ‘hero-or-villain’ and more of a shrine to the memory of a hero. Its unbalanced and nauseating, and I would suggest offensive to the families and descendants of Ned Kellys victims. I cant imagine Victoria Police or Leo Kennedy sharing in the excitement.

If this image is indeed of Ned Kelly, as the Vault is hoping to prove, then it will be only the sixth known photo of him. The other ones are the two taken in 1880 at Neds request in Melbourne Gaol the day before he was hanged, the “Boxing Ned” photo taken in 1874, and two mugshots, one from 1874 when he was at Pentridge and the earliest photo of him, taken at Beechworth gaol in 1871, shown at the top of this post.

Surely the most famous photo of Ned Kelly

 

The other 1880 prison photo

Ned in 1874, Pentridge Mugshot

Boxing Ned, August 1874

There are other photos that are said to be of Ned Kelly, one of which sold at Auction earlier this year for $16000. This one has Steve Hart and Dan Kelly in it as well but theres great skepticism in the Kelly community about its authenticity:

Sold for $16,000 in 2016 as Steve, Ned and Dan but who believes it apart from the buyer?

Theres also the photo of three men on horseback, a commercially produced Postcard labeled as the Kelly Gang, but again there is doubt about its authenticity. In any case, the detail is so poor, the riders could be any three men:

Lastly there is the infamous “Gentleman Ned” photo, sold at Auction in 2002 for $19,000 with the backing of no less a Kelly expert than Ian Jones himself with the support of Keith McMenomy. The photo apparently was passed down from Tom Lloyd, who had kept it in his wallet with photos of Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.  Jones was reported at the time to have said that he was unimpressed by people "...jumping up and down saying it is not Ned Kelly". He was convinced saying, "Everything checks...even in amazing detail like the belt he is wearing." Eventually Christies gave the buyer his money back because it was proven not to be Ned Kelly at all. This ought to be a cautionary tale for the Ned Kelly Vault and the photo it is so vigorously promoting, but so far theres little sign of that on the Facebook page at least.

“Gentleman Ned”
- the buyer at Christies in 2002 got a refund of $19,000

According to the detail so far released, the Vaults photo has been in the possession of ‘the Kelly family’ for generations and they say it once belonged to Neds mother. The Vault aren’t saying exactly which ‘Kelly family’ it was who had possession of this photo, but they have refused permission for the image to be made widely available, and according to Matt Shore steps are going to be taken to make it impossible for the public to take pictures of it themselves when it finally goes on public display. These restrictions are hard to understand except perhaps in the context of the commercial value of the photo, which if proven to be genuine could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be interesting to know what value was placed on it for insurance purposes.

The photo is said to be an image of Ned Kelly and another person taken in 1874 when Ned was supposed to have been ‘going straight’ working in the bush. He had only recently been released from Beechworth gaol where he had served time for feloniously receiving a horse, a fact pointed out in the ABC interview about the photo  by Mr John Suta, the ‘kelly tragic’ who owns the Sydney Nolan painting of Ned that’s already on display in the Vault.  Unsurprisingly for a Kelly ‘tragic’ Suta repeated the usual Kelly lies about Ned being unfairly persecuted by the Police and being given twice the sentence for receiving the horse than the horse thief himself got. Mr Suta, like most of the Kelly sycophants, needs to update his knowledge of Kelly history by reading Morrisseys recent book “Ned Kelly A Lawless Life” because in that book Morrissey points out that Ned knew the horse was not stolen but ‘borrowed’ and that he tried to sell it:

“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”

A few months after his release from Gaol, the “Boxing Ned’ photo was taken as Kelly engaged in a famous fist-fight with Wild Wright, apparently settling scores related to the stolen horse. Going by the state of his facial hair, the Vault are guessing their photo was taken a few months before this.

I hope when they eventually reveal the image at the Vault – or perhaps we should be referring to it as the Kelly Shrine now - there will be more than just veneration of the image, and homage to Ned Kelly. It would be a perfect opportunity to make an interesting display of the history of pictures of Ned Kelly and the Gang, to recount their chequered history, the methods used to verify the provenance and the identity of photographic records, and the salutary lessons that can be learned.

It will of course be the second object on display at the vault which they have claimed to be the greatest Kelly discovery in 50 years, the other being a piece of iron plate about which they deceptively state “...beyond doubt this piece of unremarkable metal is in fact an offcut from Joe Byrnes breastplate”  In fact  scientific tests have proven that it is NOT an offcut from Joe Byrnes armour but just a rusty old piece of scrap metal. I warned the Vault months ago that by continuing to make these claims about disproven  ‘kellyana’ their credibility as a museum will be undermined, (read my post on this here ) but it has remained in the exhibition, and as far as I am aware the claims about it remain the same.  Now, with this latest Kelly photo about to go on display, the chickens are going to come home to roost – the first object they claimed to be the greatest Kelly find in 50 years is a fake, so why would anyone believe the second one isn’t a fake too? If they’re going to stake their claim that the Photo is Ned on the results of scientific assessments, why have they rejected the scientific asessments on the rusty iron? They need to commit to believing the Science whatever it does to their fond hopes, because if they just pick out the opinions that suit their narrative their credibility as a Museum is shredded and they will be recognised as the shrine they are trying not to be.

But lets not forget that if  the photo is accepted as genuine, it’s not a photo of  Australias greatest hero, a person anyone should look up to or want to emulate, but of a young criminal psychopath, a notorious liar who became a multiple police murderer and the mastermind of a terror plot as brutal and as merciless as any that we read about in the daily press. The photo, if its Ned, is a photo of a villain. Try not to get overexcited about it people!

The Man Haron Monis of 1880

The Argus 29th June 1880

Ive been waiting to see what if any reaction there would be on the Kelly sites to the anniversary of the siege at Glenowan, which took place 136 years ago on the weekend of June 26th and 27th 1880, finishing on Monday 28th when Ned was captured in the early hours and the Inn burned down in the afternoon.

I half expected it to be ignored completely, given that it was such an embarrassing exposure of Ned Kellys mad and badly thought-out plan to murder as many more cops as he could - three were not enough -  his callous indifference to the lives of the ordinary citizens of Glenrowan of whom three were killed when he used them as human shields, and the hopeless impracticality of the armour that the Gang had laboriously constructed in their bush forge. And if those humiliations were not enough, theres also the tragedy of the merciless killing of Aaron Sherrit, and the suicide of Dan and Steve to complete the picture of horror, mayhem and death that the psychopathic Ned Kelly brought to Glenrowan that weekend. If it wasn’t for the bravery of Thomas Curnow the destruction and horror would have been orders of magnitude greater and nobody would be posting sentimental rubbish about Ned being a true Australian and hero on Facebook 136 years later. Everyone apart from lunatics would be comparing him with Man Haron Monis, Martin Bryant and the others in the list of mass killers and mad criminals in Australias history books. So it wouldn’t have  surprised me if the Kelly sympathisers didnt draw anyones attention to the anniversary.

But heres the tally : 

• Iron Outlaw : Nothing
• Ned Kelly Centre : Nothing
• Unmasking ..FB Page : Nothing
• NK Central FB : They shared a comment about the armour, and a descendant of Aaron Sherrit shared some thoughts about his murder and the 11 deaths the Outbreak resulted in, which were good, but in effect hardly anything.
• NK Vault FB Page: Two lines and a photo of a newspaper headline from the time, followed by about 10 brief comments i.e. hardly anything
• Ned Kelly Forum : A disgracefully ignorant Post lamenting the failed attempt to establish a Republic in North East Victoria, and then ‘RIP’ followed by a list of the three Gang members that died but not a single word about the innocent ones who died. Then a long list of foolish and ignorant comments by Kelly sympathisers ...more about this later...

Its been interesting reading the reports coming out of the Inquest into the Lindt Cafe siege where two people died, one at the hand of the terrorist and the other as a result of the Police action to bring it to an end. What I find interesting to read is how hard it was for the Police to decide what should be done. They had all sorts of resources at their fingertips, night vision technology, high-tech armaments and surveillance equipment that probably gave them intelligence about what was happening in there that we will never be privy to, instantaneous communications between them all, body armour and anti-terrorist training and yet despite all that, there was uncertainty about when and how to react, and when they finally did, despite all that know-how and back-up, an innocent hostage ended up dead. In all of this there has been almost no criticism of the Police, either direct or implied, and thats as it should be. Nobody doubts they wanted to get the best outcome for everyone involved in the fluid and unpredictable scenario they were confronted with.

Compare that to Glenrowan! The Police are endlessly excoriated and blamed by Kelly myth makers and police haters for the civilian deaths that resulted from their actions, and Ned Kelly, the author of all this mayhem is hailed as a brave hero. This outrage was of course NOT something any of the police had been trained for, they arrived in the dark with almost no intelligence about what was happening and limited ways of finding out once they got there, no special equipment, communication by word of mouth only, and were confronted by a Gang who had already murdered three police and the day before in a chilling act of betrayal, one of their own friends. By any measure the Gang at that moment could only have been perceived as dangerously ruthless and unpredictable in the extreme, an impression instantly reinforced when they responded to being surrounded and called on to surrender, with a volley of shots from the Hotels  darkened verandah and defiant shouting. Who was going to be brave enough to predict what they were going to do next?

The reality is that, as at the Lindt Cafe, its possible to imagine different decisions being made at Glenrowan that could have produced a better outcome, but I am quite sure to have really understood what was going on, and to be qualified to criticise you needed to have  been there. Lazy armchair critics of the Police responses at Glenrowan are simply looking for someone else to blame for the outcomes of Ned Kellys acts of Terror, but make no mistake, just as at the Lindt cafe so at Glenrowan it was the hostage taker who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of innocent hostages. I readily accept there were a couple of incidents of ill-discipline at Glenrowan, but given all the circumstances, and the fallibility of human nature, overall I give the Police credit for bringing the Outbreak to an end, as we all do for what they did at the Lindt Cafe.

The reality is that when it comes to Glenrowan, the Kelly sympathisers are in massive denial, and if you want to see it, go to their Facebook pages where, as I pointed out if mentioned at all there is only token acknowledgement of this grim anniversary. There are scores of  “Likes” - whatever ‘liking’ this anniversary means -  a tiny number of “Sad”, a string of nauseating acclamations of support for Ned Kelly, and a few seriously ignorant attempts at describing what Ned Kelly represented. The most popular comment seems to be "RIP Ned”, yet he survived, unlike his brother, two other Gang members and three innocent hostages but theres no 'RIP Johnny Jones’,  no 'RIP Martin Cherry' no 'RIP George Metcalf’. Just like Ned Kelly himself it seems modern sympathisers are obsessed with Ned Kelly and don’t give a toss about the deaths of ordinary people on the sidelines . God alone knows what the comment about how different it would have been if the train had derailed was supposed to mean, another wrote it would have been  good if the train derailed, but if it had been derailed everyone agrees there would have been horrendous loss of life. On what planet would that have been ‘good’?? They’re much more interested in seeing another photo of the murderous psychopath than facing the truth about Glenrowan or reflecting on what a monstrous outrage Ned Kelly tried to unleash there. 

The truth about Glenrowan is this: the very real hero that emerged there, and who we should be remembering this week is Thomas Curnow, but he doesn’t get a mention anywhere on any of these Kelly sites, such is their blind focus on kelly mythology.  He is the man we should be celebrating, he was the true hero at Glenrowan, the partly disabled unarmed school teacher who saved  countless lives by an act  of genuine bravery, outsmarting an armed and dangerous psychopath with a candle and a silk scarf. That was a David and Goliath victory of genuinely mythic proportions! A genuinely heroic act of selfless bravery.

Instead the Kelly sympathisers are  in massive denial about Curnow, they’re in massive denial about what Ned Kelly planned for Glenrowan, and to help with their denial that have made up a lie about a Republic of North East Victoria as a cover-up, and tried to glamourise it all as some sort of heroic 'last stand'. They’re also in massive denial  about what an absolute debacle it was for the Gang - it wasn't a heroic last stand but a desperate and complete stuff-up : no policemen were killed, the train wasn’t derailed, one Gang member was shot and killed, two Gang members committed suicide, the armour was proven to be worse than useless, the leader ended up in captivity soon to be hanged, Ann Jones livelihood was ruined, and tragically, three innocent hostages died.  Responsibility for all this wretchedness can only be laid at the feet of one person : Ned Kelly the mad mastermind, Australias most notorious liar, the Man Haron Monis of 1880.

True Australian? 
Hero? 
Ned Kelly?

You have GOT to be joking. 

Lonigans Death Decoded

I liked Bills drawing so much I had to put it up as a Post for everyone to look at, and as an encouragement for the discussion to continue. Bill put this drawing up last week in our discussion about Lonigans death, a massive improvement on my own attempt at such a drawing that illustrates precisely what I believe the evidence points to about how he died.  I wanted to reply to various comments made on this topic in last weeks Blog Post but needed more space than is permitted on the Blogger Comments window, so hopefully we can continue this discussion here.

I am still convinced that McIntyres recollection, notwithstanding small variations here and there, was essentially accurate: Lonigan was killed by Ned Kelly whilst out in the open, firing from a rifle loaded with some form of multiple projectiles, possibly made by quartering a larger ball, or numerous swan drops that spread out as they approached Lonigan, and hitting him in four places at once. This happened the instant Lonigan made a move that wasn’t immediate surrender, when ordered to Bail Up.

NML thanks for taking the time to gather all those quotations, but I fail to see why they show that my version “does not fit” as you claim. You need to be a bit more specific about exactly what you think the problem is, but there is nothing in the quotes that you've supplied that doesn’t fit my view that Lonigan was killed in the open, and pretty much in cold blood.  Additionally you LEFT OUT a CRUCIAL part of McIntyres statement so I will supply a more complete extract of the relevant statement:

"I immediately held out my arms horizontally. As soon as I did so I saw the same man remove the gun a little towards his right hand and fire it, at Lonigan, who had started to run. Lonigan was standing on the opposite side of the fire to me, at a distance of ten or twelve feet. He was running towards a tree, and was about forty yards distant from the man who fired at him. I heard him falling immediately after the gun was fired. He had taken about four or five steps before he fell. Did not see him fall, but heard him breathing heavily and stertorously. ‘(From O&M ,07 August 1880. Report of the Committal hearing) 

The crucial words here are “AS SOON AS I DID SO.....”  which mean, straight away after McIntyre put his hands out, Lonigan was shot, no doubt because he didnt put his hands up like McIntyre did, but made a move for his gun. He was certainly still out in the open, and I called that ‘pretty much in cold blood’. If  Kelly wanted to he could have fired a warning shot...

One issue that I haven’t addressed so far, which might be something you are referring to NML is the claim from McIntyre that Lonigan made a run for it, but only took a few steps before he was killed. Certainly this still equates to being killed out  in the open, but did he make a run for it? McIntyre admits he DID NOT SEE what actually happened, and so it is perfectly legitimate to question his explanation of what he thinks he would have seen if he had been able to. His honest admission that he DIDNT see what happened is his way of saying this is what I THINK happened, and that view has become the accepted view, but I think he got it wrong. This is why : the position of the wounds on Lonigans body makes it impossible that he TURNED and made a run for it - so in fact if he moved, and McIntyre says he did HEAR Lonigan moving, then what he MUST have been doing was backing up. McIntyre turned and saw Lonigan on the ground and assumed Lonigan had turned and ran, but the forensics PROVE he didnt TURN. If he HAD turned the bullet/slug/quarter/swandrop/whatever it was that entered his left thigh would have done so from the opposite side. This is utterly incontrovertible. Lonigan didnt TURN, he backed up.Its also reported that after he was shot he staggered about briefly, and that was how when he looked to see what had happened, McIntyre saw Lonigan on the ground a few steps away from where he had been when he was shot.

Alternatively of course, you would have to resurrect the post mortem origin of that wound in the left thigh, but that is CONTRADICTED by Dr Reynolds autopsy finding. Mike Jones thinks the Dr. wasn’t thorough enough for us to be able to believe his claim that the wounds were all inflicted before death or within a few minutes of it, but doesn’t give any reason for this statement. I have done a little reading on this topic, and it wasn’t fun seeing post mortem pictures of murder victims and autopsies, but Mike I think this quote should suffice :

"One major difference between an antemortem and a postmortem injury is the presence of signs of bleeding. While the person is still alive, the blood is circulating and any injuries such as cuts or stabs will bleed. After death, the body usually does not bleed.” (Encyclopaedia .com entry on Antemortem Injury) Its  a complex field of study, but I am sure Dr Reynolds would have been able to tell if there was bleeding around the thigh wound or not. 

Mike its not a ‘contest’ but a search for the historical truth. Knowledge advances by picking the best explanation as the likely one and testing it until it either breaks and a better explanation is provided, or else if the prevailing explanation  stands up to  intense scrutiny, it becomes the accepted wisdom. I believe McIntyres version, as I have expressed it with the reservations about what he didnt see but assumed took place, makes sense of how Lonigan was killed. As I keep saying, the key to unravelling the mystery, is to realise Ned Kellys version was lies. 

A year later, the Explanation about Lonigans death that we’ve all been waiting for...

Exactly one year ago today I was described on Facebook by a well known self-promoting ‘relative of the Kelly gang’ as a “gutless faceless troll up to its old tricks again, bottom feeding like the scum it is”. This hysterical outburst came about because I was responding to a claim published the same day on the Unmasking the Kelly Gang Unmasked  Facebook page  that its Moderator had solved the mystery of how Lonigan was supposed to have been shot once but had four bullet wounds in his dead body at the autopsy.  This was a topic that was being discussed at the time on this blog.  The  Facebook claim was that Lonigan was killed as he ran for cover, and it was illustrated by the accompanying diagram:

It was immediately obvious to anyone with half a brain that this explanation was complete rubbish, and I pointed it out.  The diagram had Lonigan running to the right, which would mean the right side of his body would be facing Ned and the Gang – but he was hit on the left arm and the left thigh. The bullet in the left thigh had entered from the outer aspect  and travelled inwards, the exact opposite of what would be found if Kelly had somehow managed to hit the left leg from his position on the right of Lonigan. This explanation also contradicted Neds description of what happened, which was that Lonigan was behind a log and lifting his head up above it and aiming at him when Ned killed him.

For this explanation to work, known laws of physics would have to be suspended to enable bullets to be discharged in one direction but arrive at their target from the opposite one, and Ned Kellys testimony would have to be accepted as lies. I don’t have a problem with the idea that Ned Kelly told lies – we know he was an habitual liar – but I do have a major issue with an explanation that requires the Laws of Physics to be suspended.

Once the FB moderator had read my demolition of his nonsense, he had the intelligence to at least realize he had made a  major stuff up, but sadly not the grace to admit it publically. Instead he returned to the original FB Post and doctored it to now read at the beginning “ Part 1 : McIntyres version” , making out that part 2 would be the solution he had just devised. This was a rather contemptible bit of sleight-of-hand but I was looking forward to seeing how he was going to wriggle out of the mess he had just made for himself, given he had already announced he had solved the puzzle :

‘To enlighten them all …..I will explain with the help of two attachments how Ned was able to shoot Lonigan and how Lonigan was able to receive the wound to the thigh. I am surprised no one has worked this out before.’

I looked forward to reading it, but seriously doubted he would ever provide “Part 2” and Ive been proved right. I started to count the days, and record on the Blog how long we had been waiting…and today, we have been waiting an entire year! 365 days of failure to deliver means he will never deliver. He’s clueless so I will put the guy out of his misery and stop counting.

Interestingly, during this same year his FB page has declined to the point where it seems to have been abandoned – only one “post’ this year. He banned me from it, copying what the NK Forum and Ironoutlaw have done, conveniently making my  comments there disappear! But as I have noted before, interest in Kelly is declining everywhere in the Kelly world – the ‘postponement’ of the Ned Kelly Weekend for 2016 is a recent example. The Ned Kelly Forum and Iron Outlaw web sites are moribund, their facebook pages struggling to find anything to discuss apart from old photos and news items, the Ned Kelly Centre is dead and I think even the Ned Kelly Central FB page may be starting to lose its appeal, as the age of the Jones-Kelly myth continues to recede into the past, helped on its way by this Blog I have no doubt.

So, having waited all this time and only observed the ongoing decline of interest in kelly mythology, the mystery of what happened to Lonigan has remained unsolved. 

I wrote ages ago that one thing we know about the terrible events of SBC, is that Ned Kellys version of events cant be trusted - in the context of the known facts about Lonigans wounds, being behind  a log AND being shot only once is an impossible combination of events - there is simply no way Ned Kellys claim that Lonigan was hiding behind a log, AND was shot only once can be reconciled - its simply impossible. Either other shots were fired before or after he got behind the log, or else, if there was only one shot, it was fired while he was out in the open.   This explains why after an entire 12 months the Kelly sympathiser couldn’t come up with an explanation of what happened at SBC because the first thing anyone trying to do so has to confront is that Ned Kelly lied about it - and no sympathiser is willing to confront that awful truth abut their hero.

The suggestion someone made on this Blog that Lonigan was somehow ‘wrapped’ around the end of the log  with his left thigh exposed is implausible, but also contradicts Neds account, that Lonigan was BEHIND the Log. 

However, as soon as Kellys account is recognised as lies, and dismissed,  the pieces of the puzzle start to come together and the solution can be found.

Read on and learn the truth as I explain how I discovered it.

One big difficulty that I had was the consistency with which McIntyre claimed only ONE shot was fired, and yet there were four wounds. I had previously suggested his memory of such a stressful event may have been faulty, and he only remembered the shot that felled Lonigan but not others. One of the hostages at Faithfulls Creek, Stephens,  claimed Ned  had told him he had fired twice. Its been suggested shots may have been fired into Lonigans dead body later, after McIntyre had gone. Someone suggested these other wounds were caused by ‘crossfire’, meaning shots fired by Kennedy at the gang which missed them and hit Lonigans corpse lying on the ground - three times! And then there is the ‘quartered bullet’ theory, which is that a single shot caused four wounds because the bullet was quartered. 

I have been inclined not to accept the ‘quartered bullet’ theory, because  I’ve thought that the parts of Lonigans body that were hit  cant be made to all face the gun at the same time. Particularly, I struggled with the description of the bullet that went through Lonigans eye, because it was said to have entered at an angle, which I took to mean from the right side, but the discussion that took place on this topic at the time taught me this could have been from above or below or even only slightly from the right. The other difficulty I had was that the quarter that entered the brain, smashed its way through the bony eye socket , and another passed right through Lonigans arm but the quarter that entered the left thigh did so with almost no force at all, barely penetrating the skin.  The quarters – if truly quarters – should have impacted Lonigans body with equal force. Its been suggested the bullet found in Lonigans thigh had lost is momentum because it was the same bullet that had  first passed through his left arm. John Phillips and others suggested something even more implausible to account for this wound – he suggested that Lonigan accidentally shot himself trying in a desperate  panic to unholster his own revolver. This would suggest Lonigan was left handed and that the gun badly misfired. Both unlikely.

Having thought  about all these dilemmas for a year, I believe there is an explanation which brings it all together. I have changed my position about McIntyres memory - I believe it was accurate and only one shot was fired.  This means Lonigan was out in the open when Kelly shot him. I have changed my position on the quartered bullet theory and now regard it as likely.  I think the bullet that went through Lonigans left arm ended up in his left thigh - this would fit with the possibility that Lonigan was reaching for his revolver, his arm down near the thigh, the bullets momentum being greatly reduced by passing through the fleshy part of his forearm - as described by Reynolds. Another quarter went into his brain, one grazed the right side of his head and the fourth missed altogether. I don’t believe what Ned told Stephens at Faithfulls creek -  about shooting twice - was anything but more of Kellys lies, just as his story about Lonigan hiding behind a log and raising his head above it to shoot at him were. I think Reynolds description of the bullet he removed from Lonigans thigh as a ‘revolver’ bullet was mistaken – it was a quarter of a bigger rifle bullet. The rest of my explanation is best summarised by another one of my exquisite diagrams :

The big blue spots are where the Autopsy found bullet wounds on Lonigans corpse

What you see here is Lonigan standing as McIntyre said, behind him to his left and logically, his body turned towards where McIntyre was standing by the fire. His left side is exposed to the Kelly gang and Ned’s gun, but then on hearing the shouted “Bail up” turns his head sharply to the left and exposes his right eye….. he has seconds to live.

When I first drew this and looked at it, I felt a kind of chill. This simple diagram explained and confirmed everything that McIntyre said and exposed Neds lies. As McIntrye said, Lonigan was shot almost immediately, right where he stood, out in the open. If he had turned to run the wounds would be on the other leg. If he had been behind a log, no leg would have been wounded. If he did make a move toward his gun, he wasn’t given a chance to get it out. It was never a fair fight as the myth makers like to pretend. He was shot pretty much in cold blood right where he was when the Gang broke cover. Exactly as McIntyre said.

If someone knows what weight bullet Neds rifle would usually fire, and if quartered if it would be of similar size to a revolver bullet I would like to know. Can anyone find out if Lonigan was left handed? These extra bits of information would help to confirm this theory, but I think my explanation accounts for all the known facts, and should now be regarded as the definitive explanation of Lonigans death.  If you have a better one let us know, but I won’t be waiting a year for it. The only thing thats prevented everyone from seeing this till now is that as usual, everyone has been hypnotised by Australias greatest conman, Ned Kelly. His lies about this event, like his lies about so many other events have once again created confusion and uncertainty about the truth of what really happened - kick all of them out of the way and the truth becomes obvious.

More of Kellys lies exposed and another Kelly myth bites the dust.