The Fitzpatrick Conspiracy : Part Two

Alexander Fitzpatrick, the man Kelly sympathisers
can barely bring themselves to look at.

Last week I described Alan Crichton’s Fitzpatrick Conspiracy theory, and pointed out what it would mean for the traditional Kelly mythology if it was accepted. Crichton’s theory is that the Fitzpatrick incident was a plot devised by Brooke-smith and Whelan with the aim of  getting at Mrs Kelly. According to Crichton, Ellen Kelly was the ‘heart and soul of the Clan’ and getting rid of her would have been a major strike at the troublesome selector family. To make this happen Brook-smith and Whelan needed an incompetent and morally bankrupt policeman who could be manipulated into doing their will, and according to Crichton, Fitzpatrick fitted the bill! I noted last week that Crichton had written “I don’t like the guy” and guessed that was an understatement – well he’s more than confirmed it this week with this post to a Facebook page “This bloke was an arsehole the moment he popped out of the womb”.

The idea that Fitzpatrick was ‘an arsehole’ from birth is actually the fatal weakness in Crichton’s conspiracy theory. Ask Kelly sympathisers and Crichton to detail what facts they know to substantiate this claim and the only things they can offer are slander about his personal life – I will come back to that – and things that happened AFTER the ‘incident’. There is simply not one shred of evidence anywhere, including on his police record, that in his year in the police force BEFORE the ‘incident’, that Fitzpatrick was anything like the rotten character Crichton needs him to be to fit into his conspiracy theory, or for that matter the rotten character the Kelly sympathisers needed him to be to sustain their character assassination of him. Not one shred of evidence. The only evidence we have of Fitzpatrick’s character leading up to the ‘incident’ suggests he was an entirely satisfactory policeman. Here’s what Standish had to say about him to the Royal Commission:

Q182.  “Were you aware before this man Fitzpatrick was sent there that he was a man of bad character ?” 

Answer : “I was not ; he was strongly recommended to me by Mr. C. A. Smyth”

Smyth was a Crown prosecutor, and, according to his Obituary  'was for many years the leading man".  Whelan had nothing to say to the Commission that was adverse about Fitzpatrick in respect of the nine months he worked at Benalla, and Constable Thomas McIntyre described him as “a decent young fellow”. An entry in Fitzpatrick’s Service Record, dated 22^nd June 1878 says “An efficient constable”.

Against these facts, and no doubt greatly contributing to modern day hatred of Fitzpatrick like that exhibited by Crichton, we have Ian Jones baseless allegations in ‘A short Life’ that Fitzpatrick’s ‘first year in the force had been a chapter of unreliability, bad company, narrow scrapes and a fondness for liquor”. This is outrageous because there is simply not one fact to support this ‘verballing’ of Fitzpatrick – and several facts, already quoted, that directly contradict it.

Peter Fitzsimons, like Jones and just about every other Kelly author joined in this baseless character assassination writing of Fitzpatrick before the ‘incident’ that “He is neither dutiful nor diligent, neither honest nor humble, not courageous nor courteous. His key passions are pursuing the fairer sex and drinking, though usually in the reverse order…..Since joining the police force in April of the previous year his police record  has been a litany of louche laxity, ill-disciplined drinking, slovenliness and being placed on official reports” Again, this is an outrageous verballing of the man – there are ZERO facts – no evidence AT ALL to support this description of Fitzpatrick in the lead up to the ‘incident’.

Later of course, as every Kelly sympathiser knows off by heart, like a line in a Kelly Catechism, Fitzpatrick was described as a ‘liar and a larrikin’, and he was eventually dismissd from the force in disgrace. I will discuss all that in Part Three, but for now I am interested in what we actually know about Fitzpatrick’s character and service BEFORE the ‘incident’. Already we have established that before the incident his service record and reputation as a policeman were unremarkable.

What I now want to focus on are the facts about his private life which have been used to create the popular belief that Fitzpatrick was a sleazy womaniser, a morally bankrupt sexual predator. Crichton called him ‘a philandering drunkard’. The facts said to support these claims are that he was engaged to someone who was already pregnant, and he had previously fathered a child in an earlier relationship with a woman called Jessie McKay, from Meredith. There is also the claim that he was pursuing Kate Kelly.

The circumstances of the prior relationship that produced a child are not well known, but Fitzpatrick paid maintenance for the child, something even today many young men do their best to avoid doing if at all possible – so his example in that regard was a good one. We also know that Fitzpatrick married his pregnant fiancé and the marriage was apparently long lasting and successful, something which I think at the very least again speaks to something positive in his character. As far as the interaction with Kate is concerned, Mrs Kelly only ever said that Fitzpatrick had tried to kiss her. Kate herself initially denied that Fitzpatrick was ever there, then later changed her story but curiously didn’t offer it in support of her mother’s defence at her trial. Why not, if it was true? Surely it would have helped her mother.  Some months later Kate was reported to have said that she was at home alone when Fitzpatrick arrived, and that he immediately began to behave ‘improperly’ toward her but then Ned Kelly burst in and drew his gun. That scenario if true would make a liar of Ned Kelly who said he wasn’t there, and a liar of all the other supposed witnesses who said it was Fitzpatrick who drew the gun and that Kate wasn’t home alone. Ned himself contradicted his sisters claim saying that “If he (Fitzpatrick) or any other policeman tried to take liberties with my sister, Victoria would not hold him”.

There are therefore many good reasons to have serious doubts about the truth of the claim that Kate was molested by Fitzpatrick, but if Mrs Kelly is to be believed it was no more than an attempt to kiss her. If Ned is to be believed nothing happened, and as for Kate, which of her three stories should be believed? These deep uncertainties demand caution in the formulation of narratives around this issue but they are ignored by the Kelly sympathisers in their determination to vilify Fitzpatrick, and they routinely claim he attempted to rape - or actually raped - Kate Kelly. This is an outrageous slur that should be challenged every time someone utters it but pro-Kelly Facebook Page moderators never do. Their interest is not in the true story but in perpetuation of whatever myths and lies support their hero-worship of Ned Kelly, and repetition of any anti-police lies and hate that anyone cares to voice. But lets be honest here : paying child support and having a pregnant fiancé – which is what we actually know about Fitzpatrick -  is hardly the stuff of moral depravity.

There’s one other thing about the Kelly supporters routine, holier-than-thou vilification of Fitzpatrick that requires comment : it is deeply hypocritical, and I am sick and tired of it. The apparent sense of moral superiority that motivates their ridicule and scorn of Fitzpatrick because he was paying child support and engaged to a woman already pregnant is accompanied by a very deep denial of the manifest moral failures of innumerable members of their own clan – the arsonist Jim Kelly, the sexual predator James Quinn, the serial fornicator Ellen who conceived to three different men out of wedlock, the unfaithfulness of Annie Kelly who bore a daughter to a policeman while her own husband was in prison, the prenuptial impregnation of Ellen Barry aged 15 by Aaron Sherritt, the drunkenness, the lying and stealing, the bashings and domestic violence suffered by Margaret Quinn, the horrific animal cruelty of John Lloyd ….the list is almost endless and the Kelly-lovers hate it ever being mentioned.  They don't want anything to disturb their deep denial of Kelly clan depravity - but really, their extreme judgemental attitude to Fitzpatricks minor failings is just sickening hypocrisy. Its time for them to face reality : Fitzpatrick wasn't  an arsehole from birth, he wasn't the villain : the Kellys were.

The Fitzpatrick Conspiracy : Part One

In April next year there will be some sort of a Kelly convention at Chiltern, not far from Beechworth, a fund raiser for the Chiltern Athenaeum. One of the speakers has already announced what his topic will be: Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick:  “I'll be doing a presentation on this bloke at the Kelly event in Chiltern next April and I won't be holding back.” And then he says, in what is probably an understatement, and somewhat ominously “I don’t like this bloke”.

Of all the people Kelly sympathisers hate, and there are many, Fitzpatrick is without doubt the person Kelly sympathisers hate the most. They all claim, as did Ned Kelly himself that the entire Kelly outbreak is Fitzpatrick’s fault because he lied about what happened at the Kelly house when he went there to arrest Dan Kelly in April 1878. They mostly allege that Fitzpatrick was a drunk, a bumbling but treacherous fool who made a mess of his attempt to arrest Dan, and then to get himself out of trouble concocted the story of an assault. Some say the police hierarchy jumped at the opportunity to escalate the fracas into an attempt to murder a policeman so they could put as many of the Kellys away as possible. The bloke who will be giving the Lecture at Chiltern next year, Alan Crichton, believes theres much more to it than that. Several years ago he developed and wrote up a conspiracy theory about the episode, and for a long time its been available on the Iron Outlaw Site, in an article called – wait for it – ‘The Fitzpatrick Conspiracy’. He wrote “the whole scenario at the Kelly hut on the 15th of April 1878 was one big setup by police long before Fitzpatrick’s arrival at the hut”. I expect that is what he will be expounding on next year at Chiltern.

Now, for the benefit of everyone who reads this, and in particular for the many people in the Kelly world who don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between playing the man and playing the ball, please understand that what follows is not an attack on Alan Crichton. I have never met the man and know nothing at all about him except for the fact that he likes to write about the Kelly story. But this essay is not about him – its a critique of the claims he has made about the Fitzpatrick Affair in that article.

Crichton’s conspiracy theory is that the motivation behind the entire Fitzpatrick affair was that the police wanted to imprison Mrs Kelly: “The police knew how much Ned and his siblings were devoted to their mother. She, after all, was the heart and soul of the formidable clan”.  What they needed was an excuse to get into her house, and a policeman who could be manipulated into going there and causing trouble.

According to Crichton, the chief conspirators were Superintendent Brooke-Smith and Sergeant Whelan at Benalla who, in their search for a suitably pliable policeman picked out  Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick to be their fall guy.  “Out of all the capable officers in Victoria at the time, Inspector Brooke Smith happens to choose one of the most incompetent larrikins in the force in the form of Alexander Fitzpatrick. With Fitzpatrick’s shocking reputation and being in the force but one year, why would Brooke Smith choose a bloke like this to take over the most dangerous station in the North East? It could not be through lack of choice. Any officer chosen would have been a better replacement than Fitzpatrick.” To Crichton, the only possible explanation for the involvement of such an incompetent as Fitzpatrick in this affair, is that he was specifically chosen because of that very same incompetence. Crichton wrote “I believe that Alexander Fitzpatrick was simply used by his superiors as their inebriated, gullible, desperate, and quite dispensable sacrificial lamb.”

According to Crichton’s conspiracy theory, to insert their man into the scene, Brooke-Smith, created  a temporary vacancy at the nearby Greta police station by sending its usual occupant, Senior Constable  Strahan, to NSW to search for Ned Kelly. Theres also a story that Strahan was off sick – and Crichton thinks that if that was the case, it was a ‘sickie’, a fake illness that provided an excuse to have him off work. Either way, with Strahan out of the way, Brook-Smith and Whelan were able to send in their hand-picked stooge, Fitzpatrick, to replace him and to do their bidding at the Kelly house.

All police needed now was a pretext to get Fitzpatrick into the Kelly house, and it appeared in the Police Gazette of April 10^th 1878, in a list of arrest warrants that had been issued, and one was in the name of Dan Kelly for horse stealing. Crichton writes: “The police now have reason for entering the Kelly hut, an opportunity for Fitzpatrick to start an aggravating confrontation as planned, and a chance to incriminate the senior members of the household with a charge of assault, or what unfortunately turned out to be cries of attempted murder”. (my underlining)

The last piece in Crichtons conspiracy theory is his belief that Fitzpatrick was such a coward that he wouldn’t have been persuaded to visit the Kelly homestead unless he was first assured that Ned Kelly himself wouldn’t be there. Therefore according to Crichton, Whelan and Brooke-Smith told Fitzpatrick that Ned Kelly was in NSW, and Strahan had been sent there to try to find him.

So, according to Crichton’s theory, primed by his superiors lies, Fitzpatrick saddled up at Benalla on Monday april 15th, and headed off to take his temporary appointment at Greta. With Whelans encouragement, he would stop off at the Kelly homestead on his way past, start the planned ‘aggravating confrontation’ and arrest Dan Kelly if he happened to be home.

I am not sure if Crichton or anyone who has read this theory over the years realises it, but it undermines some of the important pillars of the mainstream Kelly myth, the most important one being that this was all Fitzpatrick’s doing. Instead, according to Crichton, Fitzpatrick was as much a victim in all this as the Kellys were, an unwitting tool in the hands of his scheming superiors, their “quite dispensable sacrificial lamb” Accoding to Crichton Fitzpatrick was tricked by Whelan and Brooke-Smith into walking into a situation that was bound to go badly, given their understanding of Fitzpatrick’s incompetence and the Kellys state of mind after years of police harassment, a virtual powder keg waiting for a match. If Crichton’s theory were to be believed Fitzpatrick has to be seen as a figure of pity, a weak pliant and pathetic individual who was duped and sacrificed by his superiors, and as a result had his career ruined and his reputation forever and falsely blackened. If Crichton’s theory were to be believed, the true villains were Whelan and Brooke-smith, not Fitzpatrick. If Crichton’s theory were to be believed it would mean that for 140 years the Kelly sympathisers have been directing all their venom and hate at the wrong police.

Another thing Kelly sympathisers would have to abandon if Crichton’s theory was accepted is their long-held view that Fitzpatrick disobeyed orders when he visited the Kelly home. They say that police were ordered to never go there alone -  but he did, and so they say, in addition to all his other personal faults, Fitzpatrick was insubordinate, further proof of his unfitness to be in uniform. But according to Crichton his superiors ordered him to go there, and they were happy for him – indeed they wanted him to be - alone. So if Crichtons theory is to be believed, Fitzpatrick was doing exactly what he was told to do.

Somehow, I don’t think Kelly fanciers really want to give up hating Fitzpatrick, but if they are going to adopt Crichton’s conspiracy theory, they would have to. They are struggling already to let go of their attachment to the unhistorical Republic theory - could they let go of the man they love to hate so much, Alex Fitzpatrick, and instead see him as a figure to be pitied? If they wont do that they will have to reject Crichtons conspiracy theory.

Next weeks post will be part two of my critique of Crichtons conspiracy theory, which like most conspiracy theories has a superficial plausibility but which on close analysis turns out to be completely untenable.

Corrections: A Response to a trolls campaign against free speech

For the second time this year, in an egregious violation of my absolute right to privacy, Mr Mick Fitzsimons has taken it upon himself to broadcast on his Facebook Page personal details about me and my origins and profession. Not only that, he has yet again broadcast outright lies and innumerable defamatory statements about me, and encouraged others to participate in a hate-fest of derogatory attacks on me, personally. He has never made a secret of the fact that his campaign is aimed at silencing me, and denying me the right to hold and to express opinions about Kelly history that he disagrees with, on my own Facebook pages and Blog - yes truely, he thinks I should be stopped from posting my own thoughts and my own ideas on my own FB page and my own blog! Breathtaking!

Until now I have not made any formal response to the unending stream of abuse and vilification, or the accusations levelled at me by this individual, but this latest attack requires a response. However, it will be my only comment on the topic, and there wont be any comments posted in response. I want to talk about the Kelly story not internet  thuggery. This comment is  not addressed to Mr Fitzsimons or his supporters – they are only interested in directing lies and hate at me. No, this is directed at any fair-minded individuals out there who might believe in the time-honoured tradition of everyone being given a fair go, in the idea that in an honourable contest you attack the ball and not the man, and in the idea that everyone’s right to privacy should be respected. These are ideas that by his half-decade of attacks on me, Mr Fitzsimons has demonstrated he doesn’t believe in. His lies have ben repeated so often that people are starting to believe them. Fair minded people who read his posts need to hear the truth.

I am not interested in recounting in detail the tawdry history of Fitzsimons attacks on me; suffice to say that his version of it is nonsense. My first contributions to the Kelly debate were under my own name, in 2012, not anonymously as Fitzsimons wrongly claimed yesterday. But from the moment I expressed an opinion about the Kelly story that Fitzsimons disagreed with, I became a target for his personal attacks and unwarranted abuse, including the disgusting and offensive suggestion I had something in common with Dr Joseph Mengele, a Nazi criminal who tortured and experimented on women. Subsequently I rejoined the debate as Dee, so that my surname would not be a distraction, and soon enough made it quite clear to anyone who would listen that Dee was not my real name and the image I used was an Avatar, and not in any way indicative of anything in particular. Fitzsimons however is determined to promote his childish idea that I am pretending to be a girl, that I am hiding behind the identity of a girl and now we have people claiming I wear women’s clothes, that I am a ‘cross-dresser’ and today that I am a ‘Kiwi sheep rooter’ a filthy comment that several people found amusing.  Fitzsimons himself, in an act of blatant hypocrisy, participated at length  on a Forum using a womans name, and an Avatar of a baby sucking a dummy – but he was never accused of pretending to be a baby or hiding behind a woman’s name.  He participated anonymously in  many forums - further acts of hypocrisy. (I know this because I was the administrator of several Proboards Forums - the administrator can see IP addresses – and though Fitzsimons likes to disguise his address with a proxy server he is also lazy and careless)

Fitzsimons and others, as well as attacking me personally at every opportunity, also commenced a relentless campaign to violate my privacy and to find and broadcast my personal details on the World Wide Web, a campaign which resulted in Fitzsimons and others on several occasions confidently declaring they knew my identity, and then wrongly naming several innocent people.  Earlier this year he circulated images of me to his pals.  This offensive campaign continued right up to last week when Fitzsimons announced that I am Mr T, an anonymous poster to my Blog. This is what he wrote : “Mark you have to know that Mr T is David and like Bob, I don't know how you can associate with that scum”. Once again, Fitzsimons is dead wrong. I am not Mr T. I have no idea who Mr T is and I don’t care. Its none of my business who Mr T is.  But from Fitzsimons page we now have the sickening spectacle on Thursday of  a self-declared Kelly descendant supinely offering thanks to Fitzsimons and declaring, in reference to his violation of my right to privacy “you deserve this honour to disclose this information”. What kind of people think there is something honourable about invading someone’s privacy and broadcasting personal and private information about someone on the Internet? Its actually a crime!

In a time when everyone using social media is being constantly warned about hacking and the need to protect ourselves from identity theft and criminal activity on the internet, we all have an absolute right to determine how much or how little of our personal lives we expose on the Internet and on Social Media. That is why I have never objected to people posting on my Blog or on any Facebook page using a pseudonym or calling themselves ‘anonymous’. It is an individual’s right, theirs alone and not mine to determine if they want to broadcast their personal details on the internet. I am interested in what people have to say, not in who they are. If it’s clear they don’t wish to be identified, I give absolute respect to that choice of theirs. Not so Mr Fitzsimons, and his supporters – they have decided that THEY will be the ones who decide who gets to keep their personal details private or not! Who the bloody hell do they think they are?

So I am not Mr T, or any of the many other people who post comments anonymously or using pseudonyms on my Blog.  Even though I have for years repeatedly and consistently and truthfully denied it, Fitzsimons continues to claim they are all fake identities created by me.  So for the last time, I will say it yet again : They are not fake identities invented or in any way linked or related or known to me. I post to my Blog as Dee and nobody else. I have no idea who Ashleigh Broad is, who Cameron is, who Horrie and Alf are, who Roy or any of the other names listed by Fitzsimons are. They are people who post to the Blog with their own ideas and thoughts. They’re nothing to do with me and if they don’t wish to disclose their identity, that’s their right and I respect it.

I have never posted personal details online of anyone. I have never asked the police to investigate Fitzsimons or anyone else. I have never stalked anyone. I do not have multiple personalities. I am not a pervert or a criminal or a disgraced doctor. I am not fat or balding. I am not a psychopath or mentally unstable. I have never dared anyone to name me; No, all of these allegations that Fitzsimons has made against me are lies, blatant bullying by him and his gang of Facebook thugs who want to make me go away, to silence me.

But they have failed. I am still here, I am not going away and I am not going to be silenced. I will continue to exercise my right to have and to express my views on Kelly history on my own FB page and my own Blog. I will not allow my right to freedom of expression to be trampled on by these people.As always anyone who wants to contribute to the discussion in a positive way, anyone who wants to play the ball and not the man will continue to be welcome to do so, whatever their opinion is. But for Fitzsimons and his ilk, the solution is incredibly simple : if you dont like what I write don't read it. Write your own stuff on your own places about your own Kelly beliefs, leave me out of it, mind your own bloody business and stay the hell out of my private life.

That is my final comment on the matter.