Ned kelly biography

Historian Geoffrey Serle called Kelly and his gang "the last expression of the lawless frontier in what was becoming a highly organised and educated society, the last protest of the mighty bush now tethered with iron rails to Melbourne and the world". Kelly continues to cause division in his homeland: he is variously considered a Robin Hood -like folk hero and crusader against oppression, and a murderous villain and terrorist.

Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night. Edward "Ned" Kelly was their third child. The Kellys struggled on inferior farmland at Beveridge and Red began drinking heavily. According to oral tradition, he risked his life at Avenel by saving another boy from drowning in a creek, [ 15 ] for which the boy's family gifted him a green sash.

It is said this was the same sash worn by Kelly during his last stand in In December , Red was fined for being drunk and disorderly. Badly affected by alcoholism, he died later that month at Avenel, two days after Christmas. Ned signed his death certificate. The following year, the Kellys moved to Greta in north-eastern Victoria, near the Quinns and their relatives by marriage, the Lloyds.

In , Kelly's uncle Jim Kelly was convicted of arson after setting fire to the rented premises where the Kellys and some of the Lloyds were staying. Jim was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to fifteen years of hard labour. The Kelly selection proved ill-suited for farming, and Ellen supplemented her income by offering accommodation to travellers and selling sly-grog.

In , year-old Kelly met Irish-born Harry Power alias of Henry Johnson , a transported convict who turned to bushranging in north-eastern Victoria after escaping Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. That month, they attempted to steal horses from the Mansfield property of squatter John Rowe as part of a plan to rob the Woods Point —Mansfield gold escort.

They abandoned the idea after Rowe shot at them, and Kelly temporarily broke off his association with Power. Kelly's first brush with the law occurred in October A Chinese hawker named Ah Fook said that as he passed the Kelly family home, Ned brandished a long stick, declared himself a bushranger and robbed him of 10 shillings. Kelly, arrested and charged with highway robbery , claimed in court that Fook had abused him and his sister Annie in a dispute over the hawker's request for a drink of water.

Family witnesses backed Ned and the charge was dismissed. Kelly and Power reconciled in March and, over the next month, committed a series of armed robberies. By the end of April, the press had named Kelly as Power's young accomplice, and a few days later he was captured by police and confined to Beechworth Gaol. Kelly fronted court on three robbery charges, with the victims in each case failing to identify him.

On the third charge, Superintendents Nicolas and Hare insisted Kelly be tried, citing his resemblance to the suspect. After a month in custody, Kelly was released due to insufficient evidence. The Kellys allegedly intimidated witnesses into withholding testimony. Another factor in the lack of identification may have been that Power's accomplice was described as a " half-caste ", but the police believed this to be the result of Kelly going unwashed.

In June , while resting in a mountainside gunyah bark shelter that overlooked the property, Power was captured and arrested by police. Word soon spread that Kelly had informed on him. Kelly denied the rumour, and in the only surviving letter known to bear his handwriting, he pleads with Sergeant James Babington of Kyneton for help, saying that "everyone looks on me like a black snake".

Power always maintained that Kelly betrayed him. Reporting on Power's criminal career, the Benalla Ensign wrote: [ 25 ]. The effect of his example has already been to draw one young fellow into the open vortex of crime, and unless his career is speedily cut short, young Kelly will blossom into a declared enemy of society. In response, Gould sent an indecent note and a parcel of calves' testicles to McCormack's wife, which Kelly helped deliver.

Kelly was released from Beechworth Gaol on 27 March , five weeks early, and returned to Greta. Shortly after, horse-breaker Isaiah "Wild" Wright rode into town on a horse he supposedly borrowed. Later that night, the horse went missing. While Wright was away in search of the horse, Kelly found it and took it to Wangaratta , where he stayed for four days.

On 20 April, while Kelly was riding back into Greta, Constable Edward Hall tried to arrest him on the suspicion that the horse was stolen. Kelly resisted and overpowered Hall, despite the constable's attempts to shoot him. Kelly was eventually subdued with the help of bystanders, and Hall pistol-whipped him until his head became "a mass of raw and bleeding flesh".

Wright received eighteen months for his part. Kelly served his sentence at Beechworth Gaol and Pentridge Prison, then aboard the prison hulk Sacramento , off Williamstown. He was freed on 2 February , six months early for good behaviour, and returned to Greta. According to one possibly apocryphal story, Kelly, to settle the score with Wright over the horse, fought and beat him in a bare-knuckle boxing match.

Regardless of the story's veracity, Wright became a known Kelly sympathiser. Over the next few years, Kelly worked at sawmills and spent periods in New South Wales , leading what he called the life of a "rambling gambler". Ned later claimed that the group stole horses. On 18 September , Kelly was arrested in Benalla for riding over a footpath while drunk.

The following day he brawled with four policemen who were escorting him to court, including a friend of the Kellys, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick. Another constable involved, Thomas Lonigan, supposedly grabbed Kelly's testicles during the fraccas; legend has it that Kelly vowed, "Well Lonigan, I never shot a man yet; but if I ever do On 10 November, Baumgarten was arrested for selling the horses.

Warrants for Ned and Dan's arrest for the theft were sworn in March and April King disappeared around this time. Four days later, Constable Fitzpatrick arrived at Greta for relief duty and called at the Kellys' home to arrest Dan for horse theft. Finding Dan absent, Fitzpatrick stayed and conversed with Ellen Kelly. When Dan and his brother-in-law Bill Skillion arrived later that evening, Fitzpatrick informed Dan that he was under arrest.

Dan asked to be allowed to have dinner first. The constable consented and stood guard over his prisoner. Minutes later, Ned rushed in and shot at Fitzpatrick with a revolver, missing him. Ellen then hit Fitzpatrick over the head with a fire shovel. A struggle ensued and Ned fired again, wounding Fitzpatrick above his left wrist. Skillion and Williamson came in, brandishing revolvers, and Dan disarmed Fitzpatrick.

Ned apologised to Fitzpatrick, saying that he mistook him for another constable. Fitzpatrick fainted and when he regained consciousness Ned compelled him to extract the bullet from his own arm with a knife; Ellen dressed the wound. Ned devised a cover story and promised to reward Fitzpatrick if he adhered to it. Fitzpatrick was allowed to leave.

About 1. He reached a hotel where his wound was re-bandaged, then rode to Benalla to report the incident. Kelly and members of his family gave conflicting accounts of the Fitzpatrick incident. Kelly initially claimed he was away from Greta at the time, and that if Fitzpatrick suffered any wounds, they were probably self-inflicted. In , Brickey Williamson, who was seeking remission for his sentence in relation to the incident, stated that Kelly shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had drawn his revolver.

In the ensuing struggle, Fitzpatrick drew his revolver, Ned appeared, and with Dan seized and disarmed the constable, who later claimed a wrist injury from a door lock was a gunshot wound. Williamson, Skillion and Ellen Kelly were arrested and charged with aiding and abetting attempted murder; Ned and Dan were nowhere to be found.

The three appeared on 9 October before Judge Redmond Barry. Fitzpatrick's doctor, who had treated his wound, gave evidence that the constable "was certainly not drunk" and that his wounds were consistent with his statement. The defence called two witnesses to give evidence that Skillion was not present, which would cast doubt on Fitzpatrick's account.

One of these witnesses, a family relative, swore that Ned was in Greta that afternoon, which was damaging to the defence. Ellen Kelly, Skillion and Williamson were convicted as accessories to the attempted murder of Fitzpatrick. Skillion and Williamson both received sentences of six years and Ellen three years of hard labour. Hiding out at Bullock Creek in the Wombat Ranges, they earned money sluicing gold and distilling whisky, and were supplied with provisions and information by sympathisers.

The police were tipped off about the gang's whereabouts and, on 25 October , two mounted police parties were sent to capture them. The following day at about 5 p. Lonigan made a motion to draw his revolver and ran for the cover of a log. Ned immediately shot Lonigan, killing him. The gang questioned McIntyre and took his and Lonigan's firearms.

Ned replied, "I will let them see what one native [Australian-born colonial] can do. Ned advised McIntyre to tell them to surrender. As the constable did so, the gang ordered them to bail up. Kennedy reached for his revolver, whereupon the gang fired. Scanlan dismounted and, according to McIntyre, was shot while trying to unsling his rifle. Ned maintained that Scanlan fired and was trying to fire again when he fatally shot him.

According to McIntyre, the gang continued firing at Kennedy as he dismounted and tried to surrender. Ned later stated that Kennedy hid behind a tree and fired back, then fled into the bush. Ned and Dan pursued and exchanged gunfire with the sergeant for over 1 km before Ned shot him in the right side. Amidst the shootout, McIntyre, still unarmed, escaped on Kennedy's horse.

Kennedy's body was found two days later. In his accounts of the shootout, Ned justified the killings as acts of self-defence, citing reports of policemen boasting that they would shoot him on sight, the cache of weapons and ammunition that the police carried, and their failure to surrender as evidence of their intention to kill him. Three days later, the Parliament of Victoria passed the Felons Apprehension Act , which came into effect on 1 November.

The bushrangers were given until 12 November to surrender. On 15 November, having remained at large, they were officially outlawed. As a result, anyone who encountered them armed, or had a reasonable suspicion that they were armed, could kill them without consequence. The act also penalised anyone who gave "any aid, shelter or sustenance" to the outlaws or withheld information, or gave false information, to the authorities.

Punishment was imprisonment with or without hard labour for up to 15 years. After the police killings, the gang tried to escape into New South Wales but, due to flooding of the Murray River , were forced to return to north-eastern Victoria. They narrowly avoided the police on several occasions and relied on the support of an extensive network of sympathisers.

In need of funds, the gang decided to rob the bank of Euroa. Byrne reconnoitered the small town on 8 December Around midday the next day, the gang held up Younghusband Station, outside Euroa. Fourteen male employees and passers-by were taken hostage and held overnight in an outbuilding on the station; female hostages were held in the homestead.

A number of hostages were likely sympathisers of the gang and had prior knowledge of the raid. The following day, Dan guarded the hostages while Ned, Byrne and Hart rode out to cut Euroa's telegraph wires. They encountered and held up a hunting party and some railway workers, whom they took back to the station. Ned, Dan and Hart then went into Euroa, leaving Byrne to guard the prisoners.

Around 4 p. Following the raid, a number of newspapers commented on the efficiency of its execution and compared it with the inefficiency of the police. Several hostages stated that the gang had behaved courteously and without violence during the raid. At Younghusband Station, Byrne wrote two copies of a letter that Kelly had dictated. They were posted on 14 December to Donald Cameron, a Victorian parliamentarian who Kelly mistook as sympathetic to the gang, and Superintendent John Sadleir.

In the letter, Kelly gives his version of the Fitzpatrick incident and the Stringybark Creek killings, and describes cases of alleged police corruption and harassment of his family, signing off as "Edward Kelly, enforced outlaw". He expected Cameron to read it out in parliament, but the government only allowed summaries to be made public.

The Argus called it the work of "a clever illiterate". Kelly expanded on much of its content in the Jerilderie Letter of On 2 January , police obtained warrants for the arrest of 30 presumed Kelly sympathisers, 23 of whom were remanded in custody. Police claimed that such threats dissuaded their informants from giving sworn evidence. On 22 April, police magistrate Foster refused prosecution requests to continue remands and discharged the remaining detainees.

Although the police command opposed this decision, by then it was clear that the tactic of detaining sympathisers had not impeded the gang. Jones argues that the detention strategy swung public sympathy away from the police. Fifty-eight police were transferred to north-eastern Victoria, totaling in the district. Around 50 soldiers were also deployed to guard local banks.

The gang distributed most proceeds from the raid to family and other sympathisers. Once more in need of funds, they planned to rob the bank at Jerilderie , a town 65 km across the border in New South Wales. A number of sympathisers moved into Jerilderie before the raid to provide undercover support. On 7 February , the gang crossed the Murray River between Mulwala and Tocumwal and camped overnight in the bush.

The following day they visited a hotel about 3 km from Jerilderie, where they drank and chatted with patrons and staff, learning more about the town and its police presence. In the early hours of 9 February, the gang bailed up the Jerilderie police barracks and secured in the lockup the two constables present, George Devine and Henry Richards.

They also held Devine's wife and young children hostage overnight. At 10 am on 10 February, Ned and Byrne donned police uniforms and took Richards with them into town, leaving Devine in the lockup and warning his wife that they would kill her and her children if she left the barracks. With hostages from the bank now detained in the hotel, Byrne held up the post office and smashed its telegraph system while Ned had several hostages cut down telegraph wires.

After lecturing the 30 or so hostages on police corruption and the justice system, Ned freed them, except for Richards and two telegraphists, who he had secured in the lockup. Ned stayed a while longer to shout a group of sympathisers at the Albion Hotel. While there, he forced Hart to return a watch he had stolen from priest J. Gribble , who also persuaded Ned to leave a racehorse he had taken as it belonged to "a young lady".

Prior to arriving in Jerilderie, Kelly composed a lengthy letter with the aim of tracing his path to outlawry, justifying his actions, and outlining the alleged injustices he and his family suffered at the hands of the police. He also implores squatters to share their wealth with the rural poor, invokes a history of Irish rebellion against the English, and threatens to carry out a "colonial stratagem" designed to shock not only Victoria and its police "but also the whole British army".

He tasked Edwin Living, a local bank accountant, with delivering it to the editor of the Jerilderie and Urana Gazette for publication. The letter was rediscovered and published in full in According to historian Alex McDermott, "Kelly inserts himself into history, on his own terms, with his own voice. We hear the living speaker in a way that no other document in our history achieves".

The Victorian police continued to receive many reports of sightings of the outlaws and information about their activities from their network of informants. Hare organised frequent search parties and surveillance of Kelly sympathisers. In March , six Queensland native police troopers and a senior constable under the command of sub-Inspector Stanhope O'Connor were deployed to Benalla to join the hunt for the gang.

Although Kelly feared the tracking ability of the Aboriginal troopers, Standish and Hare doubted their value and temporarily withdrew their services. In May , on the advice of Standish, the Victorian Land Board blacklisted 86 alleged Kelly sympathisers from buying land in the secluded areas of northeastern Victoria. The aim of the policy was to disperse the gang's network of sympathisers and disrupt stock theft in the region.

Jones and others claim that it caused widespread resentment and hardened support for the outlaws. Facing media and parliamentary criticism over the costly and failed gang search, Standish appointed Assistant Commissioner Charles Hope Nicolson as leader of operations at Benalla on 3 July Standish reduced Nicolson's police forces, withdrew most of the soldiers guarding banks, and cut the search budget.

Nicolson relied more heavily on targeted surveillance and his network of spies and informers. After almost a year of unsuccessful efforts to capture the outlaws, Nicolson was replaced by Hare. In June , police informant Daniel Kennedy reported that the gang were planning another raid and had made bullet-proof armour out of agricultural equipment.

Hare dismissed the latter as preposterous and sacked Kennedy. I look upon Ned Kelly as an extraordinary man; there is no man in the world like him, he is superhuman. During the Kelly outbreak, police watch parties monitored Byrne's mother's house in the Woolshed Valley near Beechworth. The police used the house of her neighbour, Aaron Sherritt , as a base of operations and kept watch from nearby caves at night.

Sherritt, a former Greta Mob member and lifelong friend of Byrne, accepted police payments for camping with the watch parties and for informing on the gang. In March Byrne's mother saw Sherritt with a police watch party and later publicly denounced him as a spy. That evening, they kidnapped a local gardener, Anton Wick, and took him to Sherritt's hut, which was occupied by Sherritt, his pregnant wife Ellen and her mother, and a four-man police watch party.

Byrne forced Wick to knock on the back door and call out for Sherritt. When Sherritt answered the door, Byrne shot him in the throat and chest with a shotgun, killing him. Byrne and Dan then entered the hut while the policemen hid in one of the bedrooms. Byrne overheard them scrambling for their shotguns and demanded that they come out. When they did not respond he fired into the bedroom.

He then sent Ellen into the bedroom to bring the police out, but they detained her in the room. The outlaws left the hut, collected kindling, and loudly threatened to burn alive those inside. They stayed outside for approximately two hours, yelled more threats, then released Wick and rode away. The gang estimated that the policemen at Sherritt's would report his murder to Beechworth within a few hours, prompting a police special train to be sent up from Melbourne.

They also surmised that the train would collect reinforcements in Benalla before continuing through Glenrowan , a small town in the Warby Ranges. There, the gang planned to derail the train and shoot dead any survivors, then ride to an unpoliced Benalla where they would bomb the railway bridge over the Broken River , thereby isolating the town and giving them time to rob the banks, bomb the police barracks, torch the courthouse, free the gaol's prisoners, and generally sow chaos before returning to the bush.

The outlaws selected a sharp curve at an incline, where the train would be speeding at 60 mph before derailing into a deep gully. They told their captives they were going to "send the train and its occupants to hell". The bushrangers took over the Glenrowan railway station , the stationmaster's home and Ann Jones' Glenrowan Inn, opposite the station.

They used the hotel to hold the workers, passers-by, and other men; most of the women and children taken prisoner were held at the stationmaster's home. The other hotel in town, McDonnell's Railway Hotel, was used to stable the gang's stolen horses, one of which carried a keg of blasting powder and fuses. Kelly conceived of the armour to protect the outlaws in shootouts with the police and planned to wear it when inspecting the train wreckage for survivors.

By the afternoon of 27 June, the train still had not arrived, as the policemen in Sherritt's hut remained there until morning, for fear that the bushrangers were still outside. Amongst them were sympathisers planted by the gang to help control the situation. As the hours passed without sight of the train, the gang plied the hostages with drink and organised music, singing, dancing and games.

Towards evening, Ned let 21 hostages he deemed trustworthy to leave, then captured Glenrowan's lone constable, Hugh Bracken, with the assistance of hostage Thomas Curnow , a local schoolmaster who sought to gain the gang's trust in order to thwart their plans. Believing that Curnow was a sympathiser, Ned let him and his wife return home, but warned them to "go quietly to bed and not to dream too loud".

News of Sherritt's death finally reached the outside world at midday 27 June, and at 9 pm, a police special train left Melbourne for Beechworth. In addition to its crew and four journalists, the train carried sub-Inspector O'Connor, his native police unit, wife and sister-in-law. They stopped at Benalla at a. Hare ordered a pilot engine to travel ahead of them as a lookout.

Ned kelly biography

One hour later, as the pilot approached Glenrowan, Curnow signalled it to stop and alerted the driver of the danger. Kelly had decided to free the hostages and was delivering them a final lecture on the police when the train pulled into Glenrowan. The outlaws donned their armour and prepared for a confrontation. Meanwhile, Bracken escaped to the railway station to explain the situation to the police, after which Hare led his troopers towards the hotel.

The outlaws lined up in the shadow of the hotel's porch and, when the police appeared about 30 m away in the moonlight, opened fire. About shots were exchanged in the first volley. Someone shouted that women and children were in the hotel, prompting a ceasefire. Hare was shot through the left wrist and, fainting from blood loss, returned to Benalla for treatment.

Ned was wounded in the left hand, left arm and right foot. Byrne was shot in the calf. Two hostages were fatally wounded by police fire into the weatherboard building: thirteen-year-old John Jones and railway worker Martin Cherry. During the lull in gunfire, a number of hostages, mostly women and children, escaped the hotel. Kelly was lying in the bush nearby.

Police surrounded the hotel throughout the night, and the firing continued intermittently. At about a. Seriously wounded, Kelly lay in the bush for most of the night. Police returned fire as Kelly moved from tree to tree towards the hotel, at times staggering from his injuries, the weight of his armour and the impact of bullets on the plate iron, which he later described as "like blows from a man's fist".

Due to these factors, Kelly had difficulty aiming, firing and reloading his guns. Eyewitnesses struggled to identify the figure moving in the dim misty light and, astonished as it withstood bullets, variously called it a ghost, a bunyip , and the devil. With the steam rising from the ground, it looked for all the world like the ghost of Hamlet's father with no head, only a very long thick neck It was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw or read of in my life, and I felt fairly spellbound with wonder, and I could not stir or speak.

The gun battle with Kelly lasted around 15 minutes with Dan and Hart providing covering fire from the hotel. Ned was disarmed and divested of his armour by the police while Dan and Hart continued firing on them. Dan was wounded by return fire, and Ned was carried to the railway station, where a doctor attended to him. In the meantime, the siege continued.

Around 10 a. They were ordered to lie down as police checked for any outlaws among them. Two of the hostages were arrested for being known Kelly sympathisers. By the afternoon of 28 June, some spectators had gathered at Glenrowan, and Dan and Hart had ceased shooting. Forbidding his men from storming the hotel, Sadleir ordered a cannon from Melbourne to blast out the outlaws, then decided to burn them out instead.

Passing through the area, Catholic priest Matthew Gibney halted his travels to administer the last rites to Ned, then entered the burning hotel in an attempt to rescue anyone inside. He found the bodies of Byrne, Dan and Hart. The causes of Dan and Hart's deaths remain a mystery. After the fire died out at 4 p. Others wounded during the shootout were hostages Michael Reardon and his baby sister Bridget who was grazed by a bullet , [ ] [ ] and Jimmy, an Aboriginal trooper.

Following the siege, Kelly was transported to Benalla, where doctors determined that his injuries were non-fatal. Outside the lockup where Kelly was kept, Byrne's body was strung up and photographed, with casts taken of his head and limbs for a waxwork , later exhibited in Melbourne. Dan and Hart's charred remains were buried by their families in unmarked graves in Greta Cemetery.

He interviewed Kelly about this and paraphrased the transcript for The Age. Initially set for Beechworth, the trial was transferred to the Central Criminal Court in Melbourne, primarily to protect jurors from threats by Kelly sympathisers. Kelly's trial began on 19 October before judge Sir Redmond Barry , who had sentenced his mother over the Fitzpatrick incident.

The day before his execution, Kelly had his photographic portrait taken as a keepsake for his family, and he was granted farewell meetings with relatives. One newspaper reported that his mother's last words to him were, "Mind you die like a Kelly", but Jones and Castles have questioned this. The following morning, Kelly prayed and, when passing the gaol's garden on the way to the gallows, commented on the beauty of the flowers, but said little else.

His last words were variously reported as " Such is life " [ ] or "Ah, well, I suppose it has come to this", [ ] though the latter may have been an interpretation rather than a direct quote. In March , the Victorian government approved a royal commission into the conduct of the Victorian police during the Kelly outbreak. While its report found that the police had acted properly in relation to the criminality of the Kellys, it exposed widespread corruption and ended a number of police careers, including that of Chief Commissioner Standish.

It concluded with a list of thirty-six recommendations for reform. There was widespread speculation that Kelly's execution would lead to further outbreaks of violence in north-eastern Victoria. The police no longer pursued a policy of dispersing Kelly sympathisers by denying them land in the district, [ ] [ ] and assured them that they would be treated fairly if they kept the peace.

During the royal commission there were threats of violence and intimidation against people who had assisted the police. Kelly's mother was released from prison in February Jones states that she met with Greta police constable Robert Graham soon after, and they reached an understanding which helped reduce tension in the community. Kelly was buried at the Old Melbourne Gaol in what was known as the "old men's yard".

In , the Old Melbourne Gaol was closed for demolition works, during which the remains of felons were uncovered. Before being reinterred in a mass grave at Pentridge Prison, skeletal parts were looted by workers and spectators from a number of graves, including one marked with the initials "E. It went missing but was later found in a safe.

On 9 March , archaeologists announced they believed they had found Kelly's burial site at Pentridge Prison, among the remains of 32 executed felons. After conducting several tests in —11, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine concluded the skull was not Kelly's. Most of the skull is missing, [ ] with what remains of the occipital bone showing cuts consistent with dissection.

In , the Victorian government approved the handover of Kelly's bones to his family, who made plans for his final burial and also appealed for the return of his skull. Bushranging peaked between the s and s whilst gold was being transported by road during the Australian Gold Rush. The crimes of bushrangers varied between the highway robbery of this period and other acts such as murder, assault, theft, home invasion and arson.

The Australian fascination with bushrangers in the past and the present, however, is fed by a national myth of Australians as rebels, larrikins. Bushrangers are regarded as Robin Hood type figures, fighting oppression, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Ned Kelly is the most infamous bushranger, and his known crimes include cow and horse theft, alongside assault and murder.

He became a bushranger under the mentoring of Harry Power, an absconding prisoner, in the late s. He moved to Victoria, on the mainland, in John maintained that he was the victim of English imperialism in Ireland, a view which he imparted on his son. In his Jerilderie letter, Ned wrote of the convict system:. Quinn arrived in Port Phillip, Victoria, in July with her family.

From County Antrim, the ten Quinns were assisted passengers — they had their voyage subsidised by the colonial government. In , Ned was arrested for an alleged assault of Ah Fook, a Chinese salesman. According to the accusation, Kelly had initiated the altercation by declaring himself a bushranger, and had stolen 10 shillings. Ned was photographed by a Melbourne photographer in a boxing stance in , after winning a bare-knuckle match at the Imperial Hotel, Beechworth.

This was his longest spell in prison until his final capture. She was the defendant in several court appearances and was eventually sentenced to three years in prison for setting upon Constable Fitzpatrick in , with a spade. Whether Ned was present or not has never been proven, but Dan and Ned went into hiding in the bush. It was at this point that the brothers, with Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, became the Kelly Gang and their crimes escalated.

They begin:. On top of the injury to Constable Fitzpatrick, they were wanted for the murders of two constables at Stringybark Creek and the robbery of the National Bank at Euroa. During a plan to wreck a special police train on the 29 June , the Kelly Gang took possession of a hotel at Glenrowan. The 60 people inside became hostages.

Ned allowed a schoolmaster, Thomas Curnow, to leave the hotel with his wife, child and sister.