January 21, 2013 • 19 mins
Ned Kelly's cropped up in the news again, but who was he? The bushranger Ned Kelly became an outlaw in 1878, and his gang successfully conducted several raids. Tune in to learn why many Australians think of him as a folk hero in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from housetop
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to bling a chocolate boarding and I'm fair Daddy. And
this episode starts off in one of my favorite ways,
with the mysterious unidentified head or skull. Rather, it is
(00:25):
a good way to start a podcast. We've done it
a few times, but it's always a classic intro. So
here's how this story starts. In two thousand nine, a
West Australian farmer named Tom Baxer turned in a skull
to the authorities, claiming that it's the skull of Ned Kelly,
a famous bush ranger or bandit who was executed back
(00:45):
in the eighteen hundreds. His body was believed to be
buried in a mass grave, but for decades kelly skull
lived in a display case in Melbourne Jail until that is,
it was stolen in ninety so nobody has really known
where the skull or the head was since then. It's
been a mystery, and back there didn't really help illuminate
(01:06):
that question very much. He refuses to say how he
got the skull or if he was involved in its stuff,
which is kind of sketchy if you think about it. Yeah,
I wonder if there will be more details on that
aspect of it in the future, but as far as
we know right now, researchers haven't positively identified the head
as Ned's. In two thousand ten, they issued kind of
a request for help. They had sort of reached to
(01:27):
the end of the road and as far as they
could go and testing things, and they asked people to
turn in any information that they know, any stories, any photographs,
and at least one man, according to a story in
August two thousand ten, has come forward with a tooth
that he believes belonged to the skull, so a tooth
that had been handed down through his family as a
(01:47):
souvenir of Ned Kelly exactly, and he has given it
to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, where which is
the body that's conducting the research and so what happens
with that know? Very funny. So there's been that renewed
interest in Kelly, but really he's never really gone away
from the Australian collective consciousness. He's been the celebrated outlaw,
(02:09):
the subject of many songs, books and films over the years,
and some even think of him as a national folk hero.
There are others, though, who consider him just as a
ruthless criminal, a villain. So we're going to try to
get to the bottom of how these takes on his
character could be so vastly different. And while we explore that,
we're also going to take a look at his wildlife
(02:31):
and the last stand that's been so romanticized over the years.
But to really understand Ned's story first you need to
know a little bit about bush rangers, and if you're
not Australian, it probably doesn't really have any context for you, right,
But bush rangers were basically bandits or highwaymen who specialized
in robbing or bailing up as it was called, stage coaches,
(02:54):
banks and small settlements. Yeah, we'll try to use the
authentic lingo in the Whenever week in So what they
did was sort of in the same vein as the
legendary English highway robbers, so they're often compared to the
likes of Dick Turpin. Also, sometimes you'll see comparisons to
the American wild West, people like Jesse James, But the
bush ranging industry actually went for longer than America's wild
(03:17):
West period. The main period of Australia's bush rangings fanned
about a hundred years from the guy who's considered the
first bush ranger, Black Caesar, to Ned Kelly's gang in
eighty Yeah. And there were also more bush rangers per
capita in Australia than there were outlaws in America, about
six thousand bush rangers during that period that we mentioned.
(03:37):
And a lot of these bush rangers were really just
ruthless killers, but sometimes they've been glorified and characterized as
robin Hood type folk heroes, mainly because of the actions
of a few specific bush rangers, such as Edward Teddy,
the jew Boy Davis, who supposedly treated his victims humanely
and shared what he stole with the poor. And we
(04:00):
see this idea in the Kelly story too. There's certainly
a robin Hood element to it. So to set up
the period that this story takes in a little bit better,
we should explain that within that hundred year period of
bush ranging, there were two sort of sub periods. From
about seventeen eighty nine to the eighteen fifties, bush rangers
were mostly escaped convicts, but from the eighteen fifties to
(04:21):
eighteen eighty or so. Most bush rangers were free settlers
who had broken the lawn, and ned Kelly definitely fell
into that latter camp. Yeah. So. Ned Kelly was born
in June eighteen fifty five in the state of Victoria, Australia,
and he was the first son of Irish parents Ellen
and James called Red Kelly, and his dad had somewhat
of a criminal background himself. He had been transported from
(04:44):
Ireland to Australia for stealing and ned grew up in
this clan like atmosphere of Irish Australian families in this
area and according to an article by Graham Seal in
History Today, they were called free selectors, so basically poor
people who were allowed by the government to cultivate tracts
of land for a small amount of rent. Many of
(05:07):
these free selectors, ned Kelly's family certainly included, made their
living off of a combination of quote legal pastoral activities
and illegal activities such as stock stealing, which in Australia
was known as duffing, and this would consequently get them
into trouble with the law now and then. Yeah, and incidentally,
many feel that it's this association with an economically and
(05:29):
politically disadvantaged social group that helped characterize bush rangers like
Ned as quote poor Man's heroes. So that kind of
sets up the villain versus hero. Yeah, the robin Hood motif. Right.
So Ned had several run ins with the law while
he was growing up. By age sixteen, he had already
served one jail sentence, and that year he was convicted
(05:49):
of receiving stolen horse and had to serve another three
year jail sentence. By the time he got out in
February eighteen seventy four, Seal says he had transformed into hard,
bitter man. Yeah. Still, though he managed to stay out
of trouble for a few years. Three years, and then
in September eighteen seventy seven, he was arrested for public
(06:11):
drunkenness and got into this fight with four policemen while
he was trying to escape. Seven months later, though, things
really elevated to another level. One of the policemen who
had been involved in that fight, Constable Fitzpatrick, came to
the Kelly home, not coming after Ned, but to arrest
Ned's brother Dan for horse stealing. And what happened next
(06:33):
is up for debate. Yes, Fitzpatrick claimed that he was
assaulted by the Kelly's, including the mom Ellen she got
in on the fight too, But the Kellys claim that
Fitzpatrick tried to molest one of the daughters, one of
Ned Kelly's sisters basically, and the assault, including which included
a shot to the wrist, was kind of a self
defense thing, so the judge was prone to side with Fitzpatrick.
(06:54):
He reviewed the case six months later and he sentenced
Ellen to three years in jail her role in this
in this fight, and then also said that he would
have given Ned and Dan fifteen years each, but they
had disappeared. Yeah, Ned and Dan had fled into the
Wombat Ranges and set up camp in the hills, which
they knew well. Two of their friends, Steve Hart and
(07:16):
Joe Byrne, joined them there in October. Event though, a
team of four policemen were sent to track this new
Kelly Gang as they were known, down where they were
camping out. Then on October the police and the Kelly
gang had a confrontation at Stringy Bark Creek, and some
sources you'll see that it was a police raid on
the Kelly camp and others you see that the Kelly's
(07:38):
actually ambushed and bailed up or robbed the police, regardless
of how the confrontation came about. A gunfight ensued and
the three policemen were killed. One McIntyre escaped to tell
the tale back in Melbourne. And after that, I mean,
this was really a turning point for them. After that,
the government declared the four Kelly Gang members outlaws and
put a high price on their heads. They even passed
(08:00):
thing called the Outlaw React. I don't know if I'm
pronouncing that right. It's kind of a strange word, but
this law basically said that the rights and the property
of the outlaws are forfeit and any citizen can kill
them on site. Sympathizers and they had many at the time,
could also be imprisoned and lose all of their belongings
as well. Okay, so you think after this new act
(08:20):
the Kelly Gang would have sort of tried to play
it cool. You know, you might have your friends turn
into enemy suddenly if there's a reward, or your friends
could get into trouble for for sympathizing with you. But
it didn't cause the Kelly Gang to lay low at all.
Less than six weeks later, on December tenth, they raided
the town of Euroa and robbed the bank and stole
(08:44):
food from the shops in the town. Of course, they
made off with a lot of gold in cash two
thousand pounds worth, but Ned also stole deeds and mortgages
held in the bank safe and this is something that
really endeared him to the struggling free selectors in Victoria,
to the poor people. They saw the banks as discriminating
against poor Irish settlers in the area. This reminded me
(09:06):
a little bit of of Bonnie and Clyde, people like
them for for robbing banks. Yeah, once they got away,
the Kelly gang divided up the loot between themselves, their families,
and their sympathizers, so again sharing with people who helped
them out. Authorities increased the reward for the Kelly's at
this point from two thousand pounds to four thousand, but
this didn't have an effect on the loyalty of their
supporters at all. They even wrote songs about it. So
(09:29):
here's just a little bet from one here. Oh Patty dear,
did you hear the news that's going around on the
head of bold Ned Kelly. They have placed a thousand
pounds for Steve Hart and Dan Kelly five hundred more.
They'll give that if the sum were doubled, sure that
Kelly boys would live. I wish we could set that
the music. I know, if only we knew what the
tune was supposed to be. Maybe maybe some of you'
(09:52):
all do. We're both thinking the same thing, um, So
you know, obviously, if you have people writing folk ballads
about you, you're pretty pop ler. And that loyalty really
continued into their next job, which was a raid on Gildery,
And during that they locked at police officers in their
own spells and nasquerrated around town in the police uniform.
So pretty bold stuff. Yeah, and they did their usual.
(10:15):
They held up banks and shops again, and they locked
up the townspeople in the hotel. It wasn't so bad
to be a hostage, though important if you were a policeman,
as long as you were in a policeman right. Apparently,
the Kelly gang treated everyone to drinks and Ned made speeches.
They made off with two thousand pounds once again, and
once again they also burned mortgages. Ned also left a
(10:35):
ten thousand words statement with a bank teller that came
to be known as the Gildery Letter. Now that letter
only exists in a copy, but it's got some pretty
interesting content. It catalogs complaints and grievances of Ned Kelly
and his gang against the government, the police, wealthy squatters.
Basically just shows his whole point of view and why
lays it all down, why people sympathize with him. So
(10:56):
at this point that Kelly gang was really ratting high,
but they were off the code nervous because the police
seemed to be getting too hot on their trail. They
needed to shake him off somehow. So their last raid
took place June on a small town surrounding a rail
station called glenn Rowan. But the raid was really about
more than just getting loot this time. The night before
(11:19):
they killed a man named Aaron Sharrett, who was a
one time pier but who had also been acting as
a sort of double agent. So he was a friend
of the Kelly gangs, but he was informing on them
to the police, and so they had reason to kill
him for for that that fact, of course, but they
also hoped that his murder would lure the bulk of
the Special District Police Force onto a train that would
(11:42):
pass through Glen Rowan, so his murder would essentially act
as a trap for the police. So, banking on the
fact that all the police would be on this train
taking this train, the gang had lifted the rails off
to the side near a hilltop with the intent of
derailing the train and killing all the police on board
and then picking off whomever was left. Yeah, So after
(12:03):
setting this up, they raided the town as usual, stole
food and money, and locked up the locals and Glenn
Rowan's Jones Hotel where they sang, dance, drank and basically
carried on with the crowd while they waited for the
police to arrive. So it seemed like a pretty good plan,
but Ned made a couple of major mistakes here. He
told the hostages about his plans for one, and then
(12:23):
he let a few of them go home. One of them,
a school teacher named Thomas Kernow, went to the track
and warned the police by waving a lantern. So the
train stopped just in time, and about thirty seven police
got off and headed for the hotel. So when the
Kelly gang heard the train stop, they knew the jig
was up and they had just one more move to
pull out of their bag of tricks. A few months
(12:45):
before the attack on Glenn rowan plowshares and some cast
iron started disappearing throughout the area, and it turns out
that the gang had used it to create crude suits
of armor for themselves. So a little bit about this armor,
which has become famous over the one of the best. Yeah,
if you can easily look at pictures of this, and
it's probably one of the best known things about Ned
(13:05):
Kelly and the Kelly Gang. This armor consisted of back
and breastplates and an adjustable metal apron that protected the
growing area of the wear. And each suit this is
what I found really remarkable. Each suit weighed eighty pounds.
Only one of them, that was Ned's, had a helmet
that had slits and advisor, and that it'sself weighed about
(13:26):
sixteen pounds, and he was the only one strong enough
supposedly to wear the suit, the helmet and still handle
a gun at the same time. Yeah, it sounds like
it would be quite cumbersome, but yeah, it doesn't look
very comfortable. If you do get a chance to check
out these pictures, it's kind of like a broke down
tin man does look like a really shabby tin man.
And it looks like some pretty crucial areas are left
(13:48):
vulnerable still, so maybe it's not quite worth it. Well,
we're gonna it's funny you should mention that, Sarah out
more about that. So the bush Rangers put on this
this crude armor and stood outside the hotel waiting for
the police and of course a gun battle and food
and civilians trying to get out of the hotel during
the fight didn't want to get caught in the crossfire.
But the armor really didn't seem to do the gang
(14:10):
that much good. It was clunky, of course, and it
caused painful bruising when it did stop a bullet. It
just was like a sheet of cast iron hitting your chest,
which couldn't be very comfortable. So, perhaps not surprisingly, Joe Byrne,
Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart were all shot dead during
that gunfight. Ned Kelly was shot in the foot, the arm,
and the thumb and several other places. It seems he
(14:31):
retreated into the bush and lost consciousness briefly. When he
woke up, though, instead of escaping, he tried to attack
the policeman, crashing out from behind them and firing at them.
The whole time. He fought them for about a half
an hour, some sources say, before they finally took him
down by a shotgun blast to the legs. After that,
he was taken to Melbourne where he recovered from all
(14:53):
thirty of his wounds and stood trial and was found
guilty sentenced to be hung, even though there were public
protest us and some people even campaign to have a
sentence reduced. Yeah. So Kelly was hanged on November eleventh,
eighteen eighty and his last words were such his life.
But weirdly, he'd told Justice Barry, who was the same
(15:14):
judge who had sentenced his mom. Yeah, he probably already
had a grudge against him, but he told Justice Barry
that he Barry would shortly follow him to the grave,
And sure enough Barry died of a heart attack just
two weeks later. Yeah, and this must have just only
added to the legend that's lived on through stories and songs.
In fact, Australia's first feature length film was nineteen o
(15:37):
six is the story of the Kelly Gang. I wonder
if there have been movies and Kelly since then. I'm sure,
I'm sure there are. I don't, unfortunately, have the names here,
But I think there are many movies, books, um stories, songs.
As we've said, there are plenty of opportunities, including many
biographies on Ned Kelly's life to learn more about him.
(15:57):
I think it's time for a new movie considering this lost,
potentially rediscovered head too. Yeah. Well, I think we'll have
to wait to see how that mystery unravels a little
more before that story is completely fleshed out. But I
think you might be right. But you know, even if
you're not an expert on Ned Kelly, you could sort
of invoke him in speech. There's a saying if someone
(16:19):
says you're as game as Ned Kelly, that means that
you're highly courageous, wicked, brave, willing to tackle big odds. Um.
So you could pass this on. It's like a nice
thing to say to people. I hope the Australians say
wicked brave. That's what you get from living in Boston. Yeah, well,
(16:39):
what can I say? Language seems to stick with us
no matter where we are. All right, let's see what
we have for listener mail today. Yeah, so this listener
mail is a weird Waldo postcard. I think it's so cool. Uh.
It's from Caitlin, and she wrote, Hi, Faran Deablina your
(17:00):
podcast a few months ago and fell in love. I've
always loved history, and you guys make it come alive.
I had a podcast idea the barefoot mailman legend here
in South Florida, before Henry Flagler established a good railway
system in Palm Beach, there was a mailman who walked
everywhere to deliver the mail barefoot. Of course, I don't
(17:20):
know if there's enough information out there about him, but
I've always found the story interesting. This is a strange story.
I wonder if he were armor too, perhaps armor and
no shoes. It doesn't sound very wise, it doesn't. It
sounds like if you get a parasite or just a
crushed foot from the weight of your armor. But anyways,
(17:42):
I really did like this Wear's Waldo postcard. It was
it's the parapeene from like the original Wears Waldo book,
and it kind of brought back old memories. I remember,
even a few years ago breaking out my old Wear's
Waldo book and I knew where Waldo was on every page,
like right away. And I don't know if I just
got better at at finding Waldo over the years or
(18:05):
if I if it's somewhere locked in my brain like
where Waldo is on each page. Mm hmmm. Al right,
well that's it for this edition of What's There It
does on the weekend. If you have any wonderful postcards
from for us from your various travels, or just some
insight to offer on any of our episodes. If you're
(18:25):
on Australian and have extra Ned Kelly stories, I'm sure
we've only begin to scratch the surface of his life.
We do actually have a postcard of Ned Kelly's helmet. Yes,
it's so cool. It's in my cubicle right now. We
love to get mail. We love to get emails. You
can send them to us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. You can also look us up
(18:46):
on Twitter and myston History or on Facebook. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about trains
and crime, we do have an article on how the
Great Train Robbery works. You can look for it by
searching for a Great Train Robbery on our homepage at
www dot how staff works dot com. Be sure to
(19:07):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how staff Work staff as we explore the most
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from housetop
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to bling a chocolate boarding and I'm fair Daddy. And
this episode starts off in one of my favorite ways,
with the mysterious unidentified head or skull. Rather, it is
(00:25):
a good way to start a podcast. We've done it
a few times, but it's always a classic intro. So
here's how this story starts. In two thousand nine, a
West Australian farmer named Tom Baxer turned in a skull
to the authorities, claiming that it's the skull of Ned Kelly,
a famous bush ranger or bandit who was executed back
(00:45):
in the eighteen hundreds. His body was believed to be
buried in a mass grave, but for decades kelly skull
lived in a display case in Melbourne Jail until that is,
it was stolen in ninety so nobody has really known
where the skull or the head was since then. It's
been a mystery, and back there didn't really help illuminate
(01:06):
that question very much. He refuses to say how he
got the skull or if he was involved in its stuff,
which is kind of sketchy if you think about it. Yeah,
I wonder if there will be more details on that
aspect of it in the future, but as far as
we know right now, researchers haven't positively identified the head
as Ned's. In two thousand ten, they issued kind of
a request for help. They had sort of reached to
(01:27):
the end of the road and as far as they
could go and testing things, and they asked people to
turn in any information that they know, any stories, any photographs,
and at least one man, according to a story in
August two thousand ten, has come forward with a tooth
that he believes belonged to the skull, so a tooth
that had been handed down through his family as a
(01:47):
souvenir of Ned Kelly exactly, and he has given it
to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, where which is
the body that's conducting the research and so what happens
with that know? Very funny. So there's been that renewed
interest in Kelly, but really he's never really gone away
from the Australian collective consciousness. He's been the celebrated outlaw,
(02:09):
the subject of many songs, books and films over the years,
and some even think of him as a national folk hero.
There are others, though, who consider him just as a
ruthless criminal, a villain. So we're going to try to
get to the bottom of how these takes on his
character could be so vastly different. And while we explore that,
we're also going to take a look at his wildlife
(02:31):
and the last stand that's been so romanticized over the years.
But to really understand Ned's story first you need to
know a little bit about bush rangers, and if you're
not Australian, it probably doesn't really have any context for you, right,
But bush rangers were basically bandits or highwaymen who specialized
in robbing or bailing up as it was called, stage coaches,
(02:54):
banks and small settlements. Yeah, we'll try to use the
authentic lingo in the Whenever week in So what they
did was sort of in the same vein as the
legendary English highway robbers, so they're often compared to the
likes of Dick Turpin. Also, sometimes you'll see comparisons to
the American wild West, people like Jesse James, But the
bush ranging industry actually went for longer than America's wild
(03:17):
West period. The main period of Australia's bush rangings fanned
about a hundred years from the guy who's considered the
first bush ranger, Black Caesar, to Ned Kelly's gang in
eighty Yeah. And there were also more bush rangers per
capita in Australia than there were outlaws in America, about
six thousand bush rangers during that period that we mentioned.
(03:37):
And a lot of these bush rangers were really just
ruthless killers, but sometimes they've been glorified and characterized as
robin Hood type folk heroes, mainly because of the actions
of a few specific bush rangers, such as Edward Teddy,
the jew Boy Davis, who supposedly treated his victims humanely
and shared what he stole with the poor. And we
(04:00):
see this idea in the Kelly story too. There's certainly
a robin Hood element to it. So to set up
the period that this story takes in a little bit better,
we should explain that within that hundred year period of
bush ranging, there were two sort of sub periods. From
about seventeen eighty nine to the eighteen fifties, bush rangers
were mostly escaped convicts, but from the eighteen fifties to
(04:21):
eighteen eighty or so. Most bush rangers were free settlers
who had broken the lawn, and ned Kelly definitely fell
into that latter camp. Yeah. So. Ned Kelly was born
in June eighteen fifty five in the state of Victoria, Australia,
and he was the first son of Irish parents Ellen
and James called Red Kelly, and his dad had somewhat
of a criminal background himself. He had been transported from
(04:44):
Ireland to Australia for stealing and ned grew up in
this clan like atmosphere of Irish Australian families in this
area and according to an article by Graham Seal in
History Today, they were called free selectors, so basically poor
people who were allowed by the government to cultivate tracts
of land for a small amount of rent. Many of
(05:07):
these free selectors, ned Kelly's family certainly included, made their
living off of a combination of quote legal pastoral activities
and illegal activities such as stock stealing, which in Australia
was known as duffing, and this would consequently get them
into trouble with the law now and then. Yeah, and incidentally,
many feel that it's this association with an economically and
(05:29):
politically disadvantaged social group that helped characterize bush rangers like
Ned as quote poor Man's heroes. So that kind of
sets up the villain versus hero. Yeah, the robin Hood motif. Right.
So Ned had several run ins with the law while
he was growing up. By age sixteen, he had already
served one jail sentence, and that year he was convicted
(05:49):
of receiving stolen horse and had to serve another three
year jail sentence. By the time he got out in
February eighteen seventy four, Seal says he had transformed into hard,
bitter man. Yeah. Still, though he managed to stay out
of trouble for a few years. Three years, and then
in September eighteen seventy seven, he was arrested for public
(06:11):
drunkenness and got into this fight with four policemen while
he was trying to escape. Seven months later, though, things
really elevated to another level. One of the policemen who
had been involved in that fight, Constable Fitzpatrick, came to
the Kelly home, not coming after Ned, but to arrest
Ned's brother Dan for horse stealing. And what happened next
(06:33):
is up for debate. Yes, Fitzpatrick claimed that he was
assaulted by the Kelly's, including the mom Ellen she got
in on the fight too, But the Kellys claim that
Fitzpatrick tried to molest one of the daughters, one of
Ned Kelly's sisters basically, and the assault, including which included
a shot to the wrist, was kind of a self
defense thing, so the judge was prone to side with Fitzpatrick.
(06:54):
He reviewed the case six months later and he sentenced
Ellen to three years in jail her role in this
in this fight, and then also said that he would
have given Ned and Dan fifteen years each, but they
had disappeared. Yeah, Ned and Dan had fled into the
Wombat Ranges and set up camp in the hills, which
they knew well. Two of their friends, Steve Hart and
(07:16):
Joe Byrne, joined them there in October. Event though, a
team of four policemen were sent to track this new
Kelly Gang as they were known, down where they were
camping out. Then on October the police and the Kelly
gang had a confrontation at Stringy Bark Creek, and some
sources you'll see that it was a police raid on
the Kelly camp and others you see that the Kelly's
(07:38):
actually ambushed and bailed up or robbed the police, regardless
of how the confrontation came about. A gunfight ensued and
the three policemen were killed. One McIntyre escaped to tell
the tale back in Melbourne. And after that, I mean,
this was really a turning point for them. After that,
the government declared the four Kelly Gang members outlaws and
put a high price on their heads. They even passed
(08:00):
thing called the Outlaw React. I don't know if I'm
pronouncing that right. It's kind of a strange word, but
this law basically said that the rights and the property
of the outlaws are forfeit and any citizen can kill
them on site. Sympathizers and they had many at the time,
could also be imprisoned and lose all of their belongings
as well. Okay, so you think after this new act
(08:20):
the Kelly Gang would have sort of tried to play
it cool. You know, you might have your friends turn
into enemy suddenly if there's a reward, or your friends
could get into trouble for for sympathizing with you. But
it didn't cause the Kelly Gang to lay low at all.
Less than six weeks later, on December tenth, they raided
the town of Euroa and robbed the bank and stole
(08:44):
food from the shops in the town. Of course, they
made off with a lot of gold in cash two
thousand pounds worth, but Ned also stole deeds and mortgages
held in the bank safe and this is something that
really endeared him to the struggling free selectors in Victoria,
to the poor people. They saw the banks as discriminating
against poor Irish settlers in the area. This reminded me
(09:06):
a little bit of of Bonnie and Clyde, people like
them for for robbing banks. Yeah, once they got away,
the Kelly gang divided up the loot between themselves, their families,
and their sympathizers, so again sharing with people who helped
them out. Authorities increased the reward for the Kelly's at
this point from two thousand pounds to four thousand, but
this didn't have an effect on the loyalty of their
supporters at all. They even wrote songs about it. So
(09:29):
here's just a little bet from one here. Oh Patty dear,
did you hear the news that's going around on the
head of bold Ned Kelly. They have placed a thousand
pounds for Steve Hart and Dan Kelly five hundred more.
They'll give that if the sum were doubled, sure that
Kelly boys would live. I wish we could set that
the music. I know, if only we knew what the
tune was supposed to be. Maybe maybe some of you'
(09:52):
all do. We're both thinking the same thing, um, So
you know, obviously, if you have people writing folk ballads
about you, you're pretty pop ler. And that loyalty really
continued into their next job, which was a raid on Gildery,
And during that they locked at police officers in their
own spells and nasquerrated around town in the police uniform.
So pretty bold stuff. Yeah, and they did their usual.
(10:15):
They held up banks and shops again, and they locked
up the townspeople in the hotel. It wasn't so bad
to be a hostage, though important if you were a policeman,
as long as you were in a policeman right. Apparently,
the Kelly gang treated everyone to drinks and Ned made speeches.
They made off with two thousand pounds once again, and
once again they also burned mortgages. Ned also left a
(10:35):
ten thousand words statement with a bank teller that came
to be known as the Gildery Letter. Now that letter
only exists in a copy, but it's got some pretty
interesting content. It catalogs complaints and grievances of Ned Kelly
and his gang against the government, the police, wealthy squatters.
Basically just shows his whole point of view and why
lays it all down, why people sympathize with him. So
(10:56):
at this point that Kelly gang was really ratting high,
but they were off the code nervous because the police
seemed to be getting too hot on their trail. They
needed to shake him off somehow. So their last raid
took place June on a small town surrounding a rail
station called glenn Rowan. But the raid was really about
more than just getting loot this time. The night before
(11:19):
they killed a man named Aaron Sharrett, who was a
one time pier but who had also been acting as
a sort of double agent. So he was a friend
of the Kelly gangs, but he was informing on them
to the police, and so they had reason to kill
him for for that that fact, of course, but they
also hoped that his murder would lure the bulk of
the Special District Police Force onto a train that would
(11:42):
pass through Glen Rowan, so his murder would essentially act
as a trap for the police. So, banking on the
fact that all the police would be on this train
taking this train, the gang had lifted the rails off
to the side near a hilltop with the intent of
derailing the train and killing all the police on board
and then picking off whomever was left. Yeah, So after
(12:03):
setting this up, they raided the town as usual, stole
food and money, and locked up the locals and Glenn
Rowan's Jones Hotel where they sang, dance, drank and basically
carried on with the crowd while they waited for the
police to arrive. So it seemed like a pretty good plan,
but Ned made a couple of major mistakes here. He
told the hostages about his plans for one, and then
(12:23):
he let a few of them go home. One of them,
a school teacher named Thomas Kernow, went to the track
and warned the police by waving a lantern. So the
train stopped just in time, and about thirty seven police
got off and headed for the hotel. So when the
Kelly gang heard the train stop, they knew the jig
was up and they had just one more move to
pull out of their bag of tricks. A few months
(12:45):
before the attack on Glenn rowan plowshares and some cast
iron started disappearing throughout the area, and it turns out
that the gang had used it to create crude suits
of armor for themselves. So a little bit about this armor,
which has become famous over the one of the best. Yeah,
if you can easily look at pictures of this, and
it's probably one of the best known things about Ned
(13:05):
Kelly and the Kelly Gang. This armor consisted of back
and breastplates and an adjustable metal apron that protected the
growing area of the wear. And each suit this is
what I found really remarkable. Each suit weighed eighty pounds.
Only one of them, that was Ned's, had a helmet
that had slits and advisor, and that it'sself weighed about
(13:26):
sixteen pounds, and he was the only one strong enough
supposedly to wear the suit, the helmet and still handle
a gun at the same time. Yeah, it sounds like
it would be quite cumbersome, but yeah, it doesn't look
very comfortable. If you do get a chance to check
out these pictures, it's kind of like a broke down
tin man does look like a really shabby tin man.
And it looks like some pretty crucial areas are left
(13:48):
vulnerable still, so maybe it's not quite worth it. Well,
we're gonna it's funny you should mention that, Sarah out
more about that. So the bush Rangers put on this
this crude armor and stood outside the hotel waiting for
the police and of course a gun battle and food
and civilians trying to get out of the hotel during
the fight didn't want to get caught in the crossfire.
But the armor really didn't seem to do the gang
(14:10):
that much good. It was clunky, of course, and it
caused painful bruising when it did stop a bullet. It
just was like a sheet of cast iron hitting your chest,
which couldn't be very comfortable. So, perhaps not surprisingly, Joe Byrne,
Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart were all shot dead during
that gunfight. Ned Kelly was shot in the foot, the arm,
and the thumb and several other places. It seems he
(14:31):
retreated into the bush and lost consciousness briefly. When he
woke up, though, instead of escaping, he tried to attack
the policeman, crashing out from behind them and firing at them.
The whole time. He fought them for about a half
an hour, some sources say, before they finally took him
down by a shotgun blast to the legs. After that,
he was taken to Melbourne where he recovered from all
(14:53):
thirty of his wounds and stood trial and was found
guilty sentenced to be hung, even though there were public
protest us and some people even campaign to have a
sentence reduced. Yeah. So Kelly was hanged on November eleventh,
eighteen eighty and his last words were such his life.
But weirdly, he'd told Justice Barry, who was the same
(15:14):
judge who had sentenced his mom. Yeah, he probably already
had a grudge against him, but he told Justice Barry
that he Barry would shortly follow him to the grave,
And sure enough Barry died of a heart attack just
two weeks later. Yeah, and this must have just only
added to the legend that's lived on through stories and songs.
In fact, Australia's first feature length film was nineteen o
(15:37):
six is the story of the Kelly Gang. I wonder
if there have been movies and Kelly since then. I'm sure,
I'm sure there are. I don't, unfortunately, have the names here,
But I think there are many movies, books, um stories, songs.
As we've said, there are plenty of opportunities, including many
biographies on Ned Kelly's life to learn more about him.
(15:57):
I think it's time for a new movie considering this lost,
potentially rediscovered head too. Yeah. Well, I think we'll have
to wait to see how that mystery unravels a little
more before that story is completely fleshed out. But I
think you might be right. But you know, even if
you're not an expert on Ned Kelly, you could sort
of invoke him in speech. There's a saying if someone
(16:19):
says you're as game as Ned Kelly, that means that
you're highly courageous, wicked, brave, willing to tackle big odds. Um.
So you could pass this on. It's like a nice
thing to say to people. I hope the Australians say
wicked brave. That's what you get from living in Boston. Yeah, well,
(16:39):
what can I say? Language seems to stick with us
no matter where we are. All right, let's see what
we have for listener mail today. Yeah, so this listener
mail is a weird Waldo postcard. I think it's so cool. Uh.
It's from Caitlin, and she wrote, Hi, Faran Deablina your
(17:00):
podcast a few months ago and fell in love. I've
always loved history, and you guys make it come alive.
I had a podcast idea the barefoot mailman legend here
in South Florida, before Henry Flagler established a good railway
system in Palm Beach, there was a mailman who walked
everywhere to deliver the mail barefoot. Of course, I don't
(17:20):
know if there's enough information out there about him, but
I've always found the story interesting. This is a strange story.
I wonder if he were armor too, perhaps armor and
no shoes. It doesn't sound very wise, it doesn't. It
sounds like if you get a parasite or just a
crushed foot from the weight of your armor. But anyways,
(17:42):
I really did like this Wear's Waldo postcard. It was
it's the parapeene from like the original Wears Waldo book,
and it kind of brought back old memories. I remember,
even a few years ago breaking out my old Wear's
Waldo book and I knew where Waldo was on every page,
like right away. And I don't know if I just
got better at at finding Waldo over the years or
(18:05):
if I if it's somewhere locked in my brain like
where Waldo is on each page. Mm hmmm. Al right,
well that's it for this edition of What's There It
does on the weekend. If you have any wonderful postcards
from for us from your various travels, or just some
insight to offer on any of our episodes. If you're
(18:25):
on Australian and have extra Ned Kelly stories, I'm sure
we've only begin to scratch the surface of his life.
We do actually have a postcard of Ned Kelly's helmet. Yes,
it's so cool. It's in my cubicle right now. We
love to get mail. We love to get emails. You
can send them to us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. You can also look us up
(18:46):
on Twitter and myston History or on Facebook. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about trains
and crime, we do have an article on how the
Great Train Robbery works. You can look for it by
searching for a Great Train Robbery on our homepage at
www dot how staff works dot com. Be sure to
(19:07):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how staff Work staff as we explore the most
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