Ned Kelly: Hero or Villain

[rdhopkins2]

We all know the story of Ned Kelly and his gang.
Is he a hero, an idol of Australian folklore?
Is he a villain, a murdering scumbag?

Personally in a way I find him a hero in that through the hardship the traps and society gave him, his family and friends he was not going to get 'boned' by them and stood up to fight against what he thought was injustice.

However, the fact that he murdered those traps and attempted to murder others detracts from my respect for him. However, given the life he chose to lead he was never going to get away from their attention or indeed at that last stand come out alive.

He fought for squatters rights but in the end broke too many laws, the ultimate being muder: villain is my final verdict!

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Haven't we been here before?

 

[Fire]

Both.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Hero to Irish Australians

Villian to the English Australians

Care factor 0 to other immigrants.

 

[Refried Noodle]

Back then he was a villain, but was soon thrusted into Australian folklore as someone who we could use as an identity of a nation to rival those of other nations - William the Conqueror, William Wallace etc etc.

So these days he's a hero.

 

[Financialpanther]

Postbox

 

[rdhopkins2]

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149737&highlight=ned+kelly

There is another thread on it.... I think its fair to say not many people love bogans or Ned Kelly!

Reason I brought the topic up was I am actually reading a book about him by Peter Carey-''True History of the Kelly Gang''

V interesting read thus far! Just happended to stumble apon it in my London shared house.
Cheers

 

[BIG COUNTRY]

Imo, hes a hero, just my opinion though.

 

[dan warna]

leaving Fitzroy really hurt them

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

To many of his own kind he was a hero, but the fact he was too scared to go the pinch on Plugger makes him a coward.

Oh, the real Ned Kelly ... well all many of us know is the sensationalised portrayal from movies and the like I guess, which makes him out to be a hero. Had honourable intentions, probably retailiated against injustice but went too far. Must say he went to the gallows with dignity. The authorities at the time were pretty mean spirited SOBs, hanging the bodies of a couple of the gang from doors for public spectacle.

My favourite excursion at school was the Old Melbourne Gaol, seeing the gallows, the armour, the condemned cell. Amazing feeling.

 

[- PC -]

Villain then icon never a hero

 

[evo]

Postbox

Agreed.

His contribution to establishing Australia's first pony express has been greatly underestimated.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Villain then icon never a hero

A pox on you Longshanks!

 

[- PC -]

A pox on you Longshanks!

You wont like my Irish Accord thread then

 

[Blues_Man]

He was a common low life scumbag...with a sadistic streak .

 

[Freo Big Fella]

Hero to Irish Australians

.

Curious. David Hicks, who to my knowledge hasn't murdered anyone, is a "dog" according to your thoughts posed on the other thread, yet Ned Kelly, who shot several men in cold blood and was known to have tortured others, is a hero?

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Curious. David Hicks, who to my knowledge hasn't murdered anyone, is a "dog" according to your thoughts posed on the other thread, yet Ned Kelly, who shot several men in cold blood and was known to have tortured others, is a hero?

David Hicks went and trained WITH oppressors.

Ned Kelly and the Irish in Australia were oppressed BY the English.

Kelly is a hero to those Irish families that were oppressed by a nasty british system.

Who is Hicks a hero too?

 

[loyallion]

Abit of both from what I hear.

 

[medusala]

Kelly is a hero to those Irish families that were oppressed by a nasty british system.

Here is one Mick who doesnt agree. Like father like son given his old man was also a police informer.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21118322-31501,00.html


Ned's nicked as investigator unravels the Kelly fable
COMMENT
Frank Devine
January 26, 2007

AS somebody who considers Ned Kelly a murderous thug and an embarrassment to us Irish, and deplores his counterfeit image as a romantic Australian hero, I am delighted to learn the cops are still on his trail. One cop, especially.
Martin Leonard, 39, formerly a detective senior constable with the federal police, now investigations manager in the passport frauds section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, shares with most of today's cops resentment of the Kelly legend, on the reasonable grounds that Ned murdered one policeman himself and was at least complicit in the murder of two others.
Some police officers suspect that it's as a cop killer that Kelly acquired some of his phony lustre as a rebel against a repressive establishment.

Leonard, who has a bachelor of arts degree from Monash University and an honours degree in law from Macquarie, and is a regular book reviewer for The Canberra Times, satisfied himself with disgruntled brooding about Kelly until, towards the end of 1995, he read Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. This set him to thinking that somebody should write a book about the fabrication of Ned Kelly. Why not himself?

As it happened, Leonard had a month's leave coming up. He took it and virtually set up residence in the National Library. The interim result is the 9000-word cover story in the December issue of the Australian Police Journal. Leonard cites 94 sources for his essay. I'm not sure if this represents a scholar's devotion to truth or a detective's concern with gathering evidence that will stand up. Anyway, Leonard is nothing if not meticulous.

He delivers some gratifyingly heavy hits against the Kelly fabrications. Did you know that our Ned, the noted bushman and marksman, once shot himself in the foot while trying to shoot somebody else? Worse, that he was a squealer?

Aged about 16, Kelly joined with a Pentridge Jail escapee named Harry Power to rob travellers near Seymour, Victoria. When Kelly was arrested and charged with highway robbery, he told police everything there was to know about Power. Power was hunted down. Conceivably as a quid pro quo for informing on his mate, Kelly was acquitted.

In a letter to a kindly disposed policeman, sergeant James Babington, Ned claimed the result was that everybody "despised him like a black snake".

Two of Ned's uncles came after the young informer to give him a disciplinary thumping. A constable who tried to protect Ned when he fled into the yard of the Greta police station was bashed unconscious with a stirrup iron.

You accept the legend of Kelly's gallantry towards women?

In 1870 he was sentenced to three months' jail for "sending an indecent letter to a female". The recipient was a MrsMcCormack and the envelope Ned mailed contained a pair of calf's testicles. His letter proposed that Mrs McCormack's husband "take the testicles and tie them to his own **** so he might shag you better next time".

Leonard's paper focuses on the murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek, especially on the one victim Kelly admitted to killing personally, sergeant Michael Kennedy.

Kelly claimed he killed Kennedy as a mercy, because he was in agony from multiple gunshot wounds. This account has been disseminated in Kelly fables.

But Leonard cites the report of Dr Samuel Reynolds, who inspected Kennedy's decomposing body on the site five days after his death. He concluded that Kennedy had been killed by a single shot and had been shot from close range standing up. One of his ears was missing. Reynolds was equivocal about the cause of this but an Argus reporter who inspected the body was certain the ear had been sawn off with a knife.

Leonard canvasses the likelihood that Kennedy was handcuffed to a tree, tortured and then killed.

The fabricated Kelly is often portrayed as a working-class victim of capitalist overlords. George Farwell, a prominent fabricator, describes the members of the jury that convicted Kelly as "stolid middle-class city types". Leonard lists their occupations: gardener, bricklayer, farmer (three), carpenter, grave decorator, bookbinder, bootmaker, blacksmith, ironmonger and dairyman. Working men all.

A major theme of the fabrication of Kelly is of the outlaw as people's champion, demonstrated by 32,000 signatures on a petition for his reprieve. Leonard dismisses the petition as "sheer chicanery". Many signatures were of known illiterates, many more of small children. Page after page was written by the same hand. Authentic signatures were often obtained by threat.

Leonard quotes a contemporary newspaper editorial on Kelly's end: "The most vicious specimen of Australian manhood has met just retribution for his deeds of blood."

And yet organisers of the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics included in the cast children dressed as this heroic national figure. Advance defabrication!

 

[gytre]

Ned Kelly was nothing more than a common horse thief who ended up taking many innocent people hostage and endangering the lives of a great many people. He thought he was above the law. He was nothing more than criminal scum.

 

[rayven]

Ned Kelly I learned was a thief of cattle and such.

Ned Kelly run foul of crooked coppers while being just a thief.

It went from there, the system chased him but not the crooked coppers who were responsible for the situation esculating.

unfair to simply label Ned Kelly and not acknowlage the crooked coppers.

 

[TheBloods]

Neither.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Here is one Mick who doesnt agree. Like father like son given his old man was also a police informer.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21118322-31501,00.html


Ned's nicked as investigator unravels the Kelly fable
COMMENT
Frank Devine
January 26, 2007
etc

First off, he doesn't state the religious denomination of the jury, it could have been packed with protestants, who cares if they were "working men" if they were all prodos that would have been an loaded jury.

Secondly he doesnt mention anything when calling Kelly a squealer about Jack Lloyd or Jim Quinn being involved in shopping Power, that's not very good researching to leave that out.

And of course they would never doctor police or medical reports to fit their truth back then would they.

That's the thing about history, and that newpapers critique of Kelly, it's written by the victors.

And back then it was written by English protestants who despised Irish Catholics.

Perhaps that ex-cop might go back and reasearch police corruption back in those days.

 

[- PC -]

First off, he doesn't state the religious denomination of the jury, it could have been packed with protestants, who cares if they were "working men" if they were all prodos that would have been an loaded jury.

Nothing like fair and balanced



I appreciate you feel a genetic link with this person, but like Croats and Jews who hang onto old wounds the Irish can be just as guilty of propogating the myth of the downtrodden

Thief and murderer was Kelly

Saint or sinner has been decided by whatever god there may be

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Nothing like fair and balanced



I appreciate you feel a genetic link with this person, but like Croats and Jews who hang onto old wounds the Irish can be just as guilty of propogating the myth of the downtrodden

Thief and murderer was Kelly

Saint or sinner has been decided by whatever god there may be

Truly, let's look at the authorities involved in all this then shall we.

Sir Redmond Barry

In the words of Manning Clarke, Barry was one of the establishment whom “clothed their sadism towards the common people in the panoply of the law”.

Manning Clarke wrote “For him civilisation meant the Melbourne Club, the best seats at the theatre, the bowing and scrapings in the law courts, and all the 'Yes, your Honour' and 'If your Honour pleases', and brass bands on Sunday to give the people pleasure”. It was Redmond Barry who called for the imposition of the death penalty for all the miners involved in the 1854 Eureka Stockade rebellion at Ballarat.

Redmond Barry was also the judge whom two years earlier sentenced Ned's mother Ellen to three years' hard labour, while William Skillion and Ned's neighbour William Williamson got six years' for their alleged involvement in the Fitzpatrick incident. Barry at the time also remarked that that Ned been present he would have sent him off to prison. Whatever happened to due process?

A man not fit to be sitting in judgement of anyone.

Senior Constable Edward Hall

This is the officer who arrested a 16 y/o Ned on charges of beinbg a horse theif. Strangley a man over 100kgs ends up shooting at a 16 y/o boy 3 times and pistol whipping him half a dozen times because he somehow couldn't over power him.
He pistol whipped him so badly a dispatch was urgently sent for a Dr from Wangaratta.

During the trial it was noted that Hall had pistol whipped and tried to shoot an unarmed youth. However, instead of censure Hall received a reward. This was the same man who had previously been charged with assault and perjury at Eldorado, forced out and transferred to Broadford only to leave there in similar disgrace for “violent and vindictive behaviour”

Rewarding a corrupt violent officer for half beating a 16 y/o boy to a pulp?

Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick

At Beechworth on October 9 1878, before the trial judge Sir Redmond Barry, the charge of “aiding and abetting Ned Kelly with shooting with intent to murder Constable Fitzpatrick” was leveled at the three defendants Ellen Kelly, William Skillion and William Williamson. Fitzpatrick was the only witness for the prosecution and despite numerous witnesses countering his claims all three were found guilty and sentenced to hard labour.

After Stringybark Creek, Fitzpatrick was transferred to Lancefield. He was there only nine months before his superior, Senior Constable Mayes, accused him of "not being fit to be in the police force; that he associated with the lowest persons in Lancefield; that he could not be trusted out of sight; and that he never did his duty".

This is the moron who pretty much sparked alot of the troubles that would follow.

Sergeant Arthur Steele

While at the Glenrowan seige:

When Mrs Reardon and her four children — a babe in arms, her 17 year old son and two young daughters — attempted to flee during an apparent cease fire, Sergeant Steele had the family firmly lined up in the sights of his shot gun. Firing as they ran across the open spaces towards the railway station, he wounded both Mrs Reardon’s baby and her son. Her son was forced to retreat back to the Inn with one of his sisters. Steele’s barrage continued until Constable Arthur yelled, “If you fire at that woman again, I'm damned if I don't shoot you!”

Steele was quoted as saying; “I have just shot Mrs Jones in the ****!”
Sergeant Arthur Steele, Glenrowan

Instead of being charged with attempted murder, Steele receive a sizeable portion of the reward money, over 290 pounds for his part in the capture.

Being rewarded for shooting the hostages?

Detective Michael Ward

From an early age both Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt became prime targets for Ward. It would be Ward’s shrewd and often illegal activities which set in motion the killing of Sherritt. His manipulative manner fitted well with his police agenda. Ward was the man responsible for setting up the unsuccessful spy ring in a vain attempt to catch the Gang.

Ward persuaded Jack Sherritt, Aaron’s brother, to steal a saddle from Aaron’s bride and plant it in the Byrne homestead. On information provided by the Sherritt family, Joe’s brother Paddy, and Mrs Byrne would be arrested for theft.

Detective Ward, having received one hundred pounds of the reward, was found guilty of misleading his superior officers and the Commission recommended he be censured and reduced one grade.

This is the man responsible for getting Sherritt shot dead.


With all their characters on show you'll have to excuse me if i think the amount of lies spread by the authorities and that what was put into print mean jack **** when it's apparent they were as a big a crooks, thugs and imbeciles as anyone else in the frame.

And the final point to show the kind of lies that were told back then

James Whitty was a squatter who became one of Ned Kelly's most redoubtable foes. Squatters often occupied important social positions in local communities and were prepared to use such positions to frustrate selection.

Whitty had gone to police accusing Ned of stealing a bull.

"Ned soon found that people had long memories for such as he. He ran in a wild bull and heard that James Whitty, a wealthy property owner on the King, had accused him of stealing it. He stopped him on Oxley racecourse and asked for an explanation. It must have been with some discomfiture that Whitty, a rugged character of Irish extraction like Ned himself, was forced to admit that his son in law, John Farrell, had fed him the rumour. The missing animal, in fact, had since turned up."