Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Legend of Ned Kelly (Encore)

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In the late 19th century, the American frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits. While this was happening in the American West, there were similar outlaws in the Australian bush.  One, in particular, has captured the imagination of Australia, and the reason he became so famous was…..unique. Learn more about Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang and how they became legendary, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the late 19th century, the American Frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits. While this was happening in the American West, there were similar outlaws in the Australian bush. One in particular has captured the imagination of Australia, and the reason he became so famous was, let's just say, unique. Learn more about Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang, and how they became legendary. On this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Australia was famously populated by the British who sent convicted conduct. to settle there. To be fair, many of the people that the British sent over were often on trumped-up charges just because they needed bodies. But there were actually hardcore criminals sent to Australia,

and in the 19th century, Australia was a far, wilder place than the country you know today. It was in this environment that Ned Kelly was born in what was then the colony of Victoria in 1854. His father, John Red Kelly, came from Ireland, and he was one of the convicts who was sent to Australia as punishment. The crime he committed in Ireland was stealing two pigs. His family had a history of getting into trouble with the law. Ned had an uncle named Jim Kelly, who was arrested for cattle wrestling, and an 8-year-old Ned made his first appearance in court to testify on his behalf. In 1865, Red Kelly was sent to prison for six months for stealing a calf.

When he was released from prison, his already bad alcohol is aborsened, and he died in 1866, leaving a 12-year-old Ned to provide for his family. The Kelly family was very poor. and given their history of crime was often harassed by the local police. At age 14, Ned fell in with a bush ranger named Harry Power and got into trouble with the law for stealing horses. He actually served two prison terms before he turned 20, one of which was three years long. His first run in with the law was at the age of 14, when he was accused of stealing 10 shillings from a Chinese pig dealer by the name of Ah Fouk. He was acquitted due to a lack of evidence, and, yeah, that was really the guy's name.

Here I should go on to explain what bush rangers are. Back of the 19th century, when men got into trouble with the law in Australia, some of them would flee into the bush. Many of these bus rangers were often children of convicts which were sent over to Australia, just like Ned Kelly was. Most of them reverted to a life of crime, often robbing people during the Australian gold rush of the 1850s and 1860s. In 1878, after another confrontation with police at the family house in Victoria, Ned was accused of attempted murder of a police officer, and he fled into the bush. His mother Ellen ended up going to prison for her role in the event.

The events of what happened were hotly disputed at the time. According to the Kellys, the officer in question, Alexander Fitzpatrick, went to the Kelly House to arrest Dan Kelly. However, the Kelly say that he was intoxicated and tried to take advantage of their younger sister. There was a fight where they knocked a revolver out of the officer's hand and he was injured. But according to the officer, he was not intoxicated and the injury was a gunshot wound. Ned and his brother Dan vowed vengeance against the police. They teamed up with two other associates, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, and they killed three police officers in an ambush in an event

known as the Stringy Bark Creek Police Murders. The group, now known as the Kelly Gang, were declared outlaws by the Victorian government. A bounty was placed on their heads for 800 pounds for all four of them, which would eventually be raised to 8,000 pounds. If you remember back to my episode on Outlawry, someone declared an outlaw was literally declared to be outside of the protection of the law. And that literally meant that someone could kill you without punishment, and no one was allowed to render you any assistance. However, that is not what happened. Kelly and his gang actually found many sympathizers, and other criminals who were willing to help them while they were on the run. On December 9th, 1878, they raided the small town of Eaura. There, they held

three dozen people hostage while they went and robbed the town's bank and tore down the telegraph. F-Wires. They escaped with 2,260 pounds, and some people think that the hostages were actually supporters of the gang. After the Eurowa raid, the number of police and military in the region was increased dramatically. Nonetheless, on February 7, 1879, they raided the town of gerildery in New South Wales. Here, too, they took several hostages, including two police officers and robbed the bank on a Sunday morning when everyone was at church. They walked away with 2,141 pounds, and they also burned the bank's mortgage paperwork, saying, quote, The bloody banks are crushing the life's blood out of the poor, struggling man.

Prior to the raid on Geraldery, Ned Kelly wrote a letter to one of his gang members, Joe Byrne. It was a 58-page letter expanding on one he wrote the previous year for the Victoria Legislature, justifying his actions, complaining about the conditions of the poor in Victoria, and rallying against the British in their empire. It was after the Geraldery raid when the bounty on their heads hit 8,000. pounds, the highest ever at that time in Australia. For over a year, then, the gang laid low and didn't do anything which would raise attention to themselves. However, in June of 1880, they eventually came out of hiding and hunted down and murdered Aaron Sherrett, was formerly an associate of Joe Byrne, who had turned

police informer. The police had been staking out the homes of known Kelly Gang associates, and Sherrits was one of those homes. When Sherritt was killed, there were four policemen inside who were supposedly there for his protection. When Byrne knocked on the door, he just shot him as soon as he opened it. This put the Kelly gang in a bind. The police were inside the building Sherrod had been shot in and they were armed. The gang needed to get away, but they knew that by morning the police inside would have sent for help and reinforcements would be arriving. They realized that the police reinforcement would be arriving by rail, so they went to the town of Glen Rowan to set up an ambush and to try to derail the train.

The plan was to derail the train, shoot the survivors, then go to another town, rob the bank, and release everyone from jail to cause more chaos. They also brought with them to Glenn Rowan a few special items. These items are the things that made Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang famous, and why I'm even bothering to do an episode on this topic 140 years later. The gang had created bulletproof armor that was to be used in shootouts with the police. The armor had been created over a period of months when they were laying low the previous year. The metal was six millimeter thick iron used in plows,

and it was probably made by blacksmiths who were sympathetic to the gang. The armor was really heavy. Ned's armor weighed 44 kilograms or 97 pounds, and it only covered the head in the torso, leaving the limbs exposed. The police had actually been notified of the armor well beforehand, but they dismissed it as nonsense. The gang took over 62 hostages in a hotel in Glenrowan, but it was a very odd hostage taking. They supposedly had a dance and gave the hostages food, and one hostage even later, said, quote, Ned didn't treat us badly. Not at all. They waited for the police to show up, but the police didn't arrive. The police had been notified that the train track was sabotaged, so they took

their time. By 2 a.m., a few hostages were freed, but at 3 a.m., the police finally showed up. The gang donned their extremely heavy armor and stepped out to meet the police on the veranda of the hotel. The entire shootout took place in the moonlight. The bulletproof armor turned out not to be decisive in the battle. The Kelly gang was simply outgunned. The police fired between 100 to 150 shots, accidentally killing three of the hostages. Joe Byrne was killed when he was shot in the groin. Ned Kelly was wounded in his hands and legs and managed to stumble out into the bush where he hit until morning. Dan Kelly and Steve Hunt remained holdup in the hotel. At about 7 a.m., Ned Kelly stumbled out, wounded, and still wearing his armor shooting at the police. Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were

firing from the hotel to provide support for Ned. The armor did actually block bullets, but after 30 minutes of a firefight, one of the police officers just shot Ned Kelly in the legs with a shotgun, and that ended the affair. Ned was taken into custody and brought to the railway station where doctors attended to him. He was found to have 28 wounds on his body from both gunshots and his armor. After removing the rest of the hostages, the police decided to burn down the building at about 250 in the afternoon. While it was burning, a Catholic priest ran in to find the bodies of Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart. It's unknown exactly how Kelly and Hart died. Ned Kelly survived and stood trial in October of that year and was sentenced to death by hanging. On November 11, 1880,

Ned Kelly was executed, despite a petition with 32,000 signatures asking the governor for clemency. After his execution, the story of Ned Kelly and his suit of armor became legendary. The story was romanticized and Kelly began being thought of by some people as a hero who fought against the system. Ned Kelly and his gang became the subject of dozens of books, paintings, poems, songs, and movies. The first full-length feature film in history, clocking in at over an hour, was the story of the Kelly gang, which was produced in 1906. At the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, there was a bunch of performers dressed in Ned Kelly armor. If you visit the town of Glenrow and today, you'll see a giant Ned Kelly statue, fully closed.

in armor. Ned Kelly's original armor can be found at the State Library of Victoria, and two of the other armor sets can be found at the Victoria Police Museum. On January 20, 2013, Ned Kelly's family reburied his remains in a cemetery next to his mother. Whether Ned Kelly was a hero or not has been the subject of debate ever since a bounty was put on his head. The other debate has been about his armor. Personally, I think the armor idea was a good one, at least in theory. Ned Kelly's armor had a total of 18 bullet marks on it, and none of them penetrated the armor. However, each of them still managed to wound him to some extent, either via bruising or a concussion. The problem was, to use a metaphor from software, they went into production with the alpha version of the product.

If they had time to build something properly, it might have worked much better, especially if their limbs weren't exposed. Several military strategists and people like Arthur Conan Doyle applauded the Kelly gang for their originality and suggested that something similar could have been used by police in certain circumstances. Regardless of what you think of Ned Kelly, his gang, and his armor, his story and the image of his Iron Bucket Helm have become one of the iconic stories and images for the entire country of Australia. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support.

helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.