Wanted for murder
1878
Printed ephemera on cloth
Bequest of Sir William Dixson, 1952
DLADD 76 / item 19
From October 1878 until late June 1880, Ned Kelly and his gang were the most wanted men in the Australian colonies. By the time they were captured, the price on each of their heads had risen from £500 to £2000, and with their deaths they claimed a place in the national consciousness that remains unrivalled. Since then, they have been memorialised by painters, writers, musicians and filmmakers alike. More books, songs and websites have been written about Ned Kelly and his gang than any other group of Australian historical figures.
The Kelly Gang’s crime spree included several large bank robberies at Euroa and Jerilderie, before coming to a fiery end in a siege at the Glenrowan Hotel in late June 1880. Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne all died in the siege. Ned Kelly was shot and wounded but survived to be tried in October that year and sentenced to death by hanging.
Australian author Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize for his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, which was inspired in part by the Sidney Nolan series of Kelly paintings. The novel’s first-person narrative style was inspired by Kelly’s ‘Jerilderie Letter’.
On
his arrest, Kelly was initially charged with the murders of Constables Lonigan
and Scanlon. However, due to inconsistencies in the evidence and the desire of
the judge, Sir Redmond Barry, to wrap the case up quickly, the crown case
against Kelly was stripped down to a single charge: the murder of Constable
Lonigan.
Ned Kelly was executed on 11 November 1880, and his body buried in the grounds of Melbourne Gaol. In 1929, his remains, together with those of other prisoners, were transferred from Old Melbourne Gaol to Pentridge Prison. On 20 January 2013, Ned Kelly’s remains were finally laid to rest in the cemetery at Greta in northeast Victoria. His coffin was buried deep in an unmarked grave, surrounded by several mounds and encased in concrete to prevent looting.
In 2009, a Western Australian farmer handed a skull believed to be that of Ned Kelly to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine for identification. This led to efforts to identify Kelly’s remains from those exhumed from Pentridge Prison. In September 2011, Kelly’s remains were formally identified, but DNA testing found that the skull was not Kelly’s.
The Australian film industry produced what was probably the world’s first full-length feature film in 1906 – the Tait Brothers’ production The Story of the Kelly Gang. Footage from this film can be seen at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.
A number of films have been made about Ned Kelly, including Ned Kelly (1970) starring Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger as Ned; the Trial of Ned Kelly (1977) starring John Watters and Gerard Kennedy; the 1980 mini-series The Last Outlaw, starring John Jarrett, Steve Bisley and Sigrid Thornton; and the 2003 film Ned Kelly starring Heath Ledger.
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