Ned kelly death
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The History of the Ned Kelly Gang.
The History of the Ned Kelly Gang
Written by Ronald Land
Once we know the stories of our ancestry, they emerge in the most interesting places. It happened to me when I heard about the Australian Seminar evening at Trinity College in Dublin. That’s because I’m the great-grandnephew of the police officer in command during the capture of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.
Ned Kelly was undoubtedly the most well-known wholesale horse thief, bank robber, police murderer, and all-around folk hero in Australian history. Read on to learn more about him and the Kelly Gang and how their story became entwined with my family’s history.
Who Was Ned Kelly?
The Ned Kelly Gang were bushrangers who terrorised the population of the northeastern district of Victoria, Australia, from 1878 to 1880. The gang’s leader, Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly, was eventually captured by police under the command of my great-granduncle, Superintendent John Sadleir.
John Sadleir wrote about the gang many years later in his book, Recollections of a Victorian Police Officer:
“Th Edward "Ned" Kelly (3 June 1855 – 11 November 1880) was an Australianbushranger.[3] He has become a symbolic figure in Australian history, folklore, books, art and movies. As a national icon, his image was used during the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.[3] He is remembered in the saying "... as game as Ned Kelly"; the word game in this case meaning brave.[4] While he was growing up, his family was often in trouble with the police. After fighting a policeman at his home in 1878, Kelly went to the bush to hide. He murdered three policemen who were searching for him. The government made Ned, his brother, and two friends outlaws. They became known as the Kelly Gang. Ned Kelly led the gang to rob a number of banks, and even capture a whole town. A final violent fight with police took place at Glenrowan. Kelly, dressed in home-made metal armour and helmet, was captured and sent to trial. Found guilty, he was hanged at the Melbourne Gaol in 1880. A painting of Kelly by Australian artist Sidney Nolan was sold in 2 In the mid-19th century, Australia had a huge problem with outlaws roaming the lawless bush. Escaped convicts turned to a life of crime to make their fortune as “bushrangers,” and as Australia was a penal colony, there was no shortage of convicts, nor was there a shortage of the mindset needed to become an outlaw in this new land. This era for Australia was very similar in nature to the Wild West era in the United States, and it produced many notorious outlaws such as Ben Hall, Dan Morgan, the Clarke Brothers, Bluecap, Captain Thunderbolt, and the most famous of them all, Ned Kelly. This is the story of the latter and how he terrorized southeastern Australia. Edward “Ned” Kelly was born in December 1854 to John Kelly and Ellen Quinn in Australia. His father was an Irish convict transported to Australia for stealing two pigs. His family struggled, and his father drank heavily. As a child, Ned Kelly risked his life to save a boy from drowning in a river. The boy’s family gave Ned a
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Ned Kelly
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Ned Kelly: The Infamous Outlaw of Australia’s “Wild West”
The Early Life of Ned Kelly
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