NED KELLY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2408, 4 December 1880, Page 2

NED KELLY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

It will bo remembered that'Edward Kelly, when at Jerilderie, delivered over to one of the persons he stuck up a document written by himself, and purporting to give a true narrative of the circumstances which had driven him into crime. This document was handed over to the police. Kelly’s narrative is instructive in many respects as showing the vain, boastful character of the man, and his story, as told by himself, should go far to disillusionise those weak minded people who have sought to create a hero out of such pitiful materials.

The document opens with a disjointed narrative of his early life, and recites at length in vain-glorious language a struggle he had with Constable Hall when first arrested for horse-stealing. After declaring that several persons had been convicted of horse-stealing who were innocence, he proceeds with his wild outbusst“ It will pay Government to give those people who are suffering in innocent justice and liberty. If not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will not onlyopen the eyesoft he Victorian police and inhabitants, but also the whole British army, and no doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump. Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than St. Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland.” The narrative then goes to deal with the assault alleged to have taken place on Fitzpatrick, and asserts that Williamson, Skillian, and Mrs Kelly wore convicted on false evidence. Complaint is made of the subsequent conduct of the police to Kelly’s sisters ; and, after stating that the police, in searching the house, shoved the girls in front of them into the rooms like dogs, so that if any one was there they would shoot the girls first, proceeds : —“ But they knew well I was not there, or I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain. I would have manured the Eleven-mile Creek with their carcases, and yet remember there is not one drop of murderous blood in my veins.” The allegation is then made that in addition to the insults offered to Ned Kelly’s sisters, the police threatened to shoot the Kelly brothers. H e goes on—“ This sort of cruelty and disgraceful cowardly conduct to my brothers and sisters certainly made my blood boil, and I don’t think there is a man born who would suffer it as long as I did, or allow his blood to get cold while such insults were unavenged. And yet in every paper that is printed I am called the blackest and coldest blooded murderer ever on record. But if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show them what cold blooded mnrdor is, but wholesale and retail slaughter, something different to shooting three troopers in self-defence and robbing a bank.” lie then gives

the following description of the murder of the police in the Wombat ranges ; “On the 251 h of October I came on police tracks between Tabletop and the bogs. I crossed them and returning in the evening I came on a different lot of tracks making for the shingle hut. I went to our camp and told my brother and his two mates, and tny brother went and found their camp at the shingle hut about a mile from my brother’s house. We saw they carried long firearms, and we knew our doom was sealed if we could not beat those before the others would come, as I knew the other party of police would soon join them, and if they came on against our camp they would shoot us down like dogs at our work. As we had only two guns, we thought it best to try and bail those up take their firearms and ammunition and horses, and ,we could stand a chance with the rest. We approached the spring as close as we could get to the camp, as the intervening space being clear ground, and no battery. We saw two men at the logs. They got up, and one took a double-barrel fowling piece, and fetched ahorse down and hobbled him at the tent. Wo thought there ■were more men in the tent asleep, those outside being on sentry. Could have shot those two men without speaking but not wishing to take their lives we waited. MTntyre laid the gun against the slump, and Lonigan sat on the log. I advanced, my brother keeping MTntyre covered which he took to be Constable Flood ; and had he not obeyed my order, or attempted to run for the gun, or drawn his revolver, he would have been shot dead. But when I called on them to throw up tlicir hands MTntyre obeyed, and Lonigan ran some six or seven yards to a battery of logs, instead of boiling behind the one be was sitting on. Ho had just got to the log, and put his hand up take aim, when I shot him tliat instant, or he would have shot me, as I took him to be Slrachan, the man who said he would not ask me to stand ; ho would shoot me first like a dog. But it happened to be Lonigan, As soon as I shot Lonigan he jumped up and staggered some distance from the logs without his hands raising, and then fell. He surrendered, but too late. I asked MTntyre who was in the hut. He replied, ‘No one,’ I advanced and took possession of their two revolvers and fowling piece, which I loaded with bullets instead of shot. I asked MTntyre where his mates were. He said they had gone down the creek, and he did not expect them that night. He asked me was I going to shoot him

and Ids mates ? I told Idm ‘No ; I would shoot no man if he gave up his arms and left the force.’ He said the police all knew Fitzpatrick had wronged us, and he intended to leave the force as he had bad health and his life was insured. He told me he intended going home, and that Kennedy and Scanlon were out looking for our camp, and also about the police. He told me the New South Wales police had shot a man for shooting Sergeant Walling. I told him him if' they did they shot the wrong man, and I expect your gang came to do the same with me. He said ‘No ; they did not come to shoot me, they came to apprehend me.’ I asked him what they carried. Spencer rifles and breachloading fowling-pieces, and so much ammunition ; for the police were only supposed to carry one revolver and six cartridges in the revolver ; but they had eighteen rounds of revolver cartridges each, three dozen for the fowlingpiece, and twenty-one Spencer rifle cartridges, and God knows how many they had away with the rifle. This looked as though they meant not onlj to shoot me, but riddle mo ; but I don’t know either Kennedy, Scanlon, or him, and had nothing against them. He said he would get them to give up their arms if I would not shoot them, as I could not blame them for doing honest duty ; but I could not suffer them blowing me to pieces in my own native land. So they knew Fitzpatrick wronged us, and why not make it public, and convict him ? But no they would rather riddle poor unfortunate Creoles. But they will rue the day when Fitzpatrick got among them. Our two mates came over when they heard the shot fired, but went back again, for fear the police might come to our camp while we were all aw ay, and manure Bullock Flat with us. On our arrival I stopped at the logs, and Dan went back to the spring, for fear the troopers would come in that way. But I soon heard them coming up the creek. I told MTntyrc to tell them to give up their arms. He spoke to Kennedy, who was some distance in front of Scanlon. He reached for his revolver and jumped off on the off side of his horse, and got behind a tree, when I called on them to throw up their arms; and Scanlon, who carried the rifle, slewed his horse round to gallop away, but the horse \vould not go, and as quick as thought fired at me with the rifle without levelling it and was in the act of firing again when I had to shoot him and he fell from his horse, I could have shot them without speaking, but their lives were no good to me. MTntyrc jumped on Kennedy’s horse, and I allowed him to go, as I did not like to shoot him after he surrendered, or I would have, as he was between me and Kennedy without shooting him first. Kennedy kept firing from behind the tree, My brother Dan advanced and Kennedy ran. I followed him. He stopped behind another tree and tired again. I shot him in the arm-pit and he dropped his revolver and ran. I fired again with the gun and he slewed around to surrender. I did not know be had dropped his revolver. The bullet passed through the right side of his chest, and he could not live, or I would have let him go. Had they been my own brothers I could not help shooting them or else let them shoot me, which they would have done had their bullets been directed as they intended them. But as for handcuffing to a tree, or cutting his ear off, or brutally treating any of them it is a falsehood. If Kennedy’s ear was cut off it was not done by me, and none of my mates were near him. After he was shot I put his cloak over him and left him as well as I could, and were they my own brothers I could not have been more sorry for them. This cannot be called wilful murder, for 1 was compelled to shoot them or lie down and let them shoot me. It would not be wilful murder if they packed our remains, shattered into a mass of animated gore to Mansfield ; they would have got great praise and credit as well as promotion. But I am reckoned a horrid brute, because I had not been cowardly enough to lie down for them under such trying circumstances and insidts to my people ; certainly their women and children are to be pitied, but they must remember those men came in the bush with the intention of scattering pieces of me and my brother all over the bush, and yet they know and acknowledge I have been, and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent; and is my brother and sisters and my mother not to be pited also, who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied, magpie-legged, narrowhipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs ?” After an incoherent rodomontade directed against the police, he proceeds : —“ Is there not big fat-necked unicorns enough paid to torment and drive me to do things which I don’t wish to do, without the public assisting them ? I have never interfered with any person unless they deserved it, and yet there are civiliabs wdio take firearms against me, for what reason I do not know, unless they want me to turn on them and exterminate them without medicine. I shall be compelled to make an example of some of them if they cannot find no other employment. If I had robbed and plundered, ravished,and murdered eveiything I had met —young and old, rich and poor, the public could not do any more than take firearms and assist the police as they have done ; but by the light that shines, pegged on an ant-bed with their bellies opened, their fat taken out and rendered and poured down their throats boiling hot, will be fool to what pleasure I will give some of them ; and any person aiding, or harboring, and assisting the police in any way whatever, or employing any person whom they know to be a detective or a cad, or those who would be so depraved as to take bloodmoney, will be outlawed, and declared to be unfit to be allowed human burial, their property either consumed or confiscated, and them, theirs and all belonging to them exterminated off the face of the earth. The enemy I cannot catch myself I shall give a payable reward for.” After referring to an officer of police in anything but complimentary terms, he goes on to say, “ I do not call MTntyrc a coward, for I reckon he is as game a man as wears the jacket, as he had the presence of mind to know his position directly he was spoken to, and it was only foolishness to disobey. It was cowardice that made Lonigan and the others fight. It is only foolhardiness to disobey an outlaw, as any policeman or other man who does not throw up their arms directly as I call on them knows the consequence, which is a speedy despatch to ‘ kingdom come.’ ”