OVER NED KELLY’S GRAVE

Shannon News, 12 April 1929, Page 3

OVER NED KELLY’S GRAVE

SCHOOL TO BE BUILT AT MELBOURNE.

END OF HISTORIC GAOL

The gloomy walls of the old Melbourne gaol, 20,000 tons of bluestone, are thundering down about the graves of Ned Kelly, Albert. William Deeming Martha Needle, and others notorious in Australian criminal records, to make way for the now engineering school at the Wording Aten’s College. The yard in which were buried those who paid the last grim penalty for their crimes is a long rectangular one surrounded by walls, apparently built to last centuries. Now this area, long given over to the correction of bad citizens, is to be dedicated to the making and training of good citizens. The cheerful shouts of students will ring out where once prison bells tolled, and light feet will scamper through a bright new modern building over a place where once only furtive whisper ings, the wmils of the condemned, am! the rattling if irons could be heard. That which is believed to bo NuL Kcllv’s grave lies by, itself, and the initials “E.K.” with an arrow arc on a Avali some distance from the others. In the last few- days, while the workers have been tearing down the wall fronting the street, many curious passers-by have peered through the bicycle shed trvinV to read the iuitials mirved on the v/all —J.V.P., F.K., .T.C., L.M.N., and many others. Among the graves are those of vYiliiam Barnes, If So; Freeland Morrell, 'S80; George Syme, 1888; Filipi Cas tillo, 1889; Robert Landells, 1889; John. Thomas Phelan, 1891; John Wilson, 1891; Martha Needle, 1594; and Albert William Deeming, ISP2. The building of the old Alelbourne Gaol was first commenced in 1841. The stone is being carted away and sola to the Harbour Trust for under-water work. . , , „ The wmlls arc of massive slaos of bluestone 2ft. long and lft. squaic. The concrete is still as hard as ever, and each slab is only removed after hard work. Buried in the walls is an ol'd pipe and occasionally the workmen come upon the brickwork of an old underground tunnel.