75 Facts About Ned Kelly

Edward Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader, bank robber and convicted police-murderer.

Ned Kelly was born and raised in rural Victoria, the third of eight children to Irish parents.

Ned Kelly later joined the "Greta Mob", a group of bush larrikins known for stock theft.

Ned Kelly continues to cause division in his homeland: he is variously considered a Robin Hood-like folk hero and crusader against oppression, and a murderous villain and terrorist.

Ned Kelly's father, John Ned Kelly, was born in 1820 at Clonbrogan near Moyglas, County Tipperary, Ireland.

The Ned Kelly selection proved ill-suited for farming, and Ellen supplemented her income by offering accommodation to travellers and selling sly-grog.

In 1869,14-year-old Kelly met Irish-born Harry Power, a transported convict who turned to bushranging in north-eastern Victoria after escaping Melbourne's Pentridge Prison.

The Kellys were Power sympathisers, and by May 1869 Ned had become his bushranging protege.

Ned Kelly, arrested and charged with highway robbery, claimed in court that Fook had abused him and his sister Annie in a dispute over the hawker's request for a drink of water.

Ned Kelly fronted court on three robbery charges, with the victims in each case failing to identify him.

Ned Kelly denied the rumour, and in the only surviving letter known to bear his handwriting, he pleads with Sergeant James Babington of Kyneton for help, saying that "everyone looks on me like a black snake".

However, Ned Kelly had given information which led to Power's capture, possibly in exchange for having the charges against him dropped.

Ned Kelly resisted and overpowered Hall, despite the constable's attempts to shoot him.

Ned Kelly was eventually subdued with the help of bystanders, and Hall pistol-whipped him until his head became "a mass of raw and bleeding flesh".

Ned Kelly served his sentence at Beechworth Gaol and Pentridge Prison, then aboard the prison hulk Sacramento, off Williamstown.

Ned Kelly was freed on 2 February 1874, six months early for good behaviour, and returned to Greta.

In early 1877, Ned Kelly joined King in an organised horse theft operation.

On 18 September 1877, Ned Kelly was arrested in Benalla for riding over a footpath while drunk.

On 11 April 1878, Constable Strachan of Greta heard that Ned Kelly was at a shearing shed in New South Wales and left to apprehend him.

Minutes later, Ned Kelly rushed in and shot at Fitzpatrick with a revolver, missing him.

Ned Kelly apologised to Fitzpatrick, saying that he mistook him for another constable.

Fitzpatrick fainted and when he regained consciousness Ned Kelly compelled him to extract the bullet from his own arm with a knife; Ellen dressed the wound.

Ned Kelly devised a cover story and promised to reward Fitzpatrick if he adhered to it.

Ned Kelly reached a hotel where his wound was re-bandaged, then rode to Benalla to report the incident.

Ned Kelly initially claimed he was away from Greta at the time, and that if Fitzpatrick suffered any wounds, they were probably self-inflicted.

In 1881, Brickey Williamson, who was seeking remission for his sentence in relation to the incident, stated that Ned Kelly shot Fitzpatrick after the constable had drawn his revolver.

One of these witnesses, a family relative, swore that Ned Kelly was in Greta that afternoon, which was damaging to the defence.

Unbeknownst to them, the gang's hideout was only 2.5 km away and Ned Kelly had observed their tracks.

Ned Kelly said he did not begrudge his death, calling him the "meanest man that I had any account against".

Ned Kelly maintained that Scanlan fired and was trying to fire again when he fatally shot him.

Ned Kelly later stated that Kennedy hid behind a tree and fired back, then fled into the bush.

Ned Kelly reached Mansfield the following day and a search party was quickly dispatched and found the bodies of Lonigan and Scanlan.

Ned Kelly expected Cameron to read it out in parliament, but the government only allowed summaries to be made public.

Premier Graham Berry, a vociferous critic of the gang, found it "very clever", and alerted railway authorities to an allusion Ned Kelly makes to tearing up tracks.

Ned Kelly expanded on much of its content in the Jerilderie Letter of 1879.

Ned Kelly found and burnt deeds, mortgages and securities, saying "the bloody banks are crushing the life's blood out of the poor, struggling man".

Ned Kelly stayed a while longer to shout a group of sympathisers at the Albion Hotel.

Ned Kelly implores squatters to share their wealth with the rural poor, invokes a history of Irish rebellion against the English, and threatens to carry out a "colonial stratagem" designed to shock not only Victoria and its police "but the whole British army".

Ned Kelly tasked Edwin Living, a local bank accountant, with delivering it to the editor of the Jerilderie and Urana Gazette for publication.

Ned Kelly then sent Ellen into the bedroom to bring the police out, but they detained her in the room.

Towards evening, Ned Kelly let 21 hostages he deemed trustworthy to leave, then captured Glenrowan's lone constable, Hugh Bracken, with the assistance of hostage Thomas Curnow, a local schoolmaster who sought to gain the gang's trust in order to thwart their plans.

Ned Kelly had decided to free the hostages and was delivering them a final lecture on the police when the train pulled into Glenrowan.

Ned Kelly was wounded in the left hand, left arm and right foot.

Ned Kelly, bleeding heavily, retreated about 90 m into the bush behind the hotel, where police found his skull cap and rifle at around 3.30 am Ned Kelly was lying in the bush nearby.

Seriously wounded, Ned Kelly lay in the bush for most of the night.

Police returned fire as Kelly moved from tree to tree towards the hotel, at times staggering from his injuries, the weight of his armour and the impact of bullets on the plate iron, which he later described as "like blows from a man's fist".

The gun battle with Ned Kelly lasted around 15 minutes with Dan and Hart providing covering fire from the hotel.

Ned Kelly was disarmed and divested of his armour by the police while Dan and Hart continued firing on them.

Dan was wounded by return fire, and Ned Kelly was carried to the railway station, where a doctor attended to him.

Ned Kelly was later found to have twenty-eight wounds, including serious gunshot wounds to his left elbow and right foot, several flesh wounds caused by gunshots, and cuts and abrasions from bullets striking his armour, which showed a total of 18 bullet marks, including five in the helmet.

Outside the lockup where Ned Kelly was kept, Byrne's body was strung up and photographed, with casts taken of his head and limbs for a waxwork, later exhibited in Melbourne.

Ned Kelly recuperated at Melbourne Gaol hospital, and four weeks after his capture, it was arranged that he be transferred to Beechworth for his committal hearing.

Ned Kelly's committal hearing took place at Beechworth Court in August 1880, with lawyer-MP David Gaunson as his attorney.

Ned Kelly later said he questioned Kelly's mental stability and found him ineffective in justifying the shooting of police, especially by likening them to soldiers.

Ned Kelly interviewed Kelly about this and paraphrased the transcript for The Age.

Ned Kelly was committed for trial on charges of murdering constables Lonigan and Scanlan.

Ned Kelly's trial began on 19 October 1880 before judge Sir Redmond Barry, who had sentenced his mother over the Fitzpatrick incident.

The day before his execution, Ned Kelly had his photographic portrait taken as a keepsake for his family, and he was granted farewell meetings with relatives.

Ned Kelly was buried at the Old Melbourne Gaol in what was known as the "old men's yard".

In May 1881, reports emerged that Ned Kelly's body had been illegally dissected by medical students for study.

Ned Kelly's skeleton was identified among the Pentridge remains through DNA analysis and comparisons to bullet wounds he received at Glenrowan.

Ned Kelly has progressed from outlaw to national hero in a century, and to international icon in a further 20 years.

Superintendent Hare wrote that Ned Kelly "always posed as a friend of the working-man".

Australia was highly urbanised, the telegraph and the railway were rapidly connecting the bush to the city, and Ned Kelly was already an icon for a romanticised past.

Macintyre states that Ned Kelly turning agricultural equipment into armour was an irresistible symbol of a passing era.

Songs, poems, popular entertainments, fiction, books, and newspaper and magazine articles about the Ned Kelly gang proliferated in the decades that followed, and by 1943 Ned Kelly was the subject of 42 major published works.

The first ballads about the Ned Kelly gang appeared in 1878 and it quickly became a popular genre and form of social protest, despite colonial governments banning public performances.

Non-Australian artists who have recorded songs about Ned Kelly include Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.

Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize for his novel True History of the Ned Kelly Gang, written from Ned Kelly's perspective and in emulation of his voice in the Jerilderie Letter.

The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia's premier prizes for crime fiction and true crime writing.

Ned Kelly has figured prominently in Australian cinema since the 1906 release of The Story of the Ned Kelly Gang, the world's first dramatic feature-length film.

In Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm argues that Ned Kelly was a social bandit, a type of peasant outlaw and symbol of social rebellion with significant community support.

Jones, Molony, McQuilton and others argue that Ned Kelly was a political rebel with considerable support among local selectors.

Jones claims that Ned Kelly intended to derail the train at Glenrowan to incite a rebellion of disaffected selectors and declare a "Republic of North-eastern Victoria".

Ned Kelly has often been characterised by the press as a terrorist, particularly in his day and during the war on terror.