Ned Kelly

Ned’s trial was held on October 28, 1880, and he was convicted of the murders and robberies and sentenced to death by hanging.

Despite petitions for mercy and demands for reprieve, Ned Kelly was hanged on November 11, 1880, at the age of 25, at the ‘Melbourne Gaol.’

It is believed that his last words were “Such is life.”

Ned was born in December 1854, in Beveridge, Victoria, into an Irish Catholic family. Ned Kelly was the third child of his parents. His father, John “Red” Kelly, was an Irish convict who was sentenced for stealing two pigs and then transported to Australia.

Red Kelly eventually moved to Victoria and started working at James Quinn's farm at Wallan, where he met and married James’s daughter, Ellen Quinn.

In 1864, the Kelly family moved to Avenel, where Ned attended school. As a young boy, Ned’s bravery in risking his life to save another boy from drowning was applauded, and the boy’s family rewarded Ned with a green silk sash. The color was symbolic of his Irish heritage.

Since an early age, Ned observed his family being targeted unfairly by the police, because of his father’s past and their family’s “selector” status. Thus, the seeds of antipathy and hostility toward the authorities were sown early in his life.

On December 27, 1866, Red Kelly died of dropsy in Avenel, leaving behind the 12-year-old Ned to support his mother and seven siblings.

Shortly after his father’s death, the family moved to Eleven Mile Creek, where Ned quit school and started doing odd jobs to earn for the family. However, the constant war between the big landowners and small “selectors,” such as the Kellys, led to biased accusations of theft and a total of 18 charges against the members of Kelly's immediate family.

In 1869, at the age of 14, Ned was arrested for assaulting a “Chinaman.” However, he was released from the Benalla lockup after 10 days, when the charge was dismissed by the magistrate.

The same year, Ned met Harry Power, a transported convict-turned-bushranger, who later became Ned’s mentor and guide. By May 1869, under Harry’s tutelage, Ned learned the tricks of the trade and mastered the art of bushranging.

His association with Harry led to Ned’s arrest in 1870, but he was released shortly due to lack of evidence.

In October 1870, an altercation with a hawker, Jeremiah McCormack, led to Ned assaulting McCormack. He was charged with six months of hard labor and was subsequently released on March 27, 1871.