Ned Kelly

First Draft of History

Ned Kelly's first attempt to translate his infamy into a kind of public platform came during what was one of his most daring, and otherwise successful heists, the raid on the bank at Euroa.

By all accounts, the raid was masterfully planned. Kelly, his brother, Byrne and Hart had been getting information about the daily movements of the locals from an old family friend, and on December 10^th, 1878, they made their move, rounding up 22 townspeople and locking them inside the railway station. While Byrne and Hart remained behind at the station, Ned and Dan Kelly slipped into less conspicuous clothes, made their way to the bank and burst in, guns drawn. When they left, they took with them 2,260 pounds in cash and gold. But they also left something behind. The so-called Euroa letter, the first draft of what would later come to be known as the Kelly manifesto.

In it, Ned Kelly employs not only his native talent for turning a phrase, but a fair measure of wit as well, as he details his version of the events that, in his mind, led him to turn outlaw. But the letter is not simply an apologia. Kelly, apparently aware of the public sympathy he was then enjoying, used the letter to cast himself as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, their avenger against an overweening bureacracy and its overzealous and brutal enforcers.

"I have no intention of asking mercy for myself or any mortal man, or apologizing, but wish to give timely warning that if my people do not get justice...I shall be forced to seek revenge of everything of the human race for the future," Kelly wrote. "I will not take innocent life if justice is given, but as the police are afraid or ashamed to wear their uniform, therefore every man's life is in danger, as I was outlawed without cause, and cannot be no worse, and have but once to die. If the public do not see justice done I will seek revenge for the name and character which has been given to me and my relations, while God gives me strength to pull a trigger."

With characteristic irony, he concluded the letter, "With no offense (remember your railroads) and a sweet goodbye Edward Kelly, enforced outlaw."

For the first time, Kelly had cast his exploits as something more than simple banditry. He had taken upon himself the role of revolutionary.

The authorities were not pleased. The suppressed the letter — it was not published until after Kelly's trial, and responded by upping the bounty on the Kelly gang's heads. But that, they realized, would not be enough to turn the mob against the man who claimed to be their hero, and so the police also began what most historians believe was an ill considered campaign to round up Kelly friends and sympathizers across the region.

The tactic, by all accounts, backfired. Rather than shaking the public's admiration for the dashing young bushranger, the crackdown only served to increase support for him.