Ned Kelly

A Small-Time Crook

The move was not simply a leap in the dark. Ned's mother, the former Ellen Quinn, had family in the Greta area. By most accounts, the Quinn family had, at that time, developed a reputation for treading on the wrong side of the law. As the website Ned Online puts it, "the Kellys were part of the Quinn clan, who collectively had the distinction of being officially regarded as the most lawless in the Wangaratta district. An official policy of suppressing lawless (behavior) led to the Quinn family being paid special attention by the police, and arrested given any (misdemeanor). Tension and arrests happened easily and often, as it can be said that selectors as a class displayed a series of attitudes that the colonial elites found problematic.

Ned Kelly's prison record

It was just two years after John Kelly's death that Ned had his first significant scrapes with the law. His first encounter with the local authorities was not particularly distinguished. At the tender age of 14, he was accused of attacking an itinerant Chinese merchant named Ah Fook. He was charged with assault and was held in jail for ten days, according to documents from the time.

Perhaps, as some Kelly supporters insist, young Kelly was innocent, a victim of overzealous police bent on bringing the troublesome Quinn and Kelly clan to heel.

Superintendent Nicholson of the northeastern district where Kelly and his gang were active

Perhaps he was a beneficiary of the tendency among poor Irish immigrants to rally around their own, but what is certain is that the authorities were never able to find reliable witnesses to the attack and the charges against Kelly were eventually dismissed

Soon thereafter, historians believe, Ned Kelly began in earnest his education in crime.

His tutor was Harry Powers, a notorious bandit who had earned the sobriquet "The Gentleman Bushranger" as much for his bearing as for his polite demeanor. Most accounts agree that Ned was introduced to Powers by an uncle, a member of the extended Quinn clan, who had, according to various accounts, spent some time behind bars Powers.

According to most historians, Powers was impressed with the young man and enlisted Kelly as a kind of apprentice bandit. It was to be a comparatively brief apprenticeship. After just two years, Kelly was arrested, charged with "highway robbery under arms," a charge based on his alliance with Powers. Though the charges were eventually dismissed, Kelly was held for two months, and during that time, the authorities pressed him for information about Powers. He gave up nothing.

But his suspicious neighbors, suspected that he had, and for a time, Kelly was haunted by the thought that some believed that he was the worst thing an Irish immigrant could possibly be, an informer. As he wrote after his release in a letter to a police officer who had befriended him during his incarceration, "everyone looks at me like I'm a black snake."