Dan Kelly

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Early life

Dan Kelly's father, John Kelly (known as "Red"), married an Irish woman, Ellen Quinn, in Melbourne in 1850. They had seven children: Annie (1853), Edward "Ned" (1854), Maggie (1856), James (1859), Dan (1861), Kate (1862) and Grace (1863).

In 1864, Kelly's family moved north to a farm at Avenel. Red Kelly stole a calf and was sent to jail for six months. Dan was in trouble with the police when he was five years old because they believed he had stolen a horse. Dan's father died in 1866, and in 1867, his mother, Ellen Kelly, moved the family to a small farm near Greta in northeast Victoria.

Ellen Kelly's two sisters, Catherine and Jane Lloyd, were living at Greta, and her two brothers, John and James Quinn, had moved to the area in 1864. The Quinn family were well known to the police. Dan Kelly was again in trouble with the law when he was only 10 years old. He and his brother James, aged 12, were arrested by Constable Flood for riding a horse that did not belong to them. Jim was working for a local farmer and had taken the horse to ride home on. Flood did not believe them, and the boys were forced to spend two nights in a prison cell. It later transpired that the farmer had indeed given them permission to borrow the horse.

In 1875, like many other young men in northeast Victoria, Dan Kelly and his cousins, the Lloyds, went to New South Wales to look for seasonal farm work in the Riverina area and on the Monaro High Plains. His group of friends was known as "the Greta mob". They went out together to hotels, dances and horse races. By 1876, they were well known for their visits to nearby towns such as Wangaratta, Beechworth and Benalla.

On one visit to Benalla in 1876, Dan was arrested for stealing a saddle. The police let him go when they could not get enough evidence. Dan and his cousins got into trouble with the police in October 1877. They had gone to a shop to pick up food and other supplies, but the shop was shut. When the owner refused to open the shop, Dan Kelly broke down the door. They were charged with violent assault, damage to property (the door), breaking into houses and stealing things worth £113. The boys went into hiding, and the police spent three weeks looking for them. Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick told Ned Kelly to convince them to give themselves up. In court, the police were not able to prove most of the charges, but Dan went to prison for one month for damaging property worth £10.

On 15 April 1878, Constable Fitzpatrick went to the Kelly's house to arrest Dan Kelly for stealing horses. Dan had been seen in Chiltern riding a stolen horse. What happened at the house is now called the "Fitzpatrick incident". There was a fight with Fitzpatrick, and he said the Kelly family had tried to kill him. Dan and Ned went into the bush to hide. Ellen Kelly was sent to jail for three years for attempted murder. Maggie's husband, William Skillion, and a neighbour, William Williamson, were sent to jail for six years.

Murder

In June 1880, the Kelly Gang came out of hiding. They knew that Joe Byrne's friend, Aaron Sherritt, had been giving information to the police. Four policemen were staying at Sherritt's house, near Beechworth, to protect him. Dan Kelly and Byrne went to Sherritt's house late at night and took hostage his neighbour, a German called Weekes and used him to trick Sherritt out of the house. When Sherritt opened the door, Byrne shot him dead. The policemen were hiding under the bed. Kelly and Byrne rode quickly back to Glenrowan where Ned Kelly and Hart had forced many of the townspeople into a hotel, the Glenrowan Inn. They also had forced railway workers to pull up the train tracks. They knew that more police would be sent by train to Beechworth to find them. They wanted the train to crash when it reached the place where tracks had been removed near Glenrowan. The bushrangers, wearing homemade armour, would then capture any of the policemen that were alive after the crash. With the police out of the way, the Kelly Gang would then go into Benalla and rob the bank. The captured police would be released when Ellen Kelly, William Williamson, and William Skillion were let out of jail.

The plan did not work because the four policemen did not come out of Sherritt's house until the morning. This meant that the news of the murder did not reach Melbourne as quickly as the Kelly Gang had hoped. The people held prisoner in the hotel became restless. Ned organised music and Dan joined in dancing to keep the people in the hotel entertained. Dan also organised some sporting games including long jump and hop, step and jump. Dan wanted to leave Glenrowan when they knew the plan was not going to work because the train was late. Ned Kelly let Thomas Curnow, the school master, go home to his wife. Dan told his brother not to trust Curnow, and to keep him at the hotel. Curnow did go home, where he discussed with his wife about doing something, but after hearing the train approaching, he ran to the railway line with a lantern and his wife's red silk scarf and at about 3.00am he was able to stop the train before it reached the broken rails. The police quickly left the train and placed themselves around the hotel so that the Kelly Gang was trapped inside.

Glenrowan and death

When the bushrangers heard the train pull into the station, they knew their plan to destroy the train had failed. They put on their suits of armour and went on to the verandah of the hotel to wait for the police. In the first few shots, police Superintendent Hare, Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne were wounded, and Jack Jones, son of the hotel owner, was fatally wounded. Ned Kelly, who was dressed in his armour, was able to leave the hotel and kept shooting at the police. The police fired their guns into the hotel building for seven hours. It is estimated that 15,000 bullets were fired during the shooting. Byrne died after being shot in the groin. Ned Kelly went back to the hotel but he could not find Dan or Steve Hart who were hiding in a back room. He again left and tried to find his horse. Ned Kelly was shot in the legs as he searched outside for his brother. The police were then easily able to capture him.

At 10.00 am there was a large crowd of people watching the action. Police Inspector Sadleir was forced to stop the shooting to allow many of the hostages to escape. He would not let Dan's sister Maggie, or a Catholic priest, Father Gibney, go into the hotel to tell the men to give themselves up. Instead, he ordered that a cannon be sent from Melbourne so that they could destroy the hotel.

At 2.30 pm, the police set fire to the building to try to make the rest of the Kelly Gang leave the building. Gibney ignored the police and went into the burning building. He found Dan Kelly and Steve Hart dead in a back room of the hotel. He said their bodies were lying side by side, their heads resting on blankets. Byrne's body was dragged out of the hotel, but the bodies of Hart and Kelly were badly burned during the fire. People who saw the burned and blackened bodies were only able to tell which was Dan Kelly and which was Steve Hart by their size. They were placed on sheets of bark from a tree and photographed. Three Glenrowan people held hostage inside the hotel died during the siege.

Family members, including his sisters, Kate and Maggie, and friends took the bodies back to Greta. The police tried to get the bodies back, and sent a group of 16 policemen to Greta, but they became worried that this would start another fight and they went back to Benalla. Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were buried in unmarked graves at Greta, on 30 June 1880. About 100 people were at the funeral, with Dan's cousin Tom Lloyd as the undertaker, and a Greta farmer, Daniel O'Keefe, acting as a preacher. After the graves were filled in, the whole area was ploughed over to keep the site of the graves hidden. The family was worried that the police would still try to get the bodies.

After Glenrowan, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart's armour was taken by the troopers and kept at Benalla. Ned Kelly's armour was sent to Melbourne to be used at his trial. Joe Byrne's armour was sent to the police depot in Richmond. At the end of 1880, all the pieces were in Melbourne. One set of armour was given to Sir William Clarke. Over the years the pieces became mixed up. In 2002, the State Library of Victoria and the police exchanged some pieces to try to get the sets complete. The State Library has Ned's armour, Joe's is still owned by the Clarke family, and the police have Dan and Steve's armour, which can be seen at the Victoria Police Museum in Melbourne.

In 2012, it was reported that a gun which may have been Dan Kelly's and used at Glenrowan was to be sold at auction. It was sold to a private bidder for AUD $122,000.

After Glenrowan

There was no autopsy held on Dan or Steve, and there have been many stories about what might have happened. The arrangement of their bodies in the hotel suggests they may have killed themselves. This was the story that was used in the first Kelly film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, in 1906, and in the 2003 film Ned Kelly.

Despite his body being identified by police and a priest before being burnt, there have also been stories that both Dan and Steve survived the fire. There is little evidence to support these claims. One man, James Ryan, claimed he was Dan Kelly. In 1934 he went on stage at the Brisbane Exhibition and told stories about the Kelly Gang. He died on 29 July 1948, after being struck by a train. The Ipswich City Council have put a memorial on his grave. In 2001, scientists took a small piece of bone from the grave of Charles Devine Tindall at Toowoomba, Queensland, to see if they could find DNA to prove he was Dan Kelly. Devine, who had burn scars on his body, told his family he was really Dan. He said he had hidden under the floor of the Glenrowan hotel and escaped after the fire. An archaeological dig at the site of the hotel by Adam Ford in 2008 found that there was no cellar or other hiding place under the floors. In October 1902, a Melbourne newspaper printed W. B. Melville's story that Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were living in South Africa, where the men allegedly fought in the Boer War.

Another man, Jim Davis from Darra (a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland), said in 1938 that he was Dan Kelly. He claimed that he, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne had escaped from the hotel. He also said he was born at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, which makes him too old to have really been Dan.

There are three people alive today who met Dan or Steve. Mr John Harris and Vince Allen both met Dan Kelly. Vince (now 82) met Dan at Main Junction in 1944. Then Helen Stanwick, now 103 met Steve Hart (who called himself Harry Thompson – who was also treated by Dr Harry Power at Devil's Pulpit) when she was a young woman. I have many emails and photos which are testimony that these two men escaped the hotel fire at Glenrowan.

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