Black Bunny's Bushrangers (T) - Ned Kelly - Jerilderie Jerilderie, New South Wales, Australia
By Black Bunny on 05-Dec-18. Waypoint GA5989

Ned Kelly - Jerilderie

Jerilderie is the only town in NSW featured in the Ned Kelly saga, has more surviving authentic Kelly sites than anywhere else along the Ned Kelly Touring Route, and is home of the famous Jerilderie Letter, dictated to Joe Byrne by Ned Kelly.

At sundown on Saturday, 8 February 1879 the Kelly gang arrived at the Woolshed Inn (3 km east of Jerilderie) to pass some time before they rode into Jerilderie, surrounded the police barracks and locked up the two policemen in their own cell.

On Sunday morning, Ned and his gang dressed themselves in police uniforms and masqueraded as reinforcements sent to strengthen police patrols on the border! Dan Kelly accompanied Mrs Devine, the police constable’s wife to prepare the Courthouse for the usual monthly Catholic Church service, delivered by a visiting priest.

On Monday morning, Dan Kelly and Joe Byrne rode to the blacksmith shop of Samuel Rea where they had their horses re-shod, at the expense of the New South Wales Police.

Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne commandeered the back parlour of the Royal Mail Hotel, Ned explaining to licensee Charles Cox that he required a room for a few hours to put people in “for I have come here to stick up the Bank today”. (The Bank of NSW occupied a section of the hotel premises.)

Ned and Joe bailed up the bank teller and the junior teller and confiscated £691 from the cash till. After locating the bank manager, £1450 was taken from the safe. The bank employees were escorted to the hotel’s back parlour and held hostage. Ned recruited the hotel groomsman to burn various documents held by the bank as collateral for loans, a deed which he carried out with alacrity.

Ned, in company with Trooper Richards and Bank Teller Edward Living, then went in search of Samuel Gill, the Editor of the Jerilderie and Urana Gazette, to fulfil the true purpose of the gang’s visit to Jerilderie – to print Ned’s side of the story that led he and his gang along the path of outlawry – the now famous ‘Jerilderie Letter’…… On handing over the manuscript, Ned said to Mr Living “Mind that you keep your promise and see that they are printed, or you will have to reckon with me next time we meet.”   However, Mr Living did not give the manuscript to Gill, rather he kept it himself, and it was not to resurface until more than 100 years later. 

Today the original Jerilderie Letter is held at the State Library of Victoria. Living kept the ‘Jerilderie Letter’ and it only surfaced more than 100 years later, when it was donated to the State Library of Victoria.

Bushrangers.

Over 2,000 bushrangers are estimated to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan.

Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term "bushranger" had evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.

Bushranging thrived during the gold rush years of the 1850s and 1860s when the likes of Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner and John Gilbert led notorious gangs in the country districts of New South Wales. These Wild Colonial Boys typically robbed small-town banks and coach services.

In other infamous cases, such as that of Dan Morgan, the Clarke brothers, and Australia's best-known bushranger, Ned Kelly, numerous policemen were murdered.

The number of bushrangers declined due to better policing and improvements in rail transport and communication technology, such as telegraphy. Kelly's capture and execution in 1880 effectively represented the end of the bushranging era.

From: Wikipedia & the Ned Kelly Touring Route

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushranger
https://nedkellytouringroute.com.au/destinations/jerilderie/

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