Dan Kelly - the Ipswich survival myth [Brian Stevenson]

 Here is an article I wrote for the Ipswich newspaper, the Queensland times. It was published in that newspaper on 28 November 1998.

I wrote it in response to the revival, yet again, of the canard that Dan Kelly had survived Glenrowan and died in Ipswich many years later. After the paper had published some misinformation on the topic, I called them and offered to set out for them the case against Dan's survival and later Ipswich existence. No charge. I am not a particularly altruistic person, but I thought it would settle my stomach ulcers somewhat if I made the effort to put a reasoned case out there that might just put the long-running legend to best.

No such luck, but I tried. And thanks to the Queensland times, who at least gave me the space. Take note, everyone - legends die hard.

Although there is a phrase or two in this that makes me cringe, I don't think the intervening twelve years has brought to light anything that contradicts the main contentions of the article.

There is a reference to the short-lived story that Dan substituted for Ned on the gallows and Ned had survived to a ripe old age. This particular gem is surely the most stupid Kelly based urban myth - and folks, that is really saying something. The story was pushed for a brief time in the mid-1990s by a psychologist, of all things, who promised a book on the subject, but the publication never saw the light of day. A well known saying about gratitude and small mercies comes to mind.

(For the record: none of the five books attributed to me have anything to do with the Kellys or bushranging. While three were solo productions, one had me as the editor only, and another as the very junior co-author. )


"DAN DIED HARD" THE CASE AGAINST IPSWICH'S CLAIM TO DAN KELLY BY FREELANCE HISTORIAN BRIAN STEVENSON



The tale of Dan Kelly has again excited some people and dismayed historians who believe he died at Glenrowan. Freelance historian, and author of five books, Brian Stevenson, has this historian's view of the demise of Dan Kelly.


Dan Kelly died hard. Trapped in the Glenrowan hotel, he and his fellow Kelly Gang member Steve Hart most likely committed suicide to avoid police capture.

As Dan, Hart and another Gang member Joe Byrne lay dead, the hotel was set ablaze. While the body of Byrne was retrieved (and later strapped upoutside the Benalla lockup and photographed), the corpses of Dan Kelly and Hart were incinerated before eyewitnesses.Blackened skeletons were raked out with long poles afterward.The charred remains were unrecognisable and this would, years later, nurture the legend that somehow Dan had escaped instead of dying at Glenrowan in 1880.

Nearly two generations later, claimants would emerge with such frequency that Ned and Dan Kelly's surviving brother Jim complained in a 1930 letter to pro-Kelly author J J Kenneally of how "the name of my brotherDan has been used freely for sordid gain by a gang of imposters."

One such person has recently been commemorated by a plaque and a replica suit of armour at the Ipswich cemetery. Another is supposedly buried at Mt. Isa.

But an examination of the case shows that Daniel Kelly died a wretched and unenviable death at Glenrowan on 28 June 1880, less than a month after his 19th birthday. The information recounted here, drawn from the evidence of contemporary witnesses as reported in widely available biographies of Ned Kelly by Ian Jones, J J Kenneally and Keith McMenomy has been publicly available for nearly 120 years.

The facts are these:

Ned Kelly was captured after his famous 'last stand' on the morning of 28 June, shortly after 6:30 am. Seeing their leader fall, Dan and SteveHart rushed out of the hotel. According to the Melbourne Herald of 29 June, Dan "shouted with rage...and rushed outside shooting at everyone he could see". A bullet struck him in the leg and he limped back inside.

At around 10 am the police called a ceasefire and offered a safe passage for the civilians who were still trapped in the hotel. By now, of course, it was broad daylight.The prisoners left the hotel and were checked by police to make sure that Dan and Steve were not among them.

According to the Melbourne Argus of 5 July 1880, they left the two youths looking "for all the world like two condemned prisoners on the drop".

It was a Monday, and as the day wore on, onlookers in their hundreds continued to arrive. There was an air of surreal calm which continued until 2:30 pm, when, to break the stalemate, the hotel containing the two doomed bushrangers was set afire.

Not one of the hundreds of eyewitnesses EVER said they saw Dan Kelly leave the building between Ned Kelly's capture at 6:30 am and the firing of the hotel seven hours later. Ironically, more than one of the later claimants would cite burns as"evidence" of their identity.

As the hotel erupted in flames, two very different men entered the building and saw Dan and Steve lying dead. The men were the Very Reverend Matthew Gibney, later Bishop of Perth and Constable James Dwyer (who had tried to give the captured Ned Kelly a cowardly kick and had clownishly bashed his own shin on the famous armour instead).

Gibney saw two "beardless boys" lying side by side "at full stretch", the armour beside them. He later told the 1881 Royal Commission into the Victorian Police: "I concluded they lay in that position to let the police see when they found them that it was not by the police they died."

Dwyer's evidence was more specific in terms of Dan's identity. His evidence to the Commission even mentioned Dan's wounded leg: "The left knee was crippled and his hand was outstretched...I knew him to be Dan Kelly from the low forehead." When asked if he could swear to Dan's identity he said: "Yes, I knew the man with the black hair and sallow complexion was Dan Kelly."

Few would disagree with Dwyer for many years, but in August and September 1933, a man now buried in the Ipswich cemetery gave a series of interviews to the Brisbane Truth. As an imposter, the man was laughably incompetent and ignorant of many aspects of the life of Dan Kelly, whose identity he tried, apparently with some posthumous success, to claim.

The Ipswich claimant did not know Dan's year of birth and claimed to be unable to read or write, although Dan could do both. He referred to a nonexistant sister, Nora, but knew nothing of the real Kelly girls, Mary, Annie, Margaret or Grace. He claimed that the Gang had shot and killed Constable Fitzpatrick, who died of natural causes in 1924. Referring to his father as "Ned" (actually John "Red" Kelly) he related how he had visited his parents while on the run, quite a feat given that Red Kelly died in 1866 when Dan was five and Ellen Kelly was in gaol forthe whole period of the Kelly Outbreak.

Perplexingly, the Ipswich claimant's story hs been widely accepted, and his grave–where still he lies–has been promoted as a tourist attraction.Some have even claimed that the grave holds Ned himself, with an obliging Dan, seen but unrecognised by hundreds of people after growing a full beard almost overnight going to the gallows in his stead.No doubt he was grateful that no one had noticed the difference between two brothers who were six or seven years apart in age and six or seven inches apart in height. Little more needs to be added to this latest bizarre offshoot of theKelly legend, except to note that wherever they are Dan and Ned Kelly must be laughing.

The legend of Dan's survival may well have its origins in the potboiler first-person novel Dan Kelly by Melbourne journalist Ambrose Pratt. Published in 1911, it was one of Pratt's more than 30 novels. Although pro-Kelly author J J Kenneally called the book 'a sordid concoction', Pratt never pretended it was anything but fiction. In a 1934 Age newspaper series on the history of Victoria, he recorded Dan's death at Glenrowan without comment. It seems likely that Pratt's production was later the inspiration for a slew of Dan Kelly claimants.

The posthumous survival of a celebrity is a common theme in urban myth.The legend of Dan Kelly's survival has many overseas parallels, virtually all without foundation. DNA testing has in recent years laid to rest forever the claims of pretenders to the identities of people as diverse as the Russian princess Anastasia and the the American bandit Jesse James. When a Billy the Kid imposter surfaced in 1950 (as shown in the film Young Guns 2),he could not read, write, or speak Spanish, skills possessed by the real young outlaw. Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, gangster John Dillinger, Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, Nazi strongman Martin Bormann, Doors frontman JimMorrison, actor James Dean and, most famously of all, Elvis Presley, all allegedly survived their deaths.

Dan Kelly died hard at Glenrowan in 1880, but the legend of his survival is dying even harder.