The Glenrowan Inn's Mrs. Ann Jones and her Policeman Son [Sharon Hollingsworth]

Recently I was doing some Kelly Gang research along a certain avenue at the Trove historical newspapers site and turned a "cyber corner" (or turned a "virtual page"?) and ran right into Mrs. Ann Jones's policeman son!

If you will remember, for the "Kelly Gang From Within" series in the Sydney Sun (published in 1911) B.W. Cookson conducted interviews in 1910 and one of those whom he interviewed was Mrs. Ann Jones of the Glenrowan Inn. In the interview she stated that:

"I have four children living. My son Owen is in West Australia; Terry is a policeman in the West; Headington is a farmer over there; and Tom is a schoolmaster somewhere in New South Wales."

In Justin Corfield's "Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia" the Ann Jones entry states that she had 14 children and listed eight of them saying at the end of the list that there were "six others."

Amongst those names in Corfield I noted that "Terry" was not listed (nor any variation thereof).  Maybe he was one of the other six? Or maybe, just maybe, Cookson misunderstood her and instead of Terry, thought she said another name? Or maybe someone down the line transcribed his notes wrong or perhaps it was typeset wrong?  Remember that Mrs. Jones was very sick at the time of Cookson's interview and prone to coughing fits (and she died not long afterward). Maybe she was hard to understand at times?

Bear with me as I lay out evidence that perhaps Mrs. Jones's policeman son, instead of being Terry Jones, was maybe one of those actually listed in Corfield.

Ann had a son named Jeremiah who was born in 1874 (according to Corfield). He was one of four of her young sons who were locked in the Inn by Ned Kelly while the rails were being lifted prior to the siege of Glenrowan.

From the Sunday Times (Perth)  May 9, 1937

..it is of interest to know that one of the first to see Ned in his armor was the late Police Sergeant Jerry Jones of Merredin. When a toddler J.J.'s mother was the proprietress of the famous Glenrowan Arms, the hotel around which the battle between the police and the bushrangers raged and from which the widowed Mrs. Jones and her small family and a lot of non-combatants emerged under a flag of truce. But. in spite of that truce, the five-year-old son of Mrs. Jones, a brother to Jerry, was shot dead by a stray bullet fired from no one could exactly tell where. Jerry himself well recalled that before the police train came along to be stopped by by school-master Curnow waving a lamp with a red handkerchief around it, the gang - Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, and Joe Byrne - drank deep and heartily at Mrs. Jones' bar, played hop, step and a jump; rope quoits; and at the order of Ned, who came there several times and went away to put on his armor, paid up for the drinks to a penny.


[Ok, there are a few errors in the account, such as the hotel is called the Glenrowan Inn, not the Glenrowan Arms..Mrs. Jones was not a widow at the time...and the young man killed was 13, not 5...also, didn't Curnow himself say that he used a candle not a lamp? But we digress...]


Looking in other news articles I found information about Constable Jerry Jones of Perth doing his duty around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. I am not exactly sure what year he began his career (he was listed on the page of officers at the WA Police Historical Society website who began their career pre-1898. 1898 being the year that numbers were begun to be assigned to police), but it seems that he did indeed die with his boots on!

July 6, 1932

Sgt. Jones, officer-in-charge at the Merredin police station died suddenly from heart failure on the morning of June 29. He was 58 years of age and had been in charge of the station three years.

Dying in 1932 and being 58 years old fits in with the birth date of 1874 for Jeremiah Jones.

Another paper dated July 24, 1932 had this:

The death of Police-Sergeant "Jerry" Jones, of Merredin, removes another link from the story of the capture of the Kelly Gang In June, 1880. The mother of the late JJ was Mrs. Jones, the landlady of the hotel at Glenrowan, where the final battle took place, and where Ned Kelly, the only one of the gang alive, was taken prisoner. The late Sergeant Jones was probably among the remaining few to have seen Ned Kelly.


The website for the WA Police Historical Society has a grave listing for policeman Jeremiah John Jones in Merredin Cemetery.

I looked under the officers lists there and there was a T. E. Jones who joined long before Jeremiah, but how likely would it be that he was named Terry and was the son of Ann Jones in light of the fact that Jeremiah/Jerry was known to others as being the one in question and had been quoted recalling the siege? It is unlikely that so many would have been mislead and also the real one or his relations would have written to the papers protesting!

 I looked all over the net and in all the Kelly books I have and modern day articles up to this point that I have access to and no one else has publicly come up with the "Jerry is Terry" theory. Am I correct in this?
 If so, it would seem that just one letter of the alphabet sometimes makes all the difference in the world to researchers!

As an aside, I feel utterly compelled to mention about Ned Kelly's half-brother Jack King (who went by the Kelly name) who was a policeman out in WA from March 1906 until April 1908. If I did not bring it up I am sure someone else would surely have reminded me of the omission!

We can only wonder if Jack and Jerry ever crossed paths!