Douglas Morrissey Thesis, Chapter 5, Part 2 [Brian Stevenson]

It's been a while, folks. First and foremost I want to thank my co-blogger Sharon for her forbearance during the long period I did not contribute. She is a great co-blogger, but more than that she is a terrific friend and is extremely understanding when someone finds themselves unable to blog for ... well, quite a long time. Thanks to all, especially Sharon, for waiting.

My post this time is a follow on from one I did a long time ago, another condensation of a section of Douglas Morrissey's excellent unpublished thesis, 'Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves: A Social History of Kelly Country.' Morrissey covers the social milieu of the Kelly Country in the time preceding, during, and immediately following the outbreak.

Morrissey's main theme is not necessarily a popular one, but he has done his homework. He researched whatever primary sources he could find on the area to build up a profile of the social conditions and environment of the district that the Kellys knew. His conclusion was that the Kellys and their sympathisers were atypical of the region, most of whom were quiet and law abiding citizens who preferred to go about their business rather than complain about police oppression, something which tended to be experienced only by those who had in the past given the police reason for concern.

Morrissey's Chapter 5 is entitled Social Order and Authority. It's a long chapter, fifty pages or so. I have not attempted to summarise the whole chapter, but rather to look at some of the things Morrissey has covered, particularly with regard to the Kellys.

Most of the people in the districts covered by Morrissey were Protestant, with Catholics comprising approximately one third of the population. The areas less suitable for agriculture were hilly and stony, and these were the areas where the Catholics tended to live. The Kellys were atypical of these farmers, raising livestock rather than crops. There was not really a significant difference between the defaulting rate of Catholics and Protestants, but the Catholics were more likely to be behind in the rent.

Many of the Protestants were temperance advocates. Morrissey cites the case of one publican refusing to sell Jim Kelly and Wild Wright a pannikin of spirits, saying that he did not sell liquor to travellers as 'the Lord has shown me a better way.'

Interestingly, the Salvation Army had a minor presence in the region and in the summer of 1886 they called on Mrs Ellen Kelly at Greta. The visitors gave Mrs Kelly some issues of their periodical, the War Cry and she promised that she would read them. 'Before we left she knelt down with us and prayed', according to the War Cry  for 27 November 1886.

Methodist wowserism coexisted with a rollicking Irish and Catholic 'pub culture' though of course some Protestant families did not mind participating in or imbibing that which said culture had to offer. But the role of the pub was changing and by the late 1870s the realities of farm economics meant that the pub declined in its role as a community meeting place. People were simply too busy working or too broke to buy liquor on a regular basis. Around this time, many young men, the Kellys and their associates included, went to New South Wales at certain times of the year to shear. Morrissey might have been unaware of this, when he stated:
 

'There was, of course, a residue of hard drinking labourers, bush larrikins, petty criminals and horse and cattle thieves who spent most of their time and a great deal of their money loafing, brawling and drinking in the region's pubs. With a few exceptions, the Kellys and their friends belonged to this free wheeling criminal fraternity who regularly indulged in flash and riotous living.'
 

Mixed marriages were tolerated in a community where many Catholics and Protestants lived in close proximity. Ellen Kelly and her daughter Maggie, for example, married Protestants. Illegitimacy was rife as well. Ellen Kelly and at least two of her daughters, Maggie and Annie, had illegitimate children. Illegitimacy was not confined to the 'lower' classes either. The widely respected William Maginness (spelled McInnis by Ned in the Jerilderie Letter), the miller and magistrate who famously put the handcuffs on Ned Kelly after the celebrated brawl in the Benalla bootmakers, was pursued in the courts by a servant girl, Margaret Moloney, and forced to pay child support. Morrissey mentions the apparent 'flexible moral ambience' of the Kelly household, noting that Jane Graham, a 'loose woman' of the district lived for a while in the Kelly home and seems to have been on intimate terms with Ned's uncle, the perennial reprobate Jimmy Quinn. But the police never accused the Kelly women of prostitution.

Max Brown, iconic Kelly author and perhaps second only to Ian Jones in this regard, emphasised in Australian son the relationship between respectability and the rich and powerful, implying that the higher the class the more higher the moral ground was inhabited. But the moral 'looseness' undoubtedly shown in so many of the Kellys, their relatives and their associates in so many different ways was at variance with the typical selector. Most selectors were hardworking people of good character who were closely identified with traditional values. The conflict between squatter and selector for control of the land had been decided in favour of the selector a decade before the Kelly Outbreak and the selectors, content to live in in relative harmony with their wealthy neighbours, were more interested in traditional values and the pursuit of traditional goals. Even Ned, in the Jerilderie letter, demonstrated his regard for traditional values.

On this last point, Morrissey states that in the Letter Ned:
 
makes clear his acceptance of traditional values. The opportunity to acquire and farm a selection of land, the care of widows and orphans, the acceptance of the notion of what constituted 'a fair fight' and the view that the rich and powerful should not oppress the poor were among the more obvious beliefs drawn from traditional sources and accepted by Ned and his friends.

Even the 'rowdy and unruly' behaviour of the Ellen Kelly and her associates was atypical of the time and place and 'simply cannot be accepted as representative of selector women in general.' From time to time, Ellen and her mates rode furiously about the district, drank and engaged in socially unacceptable behaviour that most selector women would have shunned. As Morrissey wryly remarks:
 
It is difficult to imagine the wives and daughters of Greta's Primitive Methodist selectors or the womenfolk of the district's respectable Catholic farmers engaged in similar activities as the Kelly women. Traditional values, social convention and no doubt the women's selector husbands and fathers would have intervened and nipped such 'unwomanly' behaviour in the bud.

Finally, Morrissey has a brief comment on the police in the district. He admits that Flood and Fitzpatrick bore a lax moral character. To this list I would add the brutal Hall and the oleaginous and serpentine Ward, and, with some qualifications, the self-righteous zealot Steele, but none of the three victims at Stringybark Creek could be placed in the same category. Lonigan's 'dirty grip', if it occurred at all, needs to be weighed up against other aspects of Lonigan: the dedicated family man who thought enough about religion to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism a short time before his death. Kennedy, also a family man, had one of the most exemplary records in the force, and the bachelor Scanlon was highly regarded.

According to Morrissey, most off duty policemen spent their time playing football and cricket and writing letters to their family rather than frequenting pubs and brothels. (My own thought: the low wages may well have had something to do with this!) The Benalla police even organised themselves into a singular association that they called The Benalla Police Temperance and Harmonic Society, in which, according to the unpublished reminiscences of one Constable Maguire:  Off duty policemen nightly applauded the comic antics of their comrades as they performed popular plays, sang songs, recited lengthy poems and even delivered lectures.

So there we have it, folks. A society where traditional values predominated and where selectors much preferred to live harmoniously with squatters (or at least to the extent of not helping themselves to their livestock.) A society where most women were quiet and law-abiding, unlike the chief maternal influence on Ned's life. A society where most police were decent enough fellows.

A society nothing like the one that Ned Kelly claimed had a down on him.

Such is life.


[Note that this is the 5th installment of an ongoing series. Chapter 5 part 1 can be found at http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2011/06/douglas-morrissey-thesis-chapter-5-part.html
 The series begins at  http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2010/11/douglas-morrisseys-unpublished-thesis.html  and you can follow the links in each post to read all the installments in proper order. Stay tuned for future postings in this series.]