Ian
MacFarlane, through the good offices of the Oxford University Press,
has produced an important book, the first overt anti-Kelly monograph to
appear for decades. Meticulously documented, the case against Ned Kelly
and his cohorts is outlined in these pages, an antidote to the countless
publications since 1929 that showed sympathy towards the outlaw.
The
creation of such a book was guaranteed to make the author unpopular,
and it has. He has been slammed on several Kelly websites, with few
voices raised in his defence. This book has been attacked in some
quarters by people who boast – not that anyone should really care - that
they have not read it and never will. Yet the same people admire Ned
Kelly because he allegedly wanted a fair go for all! Such is the quality
of the ‘debate’ and the tolerance of anti-Kelly viewpoints that
prevails on some sites. Such is life, indeed.
Firstly,
a note on methodology. After obtaining a copy of this book, I read it
through quickly to get the broad picture. Then, I read it through very
carefully a second time, making notes and checking reference sources as I
went. My thoughts might not be of value to everyone, but I have done the
author the courtesy of reading the volume. To those who feel compelled
to comment, either with praise or condemnation, with authority on a book
without reading it, I will quote the words of a famous judge and say:
'I will even give you credit for the skill that you assume.'
The author has been castigated for the book’s dependence on police and conservative newspaper sources. But the same level of vituperation is not levelled against pro-Kelly authors such as Ian Jones and Keith McMenomy, whose endnotes bristle with footnoting to the very same sources. It is insulting for lay people whose publishing efforts are meagre or non-existent to accuse MacFarlane of not knowing the limitations of archival sources when he has been working with those very same sources for over twenty years. It is similarly unfair to excoriate one writer for using police and newspaper sources and leave other writers who have done the same thing unscathed.
Here
is some news for some people: not every police department document
created in Victoria between 1869 and 1881 was concocted or doctored to
discredit the Kellys. Have a look at the 1881 Royal Commission
transcripts, readily available in a few places online, and you will see a
government document largely consisting of the verbatim words of police,
but aimed in half a dozen different and disparate directions at
discrediting members of the police department. A key source, yes, but
not a pro-police one, surely.
Here is some more news: yes, the establishment newspapers (there were no other kind in 1878) were anti-Kelly. The Bulletin,
not a newspaper but a somewhat anti-establishment weekly started in
January 1880. While Kelly was alive they loathed him too. But it was not
all one sided. As Ian Jones notes, the press were critical of the
police as well. Some of the more liberal newspapers, while they never
condoned the murder of police, were even capable of giving the Kellys a
limited 'go' on occasion (see pages 152-154, 156-7 of A short life, 2003 edition.) After Euroa, the Age and, yes, even the ultra-conservative Argus,
‘reported, accurately enough, the glowing opinions [of the Euroa
citizenry] of the Gang – especially of Ned, with high praise for his
charm, good looks and horsemanship.’ (Jones, The friendship that destroyed Ned Kelly
p 87.) And of course, in the weeks after Glenrowan the press applied
the blowtorch to the police for their reckless endangerment of civilians
during the siege.
Further,
the reportage of individuals such as Allen, McWhirter and Melvin at
Glenrowan have left us with as detailed and interesting a description of
any event in Australian history. We are forever in their debt. Would we
really be without their work? Sure, police sources and newspapers
tended to be weighted against the Kellys, but proficient researchers and
historians realise this and take the subtleties (and the
not-so-subtleties!) of the sources into account. They get on with the
job and make judicious use of them without worrying about the sneers of
those who appear incapable of similar discernment, let alone writing
coherent and balanced sentences based on their research.
This
apart, MacFarlane, like other authors, makes much use of the words of
Ned Kelly himself, both in his celebrated letters and his public
utterances. Or, as the author puts it on page 231 ‘his blathering
long-winded letters and occasional speeches that were filtered by his
listeners and newspaper sub-editors.’
Now to the book!
The Kelly Gang unmasked promises
more than it delivers. While the publisher claims that within its
pages, ‘the mythology created by pro-Kelly writers is critically
explored, unravelled, and often found wanting’, and the author ‘spells
out the case against Ned and his gang’, the end result, while impressive
in some areas, is not a total success. I did learn some things from the
book, however, and was reminded of the historian David McCullough’s
recent comment that if you call yourself an expert on anything, sooner
or later you will run into trouble. I also add that the book has left
me, after nearly fifty years looking that this story, wanting to know
still more. And is that not what all books are supposed to do?
I
will be looking at several aspects of this book in blog posts over the
next few weeks, and the first one I want to cover is MacFarlane’s
treatment of four key police identities who were involved with the Kelly
pursuit, to all of their professional detriment. They are well known to
most people who will be interested in reading this blog: Inspector
Alexander Brooke Smith, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick, Constable
Thomas McIntyre and Constable Michael Ward. MacFarlane has tried to
rehabilitate the reputations of all four, with varying degrees of
success.
He
states that the story that Brooke Smith confronted the Kelly girls with
a threat to blow Ned ‘into pieces as small as the paper that is in our
guns’ into paper is ‘easily disproved’ because the police of the time
were then armed with Webleys that do not use paper cartridges. It
disproves nothing of the sort: even if the threat was anachronistic it
could still easily have been uttered. MacFarlane dispenses with the
subject of Brooke Smith rather expeditiously in a couple of lines on
page 157, leaving out any discussion of his well-documented
procrastination, indecision and reticence-bordering-on-
MacFarlane
is not at all convincing when trying to get Constable Alexander
Fitzpatrick off the hook. The usual litany of official attestations to
Fitzpatrick’s generally poor qualities is recited here, with the
suggestion that his experience at Eleven Mile Creek might have been a
factor: ‘….who can say whether or not Fitzpatrick was traumatised by the
attempt to murder him and whether later events flowed from such trauma?
Any person shot at three times and surrounded by men with firearms
would have found the experience unforgettable.’ Well, yes, but it is a
pity that the shameful treatment of the very young Ned Kelly at the
hands of the brutal Constable Edward Hall, well documented in police
records, did not attract a similar level of compassion from the author.
More than likely Ned felt that his experience was ‘unforgettable’ too,
and it was certainly not one to endear members of the Victorian police
force to him. Inconsistently, MacFarlane, while showing compassion of a
sort to the execrable Fitzpatrick, does not even mention Hall’s physical
attack on Ned, which resulted in severe physical trauma and subsequent
incarceration, and was pretty close to attempted murder.
MacFarlane seeks to bolster the case for Fitzpatrick by citing a 'hitherto unpublished document' from police archives which 'seems to support' the trooper's story. Fitzpatrick applied on 24 May 1878 for a new police jumper to replace the one damaged in the affray of 15 April and being held as evidence. MacFarlane reproduces his plaintive letter to the officer in charge at Beechworth. In his local paper, the Melton Weekly on 5 November 2012 he referred to the document as 'new evidence' but it is nothing of the sort. Ian Jones reproduced it in full in the 2003 edition of A short life (page 103, 2003 edition) and it is disappointing to see that this basic source was not consulted a little more carefully.
When
Fitzpatrick was discharged from the force, he was, surprisingly, the
subject of a petition from a hundred prominent citizens from
the Lancefield district, where he was stationed and was said to be
‘zealous, diligent, obliging and universally liked.’ MacFarlane
correctly records this inexplicable incident, which remains the only
bright spot in a pretty sorry police career. Further evidence will have
to emerge – from God knows where – and be utilized to convince me that
Fitzpatrick’s conduct as a policeman could even be deemed satisfactory.
I
have never had anything but pity and regard for Constable Thomas
McIntyre, who despite a terrible and traumatic experience held himself
together for long enough to endure innumerable questionings and to
remain in the police force until his friends were avenged. But before I
read this book, I was less than enamoured with the way in which his
story, particularly with regard to the death of Lonigan apparently
changed. MacFarlane uses examples to show the cautious way in which he
gave his numerous accounts of the Stringybark tragedy, showing, again
with examples, that in almost all respects they were much more
consistent than inconsistent.
The
major ‘inconsistency’ and the most controversial occurred when McIntyre told
Sadleir that Lonigan had been behind a log preparing to fire at Ned when
the trooper received his mortal wound. This was despite his previous
and first account of 27 October 1878 that Lonigan never succeeded in
getting his gun out. He adhered to this version every other time that he
told it for the record, except for the time he told the story to
Sadleir.
According
to Sadleir’s 1913 account, he interviewed McIntyre on 28 October 1878,
two days after the shootings. (Jones, however, implies that this meeting
took place on 29 October on page 386 of A short life, 2003 edition.) But
MacFarlane provides documentation for the movements of both men on 28
October showing that a meeting between the pair on this date was
extremely unlikely. He further suggests that Sadleir made a grievous
error in his reminiscences and used Ned’s account of Lonigan’s death
instead of McIntyre’s.
While
the idea at first seems outrageous, the alternative is to accept that
McIntyre told one version on 27 October, and then, for no apparent
reason, gave Sadleir a second version on 28 (or maybe 29) October that
placed Ned Kelly in a somewhat more favourable light. He then adhered to
the first version every other time he told it. There seems no good
reason for McIntyre to have given Sadleir, his superior officer, a
version different from the one he gave to everyone else. Much more
likely, it is entirely possible that Sadleir, thirty-five years after
the event, simply used the account of the wrong man. I
believe this is far more likely than Ian Jones's suggestion
that Sadleir included this version of Lonigan's death in his 1913
reminiscences as a sop to his conscience and was relieved when no one
noticed.
To
my great surprise, Detective Ward, long regarded as one of the most
odious and oleaginous characters in the Kelly saga, emerges from this
book as the possible victim of some unfounded local scuttlebutt. To
Kelly enthusiasts, Ward is well known as a serial seducer and
impregnator of young country girls. We will never know for sure, and
these oral traditions are pervasive, but the hard evidence is extremely
weak. MacFarlane traces the stories to the original source – the
testimony of that least trustworthy of police informers, James Wallace,
who Standish described as a ‘treacherous pedagogue.’ Wallace gave
evidence regarding Ward’s moral turpitude at the 1881 Royal Commission,
stating that Ward had several illegitimate children. The statement was
recycled by early Kelly supporter, J J Kenneally, in his book on the
Gang, first published in 1929 and reprinted numerous times. Ward was
questioning Wallace at the time Wallace made this declaration which
Kenneally quoted. But Kenneally left out Ward’s subsequent questioning.
Wallace, after repeated interrogation and challenges from Ward said that
he was unable to give the name of one person who could substantiate the
rumours. Whatever Ward was guilty of, the source of the rumours was
unable or unwilling to provide substantiation, even though – or,
perhaps, because he was – under oath. It is also interesting, albeit in
the category of circumstantial evidence that the twice-married Ward
never had any legitimate children. It is entirely possible that the
rumours that he fathered illegitimate ones were, as MacFarlane terms
them, ‘wicked lies.’
As
I said at the onset of this review, this is an important book for Kelly
Gang followers no matter what their take on the episode is. I will be
examining MacFarlane's thoughts on the rumoured 'republic' in a further
post on this blog.
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Part 2 of this 3 part review has now been added at
http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2013/02/part-2-review-of-ian-macfarlanes-kelly.html
Note: As a reminder, this review was written by my
co-blogger Brian Stevenson. It merely says "posted by Sharon
Hollingsworth" because I loaded it for him as he has been having
technical trouble on the site. Just wanted to head off any possible confusion.
