Dubious Kelly Relics: Thomas Curnow's Signal Lamp and Ned Kelly's Quill Pen [Sharon Hollingsworth]

(Updated April 8)

There have been many dubious Kelly Gang relics floating around through the years but I have just read about some I had not heard of before.

It seems that Western Australia was rife with relics of the siege as concerns Glenrowan schoolmaster Thomas Curnow and railway guard Frank Bell.

From the Sunday Times of Aug. 31, 1919

"A relic of the Kelly Gang is in Perth in the possession of Actor-Manager Ted Cole. It was given him by Guard Bell in charge of the train the Kellys planned to capsize. The said souvenir is a large red pocket handkerchief used by Schoolmaster Curnow over an ordinary candle lamp to stop the police special."

The article went on to relate how Curnow got a hold of a lamp and covered it with a red handkerchief to stop the train. (Don't worry, I am going to be debunking all this in a second!)

Then we read again in the paper (18 years later) where railway guard (Frank) Bell had passed down a relic to his son, also named Frank Bell who sent a photo of it to his son, also named Frank Bell (!?). What was it? Glad you asked! It was the actual "lamp" used by Curnow to stop the train!

From that same article in the Sunday Times of Oct. 3, 1937,  it spoke of train guard Bell:

"..whose quick eye it was that sighted the red handkerchief covered lamp waved by schoolmaster Curnow at Glenrowan and so stopped the train containing about 100 police troopers and their horses.....the historic lamp was souvenired by Bell during the subsequent Battle of Glenrowan."
 

Then, there was yet another article concerning Curnow...

From the Sunday Times of Aug. 10, 1947 in an article called "W.A. Man's Relic of Kelly Gang's Last Stand" it tells of a 77 yr old man whose family knew Curnow post-Glenrowan. Curnow gave the family a piece of the scarf he used to stop the train which this man still had in his possession. However, this gentleman relates what Curnow told him and his family and much of it was oh-so-wrong or maybe just mis-remembered? Stuff like how Curnow was riding to get a doctor when he saw Dan and Steve forcing railway workers to pull up the line and how he pleaded to be let go and they allowed him to proceed and he then went down the line where he heard the train coming and took off his own scarf and wrapped it around a signal lamp.

Ok, let's break this all down. Even though there was an illustration for contemporary newspapers (as well as reports) of Curnow using a lantern to stop the train, he himself testified that:

"I quietly prepared everything, including the red llama scarf, candle and matches..."

[later after hearing the train coming]

"I immediately caught up the candle, scarf, and matches and ran down the line to meet the train. I ran on until I got to where I could see straight before me some distance along the line, and where those in the train would be able to see the danger signal. I then lit the candle and held it behind the red scarf."

BAM! There it is!!!

If you think about it, it made more sense from a security standpoint to have a candle possibly stuck down in his pocket or carried close to his body while in transit down the railway line rather than running the risk of being caught out carrying even an unlit lamp/lantern by a member of the gang or one of their sympathisers. That (to mix metaphors) would have rung an alarm bell, the gig would have been up, and the hammer would have dropped!

In "Last of the Bushrangers" Superintendent Francis Hare related that:


"It afterwards turned out the man was Mr. Curnow, the local schoolmaster, who, having no lamp by which to stop the train, got a red scarf and held a candle behind it when he heard the train approaching, but, having left his wife alone, he hurried back for fear some of the gang might see him. After the guard of the pilot had related this story to me...."

So we see that there was no lantern or lamp nor red handkerchief. Perhaps the chap with the bit of scarf does (or rather did) have a true relic despite his error filled narrative? Concerning the earlier narrative, there were not 100 police troopers on the special train, there were around a couple dozen people in total on the train including police, black trackers, newspapermen, O'Connor's wife and her sister, plus a civilian volunteer.


Ok, let's pick apart the earlier bit with the W.A. man with the relic. Steve Hart was with the railway workers for the lifting of the rails, Dan was not. Curnow was not on the way to get a doctor in the middle of the night when he met the Kellys. He met them later on in the day while out buggy riding with his family. The doctor part might have come from where Curnow testified about how he wanted to get his wife, baby and sister to safety at his mother-in-law's place after Ned let them leave the Inn but he was worried about the gang checking up on them at his home so he left a note saying his sister was ill and they went for medicine (however his wife was restless and upset so they went back to the house..this was before the stopping of the train). He did not use his own scarf, he used his sister's and we know it was not a signal lamp, it was a candle!

 How can they get so much so wrong in these reminiscences?

Talking about getting stuff wrong, read on to the second instance of somewhat dubious relics I am relating here. For that we go back to Victoria.


There was this in the Barrier Miner, July 29, 1924

NED KELLY'S PEN FOUND. 
 
"Workmen engaged in dismantling the interior of the Melbourne Gaol yesterday found enclosed in an envelope a quill pen used by Ned Kelly, the outlaw, before his execution in 1880. On the envelope were the words, "Ned Kelly's pen." The initials of Mr. J. B. Castieau, who was the governor of the gaol at the time, were also on the envelope."

Ok, this is a long shot but is a possibility. But as I note below, Ned was unable to write anything other than signing an X due to his damaged arm, so why would he have a pen?

Then a dozen years later there was another mention of Ned's quill pen in the papers.

 In the Sunday Times of May 2, 1937 there was an article entitled Ned Kelly's Quill Pen. In the article it related about publicans, Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon, of a Melbourne tavern who had been offered a relic for sale by Jerry the builder and his brother which was "the pen Ned Kelly wrote his last letter on earth with."

When asked whom Ned wrote to with it the reply was

 "Why, to his sainted mother, it was his last message to her who loved him. And everybody knows where he got the ink..."

He went on to say:

 "I got the story from an old ex-warden of the gaol. He had part charge of Ned and worked in the quill-pen to help him in sending out a message to his poor lonely widowed mother-away up in the country where Ned was captured."...."Well, then," he continued, handling the relic reverently as if it were a fragment from sacred Jerusalem, or a chip from Caesar's tomb, 'Ned tore a linen pocket from his prison jacket to act as note paper, opened a small vein in his arm and used the blood to write a short message to his mother. That's his own life-blood you see on the quill....."I got to know the son of a long ago prisoner who cleaned the cell out after Ned's execution. He told me how his dad had found the quill-pen in the cell where it had been laid down after the condemned man had written his message. He never thought it of any value till I accidentally heard of it and bought it from him for a mere trifle...."

The tavern owners, convinced it was the real deal, purchased it off him.

Then to everyone's consternation:

"A week later half a dozen elderly Hibernian ladies, excited and fuming, alighted from a Fitzroy tram at the corner nearest to what is left of the old Melbourne Gaol. Each had a Ned Kelly quill-pen, all old and crusted with the bushranger's blood."


These ladies along with a local parish priest traced the seller's lodgings and come to find out he had absconded. The landlady told them that:


"About a fortnight ago, Jerry and his brother had brought home from the Melbourne market a live goose..."

You can guess the rest of the story! The goose was cooked (as were the geese of the gullible buyers!) and the feathers were stripped, and the quills, well, you know what became of those!

Quite a silly tale that should never have been if they knew their Kelly story. Ned was unable to write at all while in gaol, only being able to sign an X due to his injured arm and his mother was in the same gaol with him at the time not up in the Kelly country where he was captured!

In closing, there was this bit re the pen from earlier in the newspaper article that I saved till last:


"It's a wonder the police let him have anything at all," said Mrs. Muldoon, whose opinion of the Law that hanged poor Ned was not of a very complimentary nature.

"They tried not to...They were afraid poison might be worked in so they had a special watch on him day and night. They couldn't even trust the regular warders."

That last bit there is a good segue to my next blog posting entitled "Ned Kelly and Poison Pen Letters?" Stay tuned for that!