• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Institute of Australian Culture

Heritage, history, and heroes; literature, legends, and larrikins

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Ephemera
  • Poetry & songs
    • Recommended poetry
    • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
    • Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
    • Rock music and pop music [videos]
    • Early music [videos]
  • Slang
  • Timeline
    • Timeline of Australian history and culture
    • Calendar of Australian history and culture
    • Significant events and commemorative dates
  • Topics

Foreword by Gerald C. Stanley, J.P. [The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally]

1 August 2015 · Leave a Comment

[Editor: This foreword, by Gerald C. Stanley, is from The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers (5th edition, 1946) by J. J. Kenneally.]

Foreword

By Gerald C. Stanley, J.P.

For fifty years the Australian public has waited for an impartial record of the Kelly Gang and its exploits. This is given for the first time in “The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers.” Almost all the books written on the Kelly Gang have borne the impress of crass prejudice and gross libels on the Kellys and their relatives.

Mr. Kenneally has not entered the field as a partisan. He merely records facts — facts almost entirely taken from police sources — facts attested by police officers on oath. This is the source from which Mr. Kenneally draws his most damning indictment against the police of the day, and the source, too, from which he draws evidence that the Kellys, prior to the fight in the Wombat Ranges, were harried and harassed by the police, until they could no longer feel that they were, to use the words of a highly-placed police official, “being treated with equal justice.” Then, too, we have to consider the unfortunate indiscretion of the learned Judge Barry in his vicious promise to give Ned Kelly fifteen years for an alleged crime for which Kelly had not then even been apprehended. This flagrant and incomprehensible outrage on all decent conceptions of justice remains, in the final analysis, not merely a classic example of judicial barbarity, but the originating cause of the Kelly outbreak. Ned Kelly decided to fight rather than surrender to fifteen years’ gaol for a crime for which he was already “convicted” by a judge, although he had not then been arrested nor had he been tried.

In all previously published accounts of the Kellys’ exploits they are grotesquely represented as brutal criminals, whose blood lust could be sated only by an almost daily murder; whereas, in actuality, they differed very little from other young men of their day, and their conduct was the very antithesis of bloodthirsty. Subject to continual police persecution, blamed for every petty crime committed in the district, their mother thrown into gaol for an alleged assault on a police officer subsequently dismissed from the service for misconduct, it is small wonder that these high-spirited youths, nursing a fierce resentment of the injustice they had suffered, should, mistaken as they may have been, as a last resource gave battle to their persecutors.

Whilst they were prepared to engage the police and their agents in open warfare, they were determined not to sully their names with any crime against their civilian neighbours. During their long career as bushrangers, apart from their open enemies, they offered violence to no man and insult to no woman. The Kellys’ conduct contrasts very favourably in this regard with the outrageous behaviour of Sergeant Steele at Glenrowan, when he fired upon a fleeing mother with a baby in her arms. The Kellys were merely in revolt against persecution, not against Society as reflected by the laws of the State.

As Peter Lalor and his diggers found it necessary to give armed resistance to police tyranny in Ballarat, so Ned Kelly and his followers found themselves faced with a similar alternative. For his part in shooting down the armed forces of tyranny at Ballarat Peter Lalor was soon after acclaimed the popular hero of his day. For a somewhat similar resistance to persecution Ned Kelly was hanged, but, now that time has dispelled the mists of prejudice from the scenes of the Kellys’ activities, their names are coming to be held in far higher respect than those of their official persecutors.

By his long residence in the Kelly country, and by his personal knowledge of the friends and enemies of the bushrangers alike, Mr. Kenneally is peculiarly fitted for the work he has undertaken. In a brief time the last of the actors in this great drama will have passed to their final rest, and it is fortunate that their valuable collaboration should have been utilised by Mr. Kenneally in the production of his history, which must in the future be regarded as the most authoritative work on these remarkable Australian bushrangers.

GERALD C. STANLEY, J.P.



Source:
J. J. Kenneally, The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, Melbourne: J. Roy Stevens, 5th edition, 1946 [first published 1929], pages 6-8

Filed Under: prefaces, dedications, introductions, miscellaneous sections Tagged With: Gerald C. Stanley, Kelly Gang, Ned Kelly (1854-1880) (subject), SourceIACLibrary, The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang (J. J. Kenneally 1946), year1946

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Australian flag, Kangaroo, Wattle, 100hThe Institute of Australian Culture
Heritage, history, and heroes. Literature, legends, and larrikins. Stories, songs, and sages.

Search this site

Featured books

The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, by Banjo Paterson A Book for Kids, by C. J. Dennis  The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from The Bulletin The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen The Australian Crisis, by C. H. Kirmess Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy
More books (full text)

Featured lists

Timeline of Australian history and culture
A list of significant Australiana
Significant events and commemorative dates
Australian slang
Books (full text)
Australian literature
Rock music and pop music (videos)
Folk music and bush music (videos)
Early music (videos)
Recommended poetry
Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
Australian explorers
Topics
Links

Featured posts

Advance Australia Fair: How the song became the Australian national anthem
Brian Cadd [music videos and biography]
Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger
Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]

Some Australian authors

E. J. Brady
John Le Gay Brereton
C. J. Dennis
Mary Hannay Foott
Joseph Furphy
Mary Gilmore
Charles Harpur
Grant Hervey
Lucy Everett Homfray
Rex Ingamells
Henry Kendall
“Kookaburra”
Henry Lawson
Jack Moses
“Dryblower” Murphy
John Shaw Neilson
John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)
“Banjo” Paterson
Marie E. J. Pitt
A. G. Stephens
P. R. Stephensen
Agnes L. Storrie (Agnes L. Kettlewell)

Recent Posts

  • [The new stamps] [re the new Tasmanian postage stamps, 2 January 1900]
  • The Leading Lady [poem by “Stargazer”, 31 January 1917]
  • The Naval Contingent: With the Australians in China [17 October 1900]
  • Australia Day [26 January 1953]
  • Australia Day [24 January 1953]

Top Posts & Pages

  • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Australian slang
  • The Man from Snowy River [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
  • Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]

Archives

Categories

Posts of note

The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
Click Go the Shears [traditional Australian song, 1890s]
Core of My Heart [“My Country”, poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 24 October 1908]
Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]
Nationality [poem by Mary Gilmore, 12 May 1942]
The Newcastle song [music video, sung by Bob Hudson]
No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
Shooting the moon [short story by Henry Lawson]

Recent Comments

  • rob buntine on No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
  • Carol on Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Annie Crestani on Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]
  • Peter Pearsall on The Clarence [poem by Jack Moses]
  • Trevor Hurst on Timeline of Australian history and culture

For Australia

Copyright © 2023 · Log in