page_title: Ned Kelly
section_title: Aftermath and lessons
hierarchical_section_title: Ned Kelly / Aftermath and lessons
caption_attribution_description: Scene from the Royal Commission into police conduct during the 'Kelly Outbreak'.
context_page_description: Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police murderer. One of the last bushrangers, and by far the most famous, he is best known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
  Kelly was born in the then-British colony of Victoria as the third of eight children to Irish parents. His father, a transported convict, died shortly after serving a six-month prison sentence, leaving Kelly, then aged 12, as the eldest male of the household. The Kellys were a poor selector family who saw themselves as downtrodden by the Squattocracy and as victims of persecution by the Victoria Police. While a teenager, Kelly was arrested for associating with bushranger Harry Power, and served two prison terms for a variety of offences, the longest stretch being from 1871 to 1874 on a conviction of receiving a stolen horse. He later joined the "Greta mob", a group of bush larrikins known for stock theft. A violent confrontation with a policeman occurred at the Kelly family's home in 1878, and Kelly was indicted for his attempted murder.
context_section_description: In March 1881, the Victorian Government approved a Royal Commission into the conduct of the Victoria Police during the Kelly Outbreak. Over the next six months, the Commission, chaired by Francis Longmore, held 66 meetings, examined 62 witnesses, and visited towns throughout "Kelly Country". While its report found that the police had acted properly in relation to the criminality of the Kellys, it exposed widespread corruption and shattered a number of police careers in addition to that of Chief Commissioner Frederick Standish. Numerous other officers, including senior staff, were reprimanded, demoted or suspended. It concluded with a list of 36 recommendations for reform. Kelly hoped that his death would lead to an investigation into police conduct, and although the report did not exonerate him or his gang, its findings were said to strip the authorities "of what scanty rags of reputation the Kellys had left them."
  The £8,000 reward money was divided among various claimants with £6,000 going to members of the Victoria Police, Superintendent Hare receiving the lion's share of £800. Curnow complained about his payout of £550, and the following year it was upgraded to £1,000. Seven Aboriginal trackers involved in the siege were each awarded £50, but their money was given to the Victorian and Queensland governments for safekeeping, the Reward Board's argument being, "It would not be desirable to place any considerable sum of money in the hands of persons unable to uses it."
  Writers such as Boxhall (The Story of Australian Bushrangers, 1899) and Henry Giles Turner (History of the Colony of Victoria, 1904) describe the Kelly Outbreak as simply a spate of criminality. Two of those involved, Superintendents Hare and Sadleir, and later, in the late 20th century, Penzig (1988) wrote legitimising narratives about law and order and moral justification.
  Others, commencing with Kenneally (1929), McQuilton (1979) and Jones (1995), perceived the Kelly Outbreak and the problems of Victoria's Land Selection Acts post-1860s as interlinked. McQuilton identified Kelly as the "social bandit" who was caught up in unresolved social contradictions—that is, the selector–squatter conflicts over land—and that Kelly gave the selectors the leadership they lacked. O'Brien (1999) identified a leaderless rural malaise in Northeastern Victoria as early as 1872–73, around land, policing and the Impounding Act. 
  Though the Kelly Gang was destroyed in 1880, for almost seven years a serious threat of a second outbreak existed because of major problems around land settlement and selection.
  McQuilton suggested that two police officers involved in the pursuit of the Kelly Gang – John Sadleir, author of Recollections of a Victorian Police Officer, and Inspector W.B. Montford – averted the Second Outbreak by coming to understand that the unresolved social contradiction in Northeastern Victoria was about land, not crime, and by their good work in aiding small selectors. This scenario was disputed by Dr Doug Morrissey in his book Ned Kelly, Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves. (2018)
  Kelly's mother outlived him by several decades and died, aged 95, on 27 March 1923.
caption: The Royal Commission into police conduct during the Kelly Outbreak resulted in many force members being censured, reprimanded, demoted, suspended or dismissed.
exif: {}