Joe Byrne

**Joseph Byrne** also known as **Joe Byrne** (November 1856 - June 28 1880) was an Australian bushranger. He is known as the lieutenant of the Kelly Gang. He was shot dead in the siege of Glenrowan. Joe Byrne was a very good shot, a good horseman and skilled at living in the bush. This made it difficult for the police to capture him. His skill at writing helped him to write the items that were important in starting the Kelly legend. He wrote the famous Jerilderie letter. There is also a legend that Ned Kelly, with Byrne's help, was going to start an independent republic in north east Victoria. The siege at Glenrowan was the first step.

## Early life
Joe was born at Woolshed, near Beechworth, in November 1856. His father, Patrick Byrne, had come from County Carlow, Ireland, in 1849, to join his father, Joseph, who had come to Australia as a convict in 1834. Joe's mother was an Irish lady from Galway. The family moved to Sebastopol, a small gold mining town, about two kilometres farther up the valley. Joe learned to speak Chinese from the Chinese miners who lived in a small camp near his house. He was educated at a small Roman Catholic school at Woolshed. which wanted an independent republic in north east Victoria. The money from both the Euroa and Jerilderie robberies was given to the gang's family, friends and supporters.

After the Jerilderie robbery, the gang went into hiding for 16 months. This increased their reputation and  the government of Victoria and the police. The Victorian Government increased the reward for the Kelly Gang to £8,000 (about AU$2,000,000 in 2005).

## Siege of Glenrowan
Byrne and Kelly planned another bank robbery in Benalla in 1880. They thought Aaron Sherritt was being used by police to get information about them. Byrne had told Sherritt to tell the police that the gang was planning a robbery in the Goulburn River while they were really planning the Jerilderie robbery. Kelly and Byrne believed that Sherritt could no longer be trusted. They also knew he was being protected by the police. Byrne and Dan Kelly murdered Sherritt on 26 June, 1880. Ned Kelly believed that this would bring a large group of police to Beechworth to search for the killers.

The next day, the Kelly Gang took over the town of Glenrowan. They tore up the railway tracks because they knew the police would travel by train to Beechworth. They held over 60 people hostage in Jones' Hotel. Thomas Curnow, the local school teacher, escaped and stopped the police train before it could crash on the missing track. The police were able to  the hotel.

Joe Byrne helped design the armour worn by all members of the gang at Glenrowan. This did not stop him from being shot in the groin cutting his femoral artery. He was in the middle of a speech about the gang when he was shot. He died quickly from loss of blood on 28 June 1880. The police set fire to the hotel, but they dragged his body out of the hotel before it burned down. The bodies of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were not brought out of the hotel, and were severely burned.

The next day his body was hung on the door of the police cells at Benalla, and photographed by newspaper reporters. It was only removed after a young woman begged the police to let Byrne rest in peace. His family did not take his body and the police would not give it to anyone else, they thought a funeral would become a starting point for a rebellion. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the edge of the Benalla cemetery.

Ned Kelly was captured and tried in Melbourne. Ned Kelly was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880. There is a legend that Kelly and Byrne had written a Declaration for the Republic of north-east Victoria which was destroyed by the Victorian Government.

## Byrne and the Kelly legend
By writing the letters and the bush ballads, and designing the armour, Joe Byrne and Ned Kelly helped make the Kelly legend. In the following 125 years, the legend has grown. There have been a number of movies made about the Kelly Gang including *The Story of the Kelly Gang* in 1906, the world's first feature-length movie. In 2003, Orlando Bloom played the part of Joe Byrne in Gregor Jordan's movie, *Ned Kelly*.

Australian novelist Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for  the *True History of the Kelly Gang*. This was based on the Jerilderie letter written by Byrne.

Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang has been made famous by Sidney Nolan wearing the armour designed by Joe Byrne in a famous set of paintings. This was used as a scene at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

## Other websites
* Joe Byrne: Lieutenant of the Kelly Gang page
* Glenrowan 1880 Joe Byrne page 
*Photographs of Joe Byrne 

## References