HISTORY OF THE MURDERERS KELLY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume 6, Issue 597, 11 January 1879, Page 2

HISTORY OF THE MURDERERS KELLY.

Edward Kelly, the ringleader of the gang of bushrangers who murdered the three constables at Mansfield, Victoria, on October 25th, belongs to a family of Kelly who have for ten or twelve years haunted the Greta Ranges, and been notorious as horse and cattle stealers. He is twenty four years of age, and his brother Daniel is eighteen. There is another brother named James Kelly, aged twenty years, who is at present m the Wagga Wagga gaol, serving a sentence for horse stealing These brothers are the sons of an old cattle stealer known by the name of Red Kelly. They formely lived at Wallan Wallan, and afterwards at Avenel, near Seymour. They were always looked upon by their neighbors m thds'e localties as very suspicious characters. The boys were trained up by their father as young brigands, and they followed the career of crime for which their early training had prepared them. After his death, which took place at Avenel, the Kelly family, consisting of three sons and two daughters, one having died, left Avenel, and went to the King River district, where they joined two other branches of the family, the Quinns and the Lloyds. They seem to have led a low and degraded life, and were at various times suspected of crimes, which, however, could not be brought home to them by the police. They kept to themselves among the hills, and were seldom seen m town. They avoided the plains and the thickly-settled parts preferring to stick to the hills, away from the sight of the policemen so that they could have ample opportunities of making a descent on the flat . country now and again, and carrying off horses, sheep, and cattle to hide them m the mountains for a time, deface the brands, and then drive them off to some distant market. The number of the actual convictions which stand on record against the Kellys and Quinns is not so large as one might expect from people of notorious antecedents and surroundings ; but the police had the utmost difficulty m getting at them. They knew too well how to steal cattle and horses, and where to conceal them till further search was considered hopeless. They knew how to deface brands and substitute new ones so as to destroy all identity. Hundreds of cattle and horses have been stolen from Wangaratta and the Oxley Plains, and never been heard of any more. It was not until 1871 that Edward Kelly fell into the hands of the Police, and he was then sentenced to three years m Pentridge,. on a charge of < horse-stealing. This was the only conviotion recorded against him up to the outrage on Fitzpatrick. Daniel Kelly ;

has served several short terms of imprisonment for minor offences. Once he was charged with illegally using a horse, and got off. On another occasion he was tried at Benalla for a criminal assault on a female, but the charge was withdrawn, though he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for damaging property. He was never what they call "lagged." In April last, however, a warrant was out for his arrest on a charge of horse-stealing, and shortly afterwards Constable Fitzpatrick proceeded to arrest him, when he was shot at by his brother. Respecting the personal characteristics ofthe two brothers it may be said that they are tall and dashing horsemen, capable of any amount of endurance, and animated by one predominant feeling— hatred towards the police, whom they regard as their natural enemies.