Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan

Ned Kelly, a bushranger in colonial Australia, was captured at Glenrowan wearing a suit of homemade armor. He was hanged later that year in Melbourne.

Context

The Kelly Gang became outlaws after the Stringybark Creek killings of three police officers in October 1878. They later robbed banks at Euroa and Jerilderie, and many rural Victorians sympathised with them because of long-running disputes over land and police conduct.

In June 1880 the gang held hostages at the Glenrowan inn and planned to derail a police train. The plan failed when a hostage warned the police. During the siege on 28 June, Kelly emerged at dawn in armour made from plough mouldboards, and police shot him in the unprotected legs.

Joe Byrne was killed and Dan Kelly and Steve Hart died in the burning inn. Ned Kelly was tried in Melbourne before Judge Redmond Barry and sentenced to death.

He was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880. Despite petitions for mercy, the sentence was carried out. His armour is now a museum object and a national symbol, while historians still debate whether he was a criminal or a folk hero.

Kelly also wrote the long Jerilderie Letter in 1879, in which he set out his grievances against the police and the colonial government, and it survives in the State Library of Victoria collections.