A scene from the 1906 Kelly film.
Coffins of Dan & Steve.
How Dan and Hart perished.
It is now generally believed that Dan Kelly
and Hart were both dead before the hotel was
set fire to. This impression is strengthened
by the statement of the priest who bravely and
amidst loud cheers rushed into the blazing house.
He states that when he picked up the dead body
nearest to him, which proved to be that of Byrne,
he saw the bodies of the other two lying together
further away in the room.
Source: The Geelong Advertiser June 30 1880.
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A
snippet from The Age, circa 1931, as regards a
Dan "resurrection story" written by B.W. Cookson
......There is at present being circulated [word missing] the country
press of New South Wales and Victoria the latest and most fantastic of
the "resurrection stories"
in connection with the Kellys. The author of this particular cauard,
according to a Salvation Army officer, Brigadier Rixon, of Melbourne,
became converted to the Army in a small country town in New South Wales,
and avowed most solemnly that he was Dan Kelly, and that he and Steve
Hart had escaped from Glenrowan, had met "a man in the street," or, to
be exact, on the road to New South Wales, accepted from him, without the
need of credentials of any sort, a commission to take a drove of horses
to India, and thenceforward blossomed forth in new careers in various
parts of the known world-and some parts so little known as to cause
the astonished Salvation Army officials to look sideways on the rest of
the story. The convert alleged, amongst other absurdities, that he was
known to the police of the district as Dan Kelly, and that they had
advised him to stay in New South Wales, as if he crossed into Victoria
he would get into trouble. The "conversion" proved a brief one, and
the
reclaimed sinner went suddenly and silently on his way, following a few
pertinent questions as to his name and aliases. But he left behind him a
story so circumstantial in small details as to warrant its
publication-in the minds of the Salvation Army officials. And that
story, preposterous as it is, may be credited by many people ignorant of
the facts.....
(courtesy of Roselyn Drake)
Image of Dan Kelly's body taken by Bray at
Glenrowan.
Image of Dan Kelly's body taken by Madeley at Glenrowan.