BRIAN'S NOVEMBER 2007 FOLLOWUP/UPDATE
Brian Stevenson's article "Dan Died Hard" was first published in The
Queensland Times "Weekender" in 1998. The Queensland Times have
graciously allowed it to be reproduced here.
Below the article is an update written especially for Glenrowan1880 by
Brian in which he details his 2005 debate with Ipswich Councillor Paul
Tully concerning James Ryan's (Ipswich Dan) claim to be Dan Kelly.
DAN DIED HARD
THE CASE AGAINST IPSWICH'S CLAIM TO DAN KELLY
BY FREELANCE HISTORIAN BRIAN STEVENSON
Saturday, November 28, 1998
The tale of Dan Kelly has again excited some people and dismayed
historians who believe he died at Glenrowan. Freelance historian, and
author of five books, Brian Stevenson, has this historian's view of the
demise of Dan Kelly.
Dan Kelly died hard. Trapped in the Glenrowan hotel, he and his fellow
Kelly Gang member Steve Hart most likely committed suicide to avoid
police capture.
As Dan, Hart and another Gang member Joe Byrne lay dead, the hotel was
set ablaze. While the body of Byrne was retrieved (and later strapped up
outside the Benalla lockup and photographed), the corpses of Dan Kelly
and Hart were incinerated before eyewitnesses. Blackened skeletons were
raked out with long poles afterward. The charred remains were
unrecognisable and this would, years later, nurture the legend that
somehow Dan had escaped instead of dying at Glenrowan in 1880. Nearly
two generations later, claimants would emerge with such frequency that
Ned and Dan Kelly's surviving brother Jim complained in a 1930 letter to
pro-Kelly author J J Kenneally of how "the name of my brother Dan has
been used freely for sordid gain by a gang of imposters." One such
person has recently been commemorated by a plaque and a replica suit of
armour at the Ipswich cemetery.
Another is supposedly buried at Mt. Isa. But an examination of the case
shows that Daniel Kelly died a wretched and un-enviable death at
Glenrowan on 28 June 1880, less than a month after his 19th birthday.
The information recounted here, drawn from the evidence of contemporary
witnesses as reported in widely available biographies of Ned Kelly by
Ian Jones, J J Kenneally and Keith McMenomy has been publicly available
for nearly 120 years.
The facts are these:
Ned Kelly was captured after his famous 'last stand' on the morning of
28 June, shortly after 6:30 am. Seeing their leader fall, Dan and Steve
Hart rushed out of the hotel.
According to the Melbourne Herald of 29 June, Dan "shouted with
rage...and rushed outside shooting at everyone he could see". A bullet
struck him in the leg and he limped back inside. At around 10 am the
police called a ceasefire and offered a safe passage for the civilians
who were still trapped in the hotel. By now, of course, it was broad
daylight.
The prisoners left the hotel and were checked by police to make sure
that Dan and Steve were not among them.
According to the Melbourne Argus of 5 July 1880, they left the two
youths looking "for all the world like two condemned prisoners on the
drop".
It was a Sunday, and as the day wore on, onlookers in their hundreds
continued to arrive.
There was an air of surreal calm which continued until 2:30 pm, when, to
break the stalemate, the hotel containing the two doomed bushrangers was
set afire.
Not one of the hundreds of eyewitnesses EVER said they saw Dan Kelly
leave the building between Ned Kelly's capture at 6:30 am and the firing
of the hotel seven hours later.
Ironically, more than one of the later claimants would cite burns as
"evidence" of their identity.
As the hotel erupted in flames, two very different men entered the
building and saw Dan and Steve lying dead. The men were the Very
Reverend Matthew Gibney, later Bishop of Perth and Constable James Dwyer
(who had tried to give the captured Ned Kelly a cowardly kick and had
clownishly bashed his own shin on the famous armour instead). Gibney saw
two "beardless boys" lying side by side "at full stretch", the armour
beside them. He later told the 1881 Royal Commission into the Victorian
Police: "I concluded they lay in that position to let the police see
when they found them that it was not by the police they died." Dwyer's
evidence was more specific in terms of Dan's identity. His evidence to
the Commission even mentioned Dan's wounded leg: "The left knee was
crippled and his hand was outstretched...I knew him to be Dan Kelly from
the low forehead."
When asked if he could swear to Dan's identity he said: "Yes, I knew the
man with the black hair and sallow complexion was Dan Kelly." Few would
disagree with Dwyer for many years, but in August and September 1933, a
man now buried in the Ipswich cemetery gave a series of interviews to
the Brisbane Truth.
As an imposter, the man was laughably incompetent and ignorant of many
aspects of the life of Dan Kelly, whose identity he tried, apparently
with some posthumous success, to claim.
The Ipswich claimant did not know Dan's year of birth and claimed to be
unable to read or write, although Dan could do both. He referred to a
nonexistant sister, Nora, but knew nothing of the real Kelly girls,
Mary, Annie, Margaret or Grace. He claimed that the Gang had shot and
killed Constable Fitzpatrick, who died of natural causes in 1924.
Referring to his father as "Ned" (actually John "Red" Kelly) he related
how he had visited his parents while on the run, quite a feat given that
Red Kelly died in 1866 when Dan was five and Ellen Kelly was in gaol for
the whole period of the Kelly Outbreak.
Perplexingly, the Ipswich claimant's story hs been widely accepted, and
his grave–where still he lies–has been promoted as a tourist
attraction.
Some have even claimed that the grave holds Ned himself, with an
obliging Dan, seen but unrecognised by hundreds of people after growing
a full beard almost overnight going to the gallows in his stead. No
doubt he was grateful that no one had noticed the difference between two
brothers who were six or seven years apart in age and six or seven
inches apart in height.
Little more needs to be added to this latest bizarre offshoot of the
Kelly legend, except to note that wherever they are Dan and Ned Kelly
must be laughing.
The legend of Dan's survival may well have its origins in the potboiler
first-person novel Dan Kelly by Melbourne journalist Ambrose Pratt.
Published in 1911, it was one of Pratt's more than 30 novels. Although
pro-Kelly author J J Kenneally called the book 'a sordid concoction',
Pratt never pretended it was anything but fiction. In a 1934 Age
newspaper series on the history of Victoria, he recorded Dan's death at
Glenrowan without comment. It seems likely that Pratt's production was
later the inspiration for a slew of Dan Kelly claimants. The posthumous
survival of a celebrity is a common theme in urban myth. The legend of
Dan Kelly's survival has many overseas parallels, virtually all without
foundation.
DNA testing as in recent years laid to rest forever the claims of
pretenders to the identities of people as diverse as the Russian
princess Anastasia and the the American bandit Jesse James. When a Billy
the Kid imposter surfaced in 1950 (as shown in the film Young Guns 2),
he could not read, write, or speak Spanish, skills possessed by the real
young outlaw.
Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, gangster John Dillinger, Lincoln's assassin
John Wilkes Booth, Nazi strongman Martin Bormann, Doors frontman Jim
Morrison, actor James Dean and, most famously of all, Elvis Presley, all
allegedly survived their deaths.
Dan Kelly died hard at Glenrowan in 1880, but the legend of his survival
is dying even harder.
BRIAN'S NOVEMBER 2007
FOLLOWUP/UPDATE
On 27 June 2005 Paul Tully, Councillor in Ipswich, Queensland,
appeared on the national television morning show, Sunrise to mark the
125th anniversary of the siege of Glenrowan. It was disappointing that
Channel Seven chose to mark the chronological milestone with the easily
disproved theory that Dan Kelly escaped from Glenrowan. Moreover, the
theory dovetails neatly with Cr Tully's laudable (in other contexts,
anyway) wish to promote tourism in his city. I sent an email to Sunrise
that was ignored. The next time I was in Ipswich, I wrote a press
release pointing out that I had already covered the question in a way
that I thought would have put all doubts to rest. The reporter, Steve
Gray, was very receptive when I hand delivered the press release to him,
and suggested that Councillor Tully and I have a public debate on the
issue. The next day, a photograph of the present writer, looking
somewhat resolute as I stood over the grave of the wretched James Ryan,
appeared in the local press, along with my challenge to debate. Cr Tully
agreed to the debate - full marks to him for that.
I arranged a visit to southeast Queensland for mid-August 2005 and a
debate was arranged for 15 August at the Ipswich City Council,
Councillor Tully's home ground. Around 40 people attended the debate.
Incidentally, I noticed a person of distinctive appearance who I did not
know. I later came across a picture that looked very much like him, and
I believe that the debate was attended by a person very famous in Kelly
research circles who did not identify himself at the time. (It is up to
him to let the punters know if I am right.) Despite my slight
apprehensions, the Councillor turned out be an affable enough cove, and
he made my family members and myself feel very welcome in the city of
which he obviously feels so proud. He put his side of the case
first, and did not do too badly, although he concentrated on the
strongest aspect of his case, such as it was. A qualified lawyer, he
noted that the bodies were never identified, so there would always be a
lingering doubt as to who they were. Nothing about James Ryan's
laughable ineptitude as an impostor, though, and I was surprised when he
called witnesses.
I never really found out who they were, but he called forward a man and
a woman, who were taking the parts of Father Gibney and Maggie Kelly
respectively. Both had been briefed. "Maggie" testified that the bodies
were not identifiable, but "Father Gibney" slipped up a little when he
said that he had met Steve and Dan before. He also said, however, that
he could not be sure that it was them lying dead in the flaming
Glenrowan Hotel.
Councillor Tully also mentioned a prominent local identity who claimed
to have met Ipswich Dan as a child, and noted that the local identity,
"a Christian man" believed that he had met Ned Kelly's brother. Well,
yes, but what people believe and what is the truth is not always the
same.
Then it was my turn, and I concentrated on the three things that I have
always argued against James Ryan. Firstly, the logistics of the scene -
broad daylight and in a hotel surrounded by something like 600 witnesses
- made it unthinkable that any escape could have been unwitnessed.
Secondly, Constable Dwyer provided a description of a dead youth in the
hotel that tallied with that of Dan, even to a leg wound that Dan had
been seen to receive that morning. Thirdly, the unbelievably bad
performance of James Ryan as an impostor, with his inability to remember
his own year of birth, the names of his parents, the names of his
siblings and a great deal more was all a matter of the public record,
courtesy of the verbatim reports in the Brisbane Truth of 1933. As I was
talking, I noticed a few more people coming in, and Steve Gray let us
know that the debate had attracted the notice of the Ipswich mayor and a
few of Cr Tully's colleagues. We both received questions from the
audience and I think we fielded them well enough. The innovative idea
that the Kellys branded informers and that Ipswich Dan had "DK" branded
on his backside came up. I let the audience know that I had never heard
of the Kellys branding informers and that the treatment that they meted
out to poor benighted Aaron was a lot more severe. Then I reminded them
that if I happened to have "EP" branded on my own backside, it did not
necessarily prove that I was Elvis Presley - that got a laugh. An
elderly gentleman stood up and said how he had met Ipswich Dan the day
before he died, and claimed that he was over six feet, something I wish
I had taken up with him at the time. At the end of the debate, I handed
out copies of my November 1998 article for the Queensland times and gave
the press a long list of Ipswich Dan's inaccuracies. We then adjourned
to upstairs where the hospitable Cr Tully had arranged a sumptuous
spread of French pastries and the like for us. We chatted for a fair
while but I guess we agreed to disagree - such is the stuff of civilized
debate. I have a lot of respect for Cr Tully's stance on many, many
political and public issues, but obviously had to disagree with this
one, and I always will. Steve Gray gave the affair a full and balanced
coverage in the newspaper the next day.
My hope is that I changed a few minds at Ipswich that day. I saw nothing
to indicate that minds were changed the other way. I was pleased with my
performance in the debate, and with the opportunity I had had to put the
case fully. Cr Tully had already proceeded with his attempt to have the
remains of Steve and Dan exhumed for DNA testing, but Victorian
officials knocked him back some time later. Since then, he has been
pretty quiet on the subject, and a book on Ipswich Dan, first mentioned
by him in the press in the late 1980s, has not yet materialized.