Gibney

Newspapers:
A Brave Priest.
Rev Gibney's Statement

The Very Rev. Matthew Gibney, is seen as one of the few 'heroes" of the siege at Glenrowan.
The reason he is seen in such a strong light is because he risked his life to give Ned his last rites and to 
attempt to save the lives, if not the souls of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart.

        The police had been blasting away at the Inn for considerable time when Gibney heard what was 
happening. He cut short his train journey in order to offer whatever assistance he could.

        Upon arrival at Glenrowan he gave comfort to a wounded Ned Kelly and asked Ned if he thought a 
priest might be able to get the others to surrender. Ned answered in the negative, however the brave 
priest took it upon himself to try regardless. He asked the police for permission to enter the Inn, however 
they said no to his brave request. Despite this, Gibney did enter the building just as the police-lit fire took 
hold.  Many onlookers held their breath in horror believing that the priest had been devoured by the flames, 
they cheered when he appeared unhurt from the inferno.

He discovered the bodies of Dan and Steve, and the stiff corpse of Joe Byrne.

Police followed shortly thereafter and removed the wounded Martin Cherry and
Joe's lifeless body.

        The fact that Gibney saw the bodies of Dan and Steve has often been
cited as 'proof' that they perished in the fire. (and therefore never escaped)
A question that needs to be asked
is this, did he know the gang members well enough for proper identification?
In reality he did not know them at all. He was not from this area and could not
have possibly been one hundred
percent sure under such circumstances. That is not to say they were not the
bodies of Dan and Steve, just that he could not have been certain.

        For more information and images, visit the website below.

Kilmore Missionary Church.
http://www.iol.ie/~galwill/kilmore/histmisn.htm

 
http://www.cornafean.com/Matthew%20Gibney.htm

A Hero at Glenrowan 
http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/04/jan/18/21.html

The Rev. Father Gibney's Statement.

M. Gibney said: I am a Catholic-priest of Perth,
West Australia; I was travelling on the North-Western 
line, having left Melbourne by the first down train :
in the morning, on arrival at Glenrowan Station, having
heard while going there that the Kelly Gang were at 
Jones's Hotel, I got out of the train, abandoning my in-
tention to proceed further on: consequently my 
presence at the scene was, so to speak, accidental; I got
out at Glenrowan because I thought I might
be of use in my clerical capacity; the train
arrived at Glenrowan between 12 (noon) and
1 o'clock, and I went at once into the room where Ned 
Kelly was lying at the station; I don't think he is 
dying; he is penitent and shows a very good disposi-
tion; when I asked him to say, "Lord Jesus, have 
mercy on me," he said it, and added, "it is not to-
day I began to say that;" I heard his confession.
which (sic) I shall not be expected to repeat; a?? I at first
thought he was dying, I anointed him; Kelly freely
confessed his intention of wrecking train. &c.

Source: The Sydney Mail. Saturday July 3 1880. 

Gibney at Glenrowan.

A BRAVE PRIEST. 

Father Gibney emerged from the crowd, saying he would save Sherry. 
The brave clergymen was encouraged on his mission by a cheer from the spectators. 
He walked boldly to the front door, was lost to view amongst the smoke, and a moment 
afterwards a mass of flames burst from the walls and roof of the dwelling the same instant. 
A shout of terror from the crowd announced the fear that was felt for the safety of the courageous 
priest. Constable Armstrong, with some other policeman, rushed into the building from the rear,
and a few seconds afterwards saw forms, with that of Father Gibney, which seemed to emerge, 
carrying with them Sherry, who was in a dying state, and the dead body of the outlaw Byrne.

Source: The Albury Banner and Wodonga Express July 3rd, 1880.

One of my friends was Bishop Gibney, the head of the Catholic Church in Western Australia. There was a high percentage of Irish amongst prospectors and pioneers, and the Bishop was a frequent visitor to the goldfields, where he built several churches and brought the nursing sisters of the Order of St. John of God and established a hospital for them to carry on their work. Later he got the Christian brothers to open a college for boys at Kalgoorlie. Teaching sisters under his auspices controlled schools for girls and small boys. A kind-hearted Christian gentleman, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him and keenly desirous of serving humanity.

From him I learned first-hand the story of Ned Kelly. He was present when the bushranger was captured and had talked with him and his relations and with people who were supposed to have helped him and his gang to evade the police. To have met a man who saw the last fight of the gang and who had heard much about them was a novel experience. The story he told me was sensational. We often talked of it, but the Bishop was modest about his share in the event. A friend, however, showed me a press cutting of an account from the Melbourne Age, written by a newspaper correspondent who also saw Ned Kelly captured, and published a day or two afterwards.

The last and the most notorious of the Australian bushrangers inherited lawlessness. Ned Kelly's father was transported to Tasmania from Ireland in the forties of the last century for shooting a landlord. Another account says it was for killing a man in a [P.125] faction fight. When the sentence was served he removed to Wallan, about forty miles from Melbourne. Whilst there he formed a gang of horse thieves, but their operations interfered with a more powerful gang, by whom the elder Kelly and his associates were ordered to leave the locality. The order was obeyed and the ex-convict took up his abode in the King Valley.

Cattle-duffing and horse-stealing in those days were common in the remote and wild parts of Australia. Fences were almost unknown, stock wandered over a great area, the natural increase was considerable, many animals escaped branding, and holders of immense areas often did not know their own boundaries. All this was conducive to the stealing of livestock.

The new arrival found a scope for his energies in the rough country where he lived. He died in 1865, leaving a family of three sons and four daughters. Ned, who was eleven years old when his father died, became an accomplice of a bushranger who was betrayed and captured. Ned escaped punishment. His brother Jim was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in 1871, and when released he went to New South Wales and became a bushranger, was captured and got ten years' imprisonment. Ned and a third brother, Dan, served terms of imprisonment for horse-stealing.

There was a continual feud between the Kelly family and the police, with whom they had various brushes. Ned Kelly became the leader of a number of outlaws. They shot three policemen, and the Governments of Victoria and New South Wales offered rewards totalling £8,000 for their capture dead or alive. For more than two years the Kellys remained at large, now and again making sensational raids on [P.126] towns and robbing banks. They had numerous sympathisers who could not be tempted by Government rewards to reveal the gang's whereabouts. The country was mountainous, rugged, clothed with scrub and trees, inaccessible, and the police and black trackers experienced failures and disappointments.

Bishop Gibney, then a young priest, was collecting subscriptions for orphanages in the vicinity of Glenrowan in Victoria. He learned that the gang was at bay and that a battle was in progress, so he hurried to render any spiritual assistance that might be needed.

The last desperate stand of the Kellys evidently made a vivid impression on his mind. He described to me how they had “stuck up” the hamlet of Glenrowan, how they had imprisoned some forty of the inhabitants in one of the two hotels, how they had pulled up the railway lines at a bend so that the driver of a train from Melbourne would not see the danger until too late, how a special train with police from Melbourne had been stopped and warned and escaped disaster, and how eventually the police got to Glenrowan and besieged a hotel of which the gang were in possession.

About sixty shots were exchanged. The superintendent in charge of the police was wounded badly by a shot in the wrist. Screams from women and children imprisoned in the hotel caused the police to cease fire for fear of injuring innocent people. Later many, but not all the prisoners left the hotel, and it was found that two of them had been wounded by the firing—one, a girl of fourteen, in the head, and the other, a boy of nine, in the hip.

Intermittent firing was kept up during the night [P.127] between the outlaws and the police. It was afterwards learned that one of the outlaws, Byrne, was shot in the groin as he was drinking a nobbler of whisky in the bar. Soon after he died in great pain.

The morning broke beautiful and clear. The police, who by this time numbered more than twenty, were disposed under cover around the hotel. Suddenly and unexpectedly they were attacked in the rear. A tall figure was seen close behind them. They thought at first it was a blackfellow. Over the arm there was a grey coat, and he walked coolly and slowly until he was amongst the police, and then he opened fire. Nine policemen fired at him point blank. The force of the bullets made him stagger, but he laughed derisively and tapped his breast. He was well protected by a suit of armour. The police knew him to be the redoubtable Ned Kelly. He fought only with a revolver. For half an hour the contest went on. Finally, a police sergeant, when within about ten yards of him, fired two shots into his legs, where there was no armour. This brought him down. The sergeant rushed at him and seized the hand that held his revolver. The outlaw fired it once, but ineffectually, and he was over-powered. He fought fiercely until stripped of his armour, when he became quite submissive and accepted the situation.

When the police first arrived at the hotel Ned Kelly was outside and had fired and wounded the police superintendent. In the return fire Ned Kelly was wounded. He could not, without risking his life, join the members of his gang in the hotel, so he jumped on his horse, and in the excitement got away in the darkness. He did not mean to desert his companions. [P.128] He was riding his grey mare and could have escaped had he wished. In the morning he returned to fight his way back to them. It was in that endeavour that he was captured.

The siege of the hotel continued. Further police arrived. There were still prisoners inside, and their presence embarrassed the attackers. About midday some thirty men and youths suddenly rushed out holding their hands up. Most of them were terror-stricken. They feared the bushrangers in the hotel and the police outside. A youth was seriously wounded in the shoulder by a police bullet. Some of those who had been inmates of the hotel were supposed to be sympathisers with the outlaws, and a couple of young men who had come out were arrested and handcuffed. After one o'clock the fire of the police was not returned, and the assumption was that the outlaws would keep quiet until night-time, when they would try to escape under cover of the darkness. In the mean-time the police had telegraphed to Melbourne for a field-gun. There were then but two of the gang in the hotel, Dan Kelly (brother of Ned) and Steve Hart.

There were many friends and relatives of the besieged outlaws on the scene. When Ned Kelly was captured, two of his sisters were allowed to remain with him; Father Gibney also talked with him. One of the sisters, Mrs. Skillan, was a conspicuous figure dressed in a dark riding habit and wearing a jaunty hat adorned with a white feather. The priest made several attempts to go to the hotel to urge surrender, but he was prevented by the police, who thought he would be shot and they would be held responsible. The police were agreeable to allow the sisters to [P.129] approach the hotel and ask the men to come out and be arrested, and the priest endeavoured to get them to do so, but neither would consent. They were bitter and did not favour surrender, even though they must have realised that to continue fighting meant certain death. They were all desperate.

The besiegers decided to set fire to the hotel. A constable succeeded in placing against weatherboards a huge bundle of dry straw and set light to it. Kate Kelly and Mrs. Skillan became wildly excited as they saw the flames spreading through the building and shooting from the roof. Mrs. Skillan, crying, “I will see Dan,” rushed forward, but to enter the building then would have endangered her life. She was therefore prevented from going near it.

An old man, Martin Sherry, was still in the house. He was badly wounded, but he was there when the last prisoners had escaped. What then happened was thus described by the representative of the Melbourne Age who was present:

“Father Gibney said he would save Sherry. The brave clergyman was loudly cheered by the spectators as he rushed boldly to the front door. He was soon lost to view amongst the smoke, and directly afterwards a mass of flames burst from the walls and roof of the building. A shout of terror from the crowd announced the dread of the crowd for the safety of the courageous priest. Some of the police had got in through a back door, and soon after the crowd were relieved to see them and Father Gibney emerge from the burning house carrying with them Sherry, who [P.130] was in a dying state, and the dead body of Byrne. They said Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were lying upon the floor apparently dead. Their bodies could not be removed. When the building was demolished two charred skeletons were raked out from the smouldering débris.”

Ned Kelly was hanged in the Melbourne gaol. He crowded a great deal of horse-stealing, cattle-duffing, bushranging and other crimes and sensationalism into his twenty-six years of life.

Bishop Gibney always made light of his own doings at the siege of the Glenrowan Hotel. “What I did was nothing,” he used to say, but he was not averse from discussing the Kelly gang and their doings. He was certain both Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were dead before he was forced by the fire to leave the hotel. Ned Kelly's armour weighed nearly 100 lbs., and others of the gang had similar armour. The suits were made by a blacksmith out of plough-shares. Ned Kelly's armour showed that it had been hit seventeen times by police bullets.

“They were a wild, reckless, lawless lot,” said the Bishop, “and the wonder is they had so many sympathisers, even amongst those who ought to have known better.”

“Is there any truth in the statements commonly made that they were persecuted by the police and so were driven into becoming outlaws?”

“The police had to do their duty. The Kellys and their friends thought they were too severe in their exercise of it, but that is the viewpoint of most wrongdoers. The judgment of no man can be trusted in his [P.131] own cause. There were stories of great cruelties perpetrated by the Kellys towards the police, and there may have been retaliation. I must say,” said the Bishop, “the police I met were fine fellows, and when Ned Kelly was captured I know they treated him with great kindness.”

“Possibly,” I remarked, “Ned Kelly a thousand years hence or less will be the most romantic figure in Australian history. His bravery may help to redeem his crimes in the minds of novelists. Poets are certain to weave strange fancies round his memory. Robin Hood robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Moss-troopers, who included so many heroes of story-tellers, ravaged the grass-grown borders of England and Scotland and stole whatever cattle and horses they could find. Young Australians in the year 3000 A.D. may have the story of Ned Kelly told to them without disapproval and with suppressions and embellishments in their school books.”

“Well,” said the Bishop with a smile, “you may be right. Anything may happen in 3000 A.D., but it will never happen with my consent in the schools under my control.”

Source: 

My Life's Adventure