A companion guide to the Ned Kelly display at State Library Victoria. Features physical and digital items in our collections and links to external sites.
Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly was Victoria’s most infamous bushranger. He led a group of outlaws known as the Kelly gang in the late 1870s. For 18 months, while on the run from police, they robbed banks, took hostages, chopped down telegraph poles and destroyed part of a railway line.
Although finally hanged for fatally shooting three policemen, Kelly’s life and actions have been the subject of debate for more than a century. At the time of his trial, one fifth of Melbourne’s population signed a petition against his execution. Following his death, he has been both reviled as a criminal who robbed and killed, and celebrated as a heroic underdog who had the courage to challenge the authorities for perceived abuses of power. Today the question of whether Kelly was a criminal or a hero is still debated.
Kelly argued that there were important personal and political reasons behind the gang’s actions in a 56-page statement, now known as the Jerilderie letter. Kelly dictated the letter to gang member Joe Byrne, claiming that he shot the police in self-defence. He also describes how he and his family, poor Irish farmers, were the victims of racial and class-based persecution at the hands of the police and the ‘squattocracy’ who controlled the most fertile farming land and parts of the government.
The Library is home to a variety of objects relating to Ned Kelly, and many that his notoriety inspired. We care for the Jerilderie letter, as well as archival materials for Australian author Peter Carey’s novel, True History of the Kelly gang (2000). The Jerilderie letter, which Carey describes as a ‘howl of pain’, is full of ringing phrases but also violence. Although its full contents weren’t made public until the 1930s, Kelly’s manifesto has endured and been adopted by various interest groups who have mobilised Kelly and his story for their own ends.
Soon after Kelly was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880, a ‘Kelly culture’ emerged. Kelly’s own family spoke publicly about Ned, and there are many films, books, poems, songs, plays and a ballet that draw on his life, as well as the iconic paintings by Australian artist Sidney Nolan. At the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Ned Kelly was part of how Australia told its national story to the world.
The Library is also home to the iconic iron armour he wore during his final altercation with the law, and it is on display in the Redmond Barry Reading Room.
Image credit: Ned Kelly the Bushranger [ca. 1870-ca. 1880] H2013.36/25
Ned Kelly : a short life by 
The Ned Kelly encyclopaedia by 
[Extract from newspaper with photos of Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly and Stephen Hart.] [ca. 1914-ca. 1941] H23555
Browse images of and relating to the Kelly gang in the Library collection. Please note that some of these images feature graphic content, including dead bodies.
Read the obituaries of the Kelly gang, originally published in newspapers at the time of their deaths and republished on Obituaries Australia.
You can also find obituaries for others part of the Kelly story. For example:
The Public Records Office (PROV) holds prison records as part of its Register of prisoners collection. To view these records online, visit the Register of prisoners page and type in the name or prison number of the Kelly gang:
The Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV) holds records of death inquests as part of its Coroners Inquests collection. To access a digital copy of a death inquest:
Search our catalogue to find more resources on Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang. Some titles for consideration:
The fatal friendship: Ned Kelly, Aaron Sherritt & Joe Byrne by 
The reporting of Ned Kelly & the Kelly gang by 
Letter written by Donald G. Sutherland to his parents in Caithness, Scotland (1880) MS 13713
The Library holds in its Manuscripts Collection a letter written by Donald Sutherland, a bank teller at the Bank of Victoria in Oxley, 8 kilometres from Glenrowan, who provides an eyewitness account of Ned Kelly's demeanour on the morning of his capture in Glenrowan.
In Sutherland's letter, written to his parents in Scotland, Ned Kelly is described as lying on a stretcher “quite calm and collected, notwithstanding the great pain he must have been suffering from his wounds”. Sutherland also mentions his reactions upon viewing the charred remains of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart, which remind him of “old Knick himself”.
Image credit: Letter written by Donald G. Sutherland to his parents in Caithness, Scotland (1880). Page 1. MS 13713
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Learn about the Kelly Gang and their last stand at Glenrowan. Part of National Museum Australia's free online learning resource, Australia’s Defining Moments Digital Classroom website.
Ned Kelly the day before he was hanged (1880) H18202
Dan Kelly [ca. 1876-ca. 1878] H2001.161/1
Steve Hart [c.1878] H96.160/194
The destruction of the Kelly gang. Portrait of Byrne (July 17, 1880) A/S17/07/80/168
This is a comparison of the fake "last portrait" of Ned Kelly fabricated by the Burman Studios (click to view image in a new window). An earlier police photograph of Ned (click to view image in a new window) has been touched up to make him appear older and pasted onto a police photograph of James Nesbitt, a member of Captain Moonlite's gang. Close examination will show the thin line where the head of Kelly adheres to the body of Nesbitt.
Find out more on the images tab of the misinformation research guide
Watch this ABC Education video on The Kelly Gang and the demise of bushrangers featuring significant collection items. Part of its History Education series on Australian bushrangers, including The golden age of bushranging and The convict bushrangers.
