Abstract
Opened in 1841, the foreboding buildings which comprised Melbourne’s first penitentiary were extended several times until the completion of the bluestone walls and turrets in 1864. Although its design was inspired by the fashionable reformist ideas in penology of the day, the prison regime practiced within the heavy walls also incorporated a stark reminder of the lingering ‘bloody code’ that had characterised the British justice for centuries. Before it was closed in 1929 the prison had been the site of 136 executions. Among a grim list of offenders, the most notorious individual to die in the prison was Edward (Ned) Kelly. At 10:00 am on 11 November 1880, Kelly, his arms pinioned with a heavy leather strap, a white cloth bag folded back on his forehead, was led from a holding cell adjacent to the gallows. Outside a crowd estimated at between 4000 and 8000 had gathered. Although it had been over three years since an execution in Old Melbourne Gaol, it was not morbid curiosity which drew them there. These were Kelly’s supporters (and opponents of capital punishment) who had hastily collected a petition bearing 30,000 signatures seeking a commutation of the sentence of death in the short interregnum between the court case and the day of execution. The numbers (neither crowd nor petition), however, could not disguise the fact that many Victorians supported the punishment of Kelly to the full extent of the law.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
I. Jones (2003) Ned Kelly: A Short Life (South Melbourne: Lothian Books), pp. 287–8
A. Castles (2005) Ned Kelly’s Last Days (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin)
Bob Hempel Presents; J. Dunn (October–November 2005) ‘Ned Kelly Australia’s Bushranging Icon’, Outback, 43, p. 110.
J. Cranston (2006) The Story of the Kelly Gang (Glenrowan: Glenrowan Cobb & Co.), p. 131
I. Bertrand and W. Routt (2007) ‘“The Picture that will Live Forever”: The Story of the Kelly Gang’, Moving Image, 8, p. 25.
Jack Cranston (n.d.) ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang Film’, 1906–7 [press release], available at http://www.nedkellysworld.com.au/shopping/books/story_of_the_kelly_gang_film.doc; S. Jackson and G. Shirley (2006) New Life for an Australian Classic Film (Canberra: National Film and Sound Archive).
See Dunn, ‘Ned Kelly’, p. 110; Border Mail, (3 March 2007). Ned’s earnings are insufficient, however, to convince the State Government to spend $200,000 to identify his remains, although this will surely change if a way to make money from the bones can be found. See Herald-Sun (25 May 2008). I am grateful to Marie Clarke for bringing this article to my attention. See also: P. A. Pickering (2004) ‘A Grand Ossification: William Cobbett and the Commemoration of Tom Paine’ in P. A. Pickering and A. Tyrrell (eds) Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 57–80.
J. Dwyer and J. Schapper (eds) (2003) Managing Our Heritage: A Review of Heritage Place Management in Victoria (Melbourne: Heritage Council), pp. 47, 74, 93.
Elsewhere I have suggested that the reductio ad absurdum is ‘traditional Aussie hot dogs’ produced by KR Castlemaine in Victoria. The image on the packet of a helmeted Ned stuffing his face with processed meat product through the post-box slot rivals the bunny. See P. A. Pickering (Autumn/Winter 2008) ‘The “Enormous Condescension of Posterity” Revisited: Labour Heritage and Public Memory’, Dissent, 26, p. 44. See also I. Jones (2002) Ned: The Exhibition: Old Melbourne Gaol 2001–2002 (Pimlico, Qld: Network Creative Services), pp. 123–4.
E. Reade (1979) History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film 1896–1978 (Sydney: Harper & Row), p. 6.
J. M. McDonagh (2003) Ned Kelly: The Screenplay (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press), p. vi.
B. McDonald (2004) What They said about Ned!: Looking at the Legend of Ned Kelly through Books (Bondi, NSW: Australian History Promotions), p. 26.
L. Rees (1973) The Making of Australian Drama: A Historical and Critical Survey from the 1830s to the 1970s (Sydney: Angus & Robertson), p. 48
R. Rosenstone (1995) Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Modern Idea of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 36.
Rosenstone, Visions of the Past, chapter 9; R. Rosenstone (ed.) (1995) Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 202.
See D. Stewart (1963) Ned Kelly in Three Australian Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), pp. 97–236
G. Huggan (May 2002) ‘Cultural Memory in Postcolonial Fiction: The Uses and Abuses of Ned Kelly’, Australian Literary Studies, 20, pp. 142–54.
It is notable that its treatment in recent literature, notably Peter Carey’s outrageously titled True History of the Kelly Gang, has been postcolonial in genre. See P. Carey (2000) True History of the Kelly Gang, St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.
R. Drewe (1991) Our Sunshine (Sydney: Pan Macmillan).
See K. C. Barton and L. Levstik (2004) Teaching History for the Common Good (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 119–21
R. Rosenzweig and D. Thelan (1998) The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History (New York, Columbia University Press), pp. 105–6.
R. Pearce (August 2003) ‘University History’, History Today, 53, p. 54
There have been other problems casting Ned. In Rupert Kathner’s 1951 film, The Glenrowan Affair, Ned was played by Bob Chitty, then a leading footballer reputed to be one of the toughest exponents of the Australian national game during the years when its brutality was taken for granted. Although a controversial choice Chitty was certainly tough enough: in 1943 he had turned in a best-on-ground performance for his club Carlton on Saturday despite having lost the top part of a finger in an industrial accident during the week. See J. Ross (ed.) (1996) 100 Years of Australian Rules Football (Ringwood: Viking), p. 169.
See I. Jones (1973) ‘Re-Enacting the Past’ in D. Duffy, G. Harman and K. Swan (eds) Historians at Work (Sydney: Hicks Smith & Sons), p. 259
J. Baudrillard (1995) Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
I. Bertrand (1978) Film Censorship in Australia (St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press), p. 12.
E. J. Hobsbawm (1972) Bandits (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), p. 131.
John McQuilton (1979) The Kelly Outbreak 1878–1880 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press).
Bertrand, Film Censorship, pp. 42, 97, 108, 110–11, 119, 123. According to Lloyd Hughes ‘bushranger movies’ accounted for 13 per cent of all Australian films made in the 1910s. See L. Hughes (2005) The Rough Guide to Gangster Movies (London: Rough Guides), p. 248.
See C. Strange (2006) ‘Hybrid History and the Retrial of the Painful Past’, Crime, Media, Culture, 2, pp. 197–215.
C. Otto and R. Surette (2002) ‘A Test of a Crime and Infotainment Measure’, Journal of Criminal Justice, 30, p. 445.
I. Jones (1977) ‘Introduction’ in R. Simpson Trial of Ned Kelly (Ringwood: Heinemann Educational Australia), p. viii.
Burnside’s analysis of the forensic evidence casts doubt on Kelly’s version of events as does Alex Castles’s. See Burnside, ‘Regina v. Edward (Ned) Kelly’; Castles, Ned Kelly’s Last Days, pp. 32–8, 163. See also Phillips, The Trial of Ned Kelly, chapter 14. I am grateful to Simon Bronitt for comments on Kelly’s trial. We are planning to convene a conference on this subject in 2009. Kelly’s own account of events, in his famous Jerilderie letter, was suppressed by the action of his own Counsel, but as Castles notes, it does not alter the facts of the episode. See E. Kelly (2001 [1897]) The Jerilderie Letter (London: Faber).
G. Dening (1992) Mr Bligh’s Bad Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 4–5.
I. Clendinnen (2006) ‘The History Question. Who Owns the Past?’, Quarterly Essay, 23, p. 20, 22.
K. Grenville (2006) Searching for the Secret River (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company), p. 47.
R. G. Collingwood (1971 [1946]) The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 282.
N. Kendal (1934) Criminal Investigation: A Practical Textbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers (London: Sweet & Maxwell), p. 37.
D. Groome (1999) An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders (Hove: Routledge), p. 120.
R. Roesch, R. Corrodo and R. Dempster (eds) (2001) Psychology in the Courts: International Advances in Knowledge (London: Routledge), pp. 242–3.
R. Butler (ed.) (1996) What is Appropriation?: An Anthology of Critical Writings on Australian Art in the ‘80s and ‘90s (Sydney: Power Publications and IMA), p. 15.
K. J. Arenson and M. Bagaric (2005) Rules of Evidence in Australia: Text and Cases (Sydney: LexisNexis Butterworths), pp. 383–94.
D. B. Hennes (1993) ‘Manufacturing Evidence for Trial: The Prejudicial Implications of Videotaped Crime Scene Re-enactments’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 142, pp. 2142–3.
Cited in E. Kerridge (1951) ‘Ridge and Furrow and Agrarian History’, Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 14 and 14n.
E. P. Thompson (1979 [1965]) ‘The Peculiarities of the English’ in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press), p. 65.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Paul A. Pickering
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pickering, P.A. (2010). ‘No Witnesses. No Leads. No Problems’: The Reenactment of Crime and Rebellion. In: McCalman, I., Pickering, P.A. (eds) Historical Reenactment. Reenactment History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277090_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277090_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36609-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27709-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)