This post is Part 3 of a review by Stuart Dawson of Bill Denheld’s book “Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024)”.
Part 1 made some initial observations on Bill’s claim that a kind of proto-republican sentiment existed in Victoria and in the north-east in particular in the years leading up to and through the Kelly outbreak, regardless that he accepted my main point that there was no Kelly-led republican movement. Part 2 reviewed and challenged Bill’s claim of a class war between squatters and selectors in the Kelly years. It accepted tensions existed in places, but not a political class struggle. This part looks at Bill’s presentation and interpretation of the Fitzpatrick incident.
As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book. When this series of review posts is completed, it will be put up for download as a single PDF review article. It is important to note that Bill tackles a range of topics that overlap, but they are not presented in chronological order. It is therefore necessary to jump around a bit to follow his argument on some of the topics to summarise and then review them; but I think it is worth the trouble for clarity, as much for myself as for any readers of this review.
Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick and the ‘Fitzpatrick incident’ of 15 April 1878
Bill claims that Fitzpatrick set Kelly “on his defiant anti-establishment path” (18), omitting that Kelly had served two gaol terms including on a Melbourne hulk before he had ever heard of Fitzpatrick. Bill says without giving a source that “It is believed that Kelly and Fitzpatrick had illicit horse dealings in the past and it is thought that this may have given Fitzpatrick reason to distance himself and confront the Kellys” (19). This is impossible because Fitzpatrick was a boundary rider in Frankston before he joined the Force, [1] and for the first three months after joining the force he was based at the Richmond depot in Melbourne. He wasnt transferred out of Melbourne to the northeast until 31 July 1877.
At some unknown point and for an unknown period during that time he worked at Schnapper Point near Mornington (RC, Q.183). We don’t know why he was at Schnapper Point, but at a day’s ride from Richmond it was likely part of police training in a district with which he was familiar having been a boundary rider there. He would have been housed in a police station during his time there just as he was at the Richmond depot, and later at Benalla (working a 12 hour day), as was standard for unmarried constables.[2] Further, if he was then wooing Anna Savage in Frankston,[3] he can’t have been gallivanting around the Ovens district having illicit horse dealings with Kelly. Then, in Benalla, like all mounted officers he had to account for each time he took a horse out of the stable and where he rode to, in the Diary of Duty and Occurrences maintained daily in every police station.[4]There is nothing to support Bill’s unreferenced claim that to prove himself to his superiors Fitzpatrick “was to be stationed at a risky outpost known as Edi on the way to the King River” (86) at any time.
Bill gives two strikingly different endings to the Fitzpatrick incident in different chapters. First, that “Fitzpatrick stopped at the Winton pub and while having several drinks began to boast how he was going to fix this Greta mob once and for all. Perhaps while intoxicated he came past the Kellys place” (99). Bill’s presentation of the Fitzpatrick incident (99-100) is Kenneally’s 1929 version slightly reworded, omitting the part where Fitzpatrick pulled Kate Kelly onto his knee as she passed by. As with Kenneally, this version has Fitzpatrick advising Ned and Dan to go bush before he departs.
The second version is also built around Kenneally but ends with Fitzpatrick suggesting that Dan present himself at the police station the next day (232). The contrary endings are irreconcilable, quite apart from the tales being obviously and demonstrably wrong. Bill also claims that “according to evidence gleaned from Kate many years later she said Fitzpatrick made inappropriate advances to her” (232). No source is given for this claim; the only place it appears is Kate Kelly’s February 1879 interview which all parties later denied (see my ‘Redeeming Fitzpatrick’ article on both points).
Either way, Bill argues that “The [response to the] incident was rooted in Fitzpatrick’s claim that Ned Kelly had tried to murder him” (47). We don’t know what Fitzpatrick said to his Sergeant upon his return to Benalla Police Station; whether he claimed an attempted murder, which is something that he never stated later in any statement or evidence, or whether he only stated that he had been fired at and shot in the wrist by Ned Kelly, which seems the case (RC, Q. 2). What we do know is that under the law of that time, where an officer properly executing an authority to arrest is resisted, “it will be murder in all who take part in such resistance; because the officers of justice are under the special protection of the law”.[5] It follows that the charge of attempted murder for Kelly firing at Fitzpatrick was appropriate under that special protection of the law; and the charges against the others of having aided and abetted the attempted murder of a police constable were correctly laid.
Mrs Kelly’ arrest after the Fitzpatrick incident
Bill claims that “word got out to Ned and Dan of their mother’s arrest and soon the whole back country was in uproar” (232). There is no evidence of any such whole back country uproar either in Bill’s book, other Kelly books, or anywhere else that I have seen. Not even one source suggests that the arrest of Mrs Kelly caused any uproar at all outside of her immediate family and relations. Some thought she had been hard done by, being gaoled with her baby until her bail was paid (as it was), and some thought her subsequent sentence of three years’ gaol excessively harsh. The fact however is that her three years was lenient compared with the six years with hard labour given to both Skillion and Williamson for their part in the affray. If one of those men was actually Byrne and not Skillion,[6] the only way that could be rectified would be Byrne turning himself in, which he wouldn’t do. In any case, Mrs Kelly had admitted her involvement in the attack on Fitzpatrick (RC, Q. 9214). The key point here, however, as the papers show, is that most of the back country was outraged by the shooting of Fitzpatrick, not by the arrest of the notorious Mrs Kelly for her involvement in the affair.
The above review is very short and assumes readers have or will read my 2015 article ‘Redeeming Fitzpatrick: Ned Kelly and the Fitzpatrick Incident’, freely available online from several websites and referenced in Bill’s book. The article reconstructs, corroborates and vindicates Fitzpatrick’s account of the incident. Links to my 2015 research paper “Redeeming Fitzpatrick” are HERE. The next Part 4 in this series of review posts will address Bill’s presentation of the Kelly gang’s ambush of the police camp at Stringybark Creek, why he wants to argue that it wasn’t an ambush, and why I continue to argue that it was.
[1] Justin Corfield, The Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia (South Melbourne: Lothian, 2003), 163.
[2] Robert Haldane, The People’s Force (MUP, 1995), 106.
[3] John Molony, Ned Kelly (Allen Lane, 1980), 96.
[4] Robert Haldane, The People’s Force (MUP, 1995), Ch. 3, fig.1.
[5] Joseph Gabbett, A Treatise on the Criminal Law (Dublin, 1835), 477.
[6] See S. Dawson, ‘Redeeming Fitzpatrick’ for the analysis and evidence.
There is one possibility, that when Bill said that “It is believed that Kelly and Fitzpatrick had illicit horse dealings in the past and it is thought that this may have given Fitzpatrick reason to distance himself and confront the Kellys”, he means not a period before Fitzpatrick’s police posting to the north-east, which is exactly what Rebecca Wilson meant in her “Kate Kelly” book, and how I took it to mean in Bill’s book; but a period after Fitzpatrick was transferred from the Richmond training depot to the Ovens district on 31 July 1877 and before Dan Kelly surrendered to him after the Goodman’s Store assault in October 1877. Over to you Bill, to clear this up?
Morrissey is the writer who most clearly linked Kelly and Fitzpatrick as partners in crime, but he didnt ever provide the references to back up his assertions. If they were true wouldnt the Kellys have gone public and dobbed him in as part of their attempts to avoid convictions over the Fitzpatrick ‘incident’ – identifyng him as a corrupt policeman would surely have boosted their claims that Fitzpatrick was lying, and increased there chances of an acquittal.. But of course they never did make any such claim, and neither did Ned Kelly himself in any of his letters….
To be honest I don’t think Bill believes everything he makes reference to – I think he might put them out to show he is aware of the full range of theories that have been floated about various things, and for others to have a look at for themselves. What he might not realise is that in doing so he gives some of these absurd ideas an element of legitimacy and credibility they don’t deserve.
Hi David, Doug Morrissey’s belief in Bad Fitzpatrick is based on Kelly’s claiming friendship in one of his letters, is a desperate attempt to excuse himself from the charge that he shot him, coupled with his grossly exaggerated tale of beating Fitzpatrick in a fight in the Benalla bootmakers shop brawl; and on Kate Kelly’s dissembling tale that Fitzpatrick was on very intimate terms withn the family (see his A Lawless Life, p. 220 notes). It’s all nonsense, but Doug will not be budged; and he has now withdrawn himself from anything to do with Kelly studies and despite criticising my Redeeming Fitzpatrick article without naming it or me, he won’t be drawn to further comment.
In his “Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves” book, Morrissey writes that “Fitzpatrick’s shanty and pub carousing with the Kellys received no comment [in his Record of Conduct and Service] and wsas probably regarded in the beginning as creative policing” (271). He provides no no evidence at all and all this can be summed up as creative writing. How is it possible that Fitzpatrick was of carousing with the Kellys when he was rosterd and accountable seven days a week like all police were; and when he had to sign for his use of a police horse in the Daily Diary of Occurrences? It is just ridiculous fiction. Again on p. 271 Morrisey writes, “although an engaged man [at Frankston], Fitzpatrick had felt himself free to pursue romance wherever he found it, sowing his youg man’s wild oats with abandon, fathering children and promising marriage when it suited his purpose to do so. Kate no doubt saw Fitzpatrick as a dashing romantic figure, a larrikin bad boy friend of her brother Ned in a policemans’ uniform. Kate’s tears when Fitzpatrick was shot and her fear that Ned would not stop there indicates an affection for the policeman”. What a load of rubbish. Morrissey has invented a Bad Fitzpatrick with the hots for Kate and taken off. What happened is quite clear from teh testimony and evidence in mt Redeeming Fitzpatrick article. Poor 14 year old Kate was scared out of her wits by Ned shooting Fitzpatrick and thinking it was about to be a murder in front of her eyes. That’s why she was in tears; not because she had the hots for Fitzpatrick.
It gets worse on the next page: “In September 1879 Fitzpatrick was sent to Lancefeield where he continued his shanty lifestyle. … At the time of his dismissal Fitzpatrick worked his larrikin charm enlisting the aid of Lancefield’s respectable residents, who put together two favourable petitions a year apart in an attempt to save thh scheming policeman’s job” (272). What a ridiculous misrepresntation of the petitions; one has only to read Ian MacFarlane’s description of them in his “Kelly Gang Unmasked” (or better, the petitions themselves in VPRO), to know that Morrissey is talking rubish here. It is on that page that he says of my article, “A recent viewpoint countering the Kelly myth’s derogatory image of Fitzpatrick goes too far in trying to redeem him as a decent and honorable policeman”.
First, I didn’t argue that; I said that Fitzpatrick’s testimony about the Fitzpatrick Incident was almost entirely corroborable. Second, I gave full references for everything I put forward. Morrissey has given none for his creative writing which is contradicted at many points as regards Fitzpatrick by evidence that I cited in my article. It is a waste of time trying to argue with unevidenced viwepoints. In most places Morrissey’s books are good as regards the selectors, squatters and stock thieves theme, and fully supported by his PhD thesis and published historical articles on that theme; but his musings on Fitzpatrick are just fictional drivel. His refusal to even name my article, let alone argue any points against it, speaks for itself. It’s fiction; just like Rebecca Wilson’s drivelling about Fitzpatrick in her Kate Kelly book.
Morrissey is a strange fellow : a trained academic who did great work with his original thesis about selectors in the north east….who then much later tried to monetise his status as a Kelly expert by publishing three books on the topic but he was too lazy to do the hard work of bringing them up to an academic standard. As you say he invented a clever little tale about Fitzpatrick but never engaged with anyone to defend it, slagged you off and went dark.
The quality of the third of his three books was especially poor.
Hi David, in fairness to Doug Morrissey his PhD thesis formed the basis of his second book of the same title as his thesis, Selectors, Squatters ands Stock Thieves. The thesis was a brilliant piece of work and written directly against McQuilton’s class struggle based theory of the outbreak. Since the 1987 thesis and his first 2015 ‘A Lawless Life’ book some 28 years had passed, and by the 2018 Selectors book, 31 years had passed. During those three decades the VPRO files had all been restructured and renumbered with no cross-referencing system. He also wrote several valuable academic articles such as NK and horse and cattle theft, and NK’s Sympathisers.
When it was suggested that he redevelop his work for a book or books, it would have been a herculean task to track down all the references again. LaTrobe Uni History should have paid a research assistant to to do that cross-referencing, but that is something only uni professor types get, and not always then. We should be grateful that he did the books at all instead of just leaving the thesis to languish forever in obscurity like most theses do. (Mine is online with very minor revisions under the title ‘Rethinking Athenian Democracy’ and gets a number of downloads each year, but it will never be redeveloped into a book; that would take another few years to revise, update and reference.)
I don’t agree that he tried to monetise his status as a Kelly expert. I’d be surprised if he got even $1,000 in royalties total for his trouble. He is a Kelly expert, and it is a great shame that the books don’t have referencing. They clearly could have for quite a number of recent references without much effort; I have referenced many of the key points in my current review of Bill’s book, for example. But Doug could not realistically have done that for all the renumbered VPRO and Land Title files and other police documents, which were the bulk of his thesis references; it would take forever. So it wasn’t laziness; it was unrealistic for someone working outside the employed uni system.
Unfortunately he threw Fitzpatrick to the Kelly mythologists rather than take up the gauntlet. He didn’t or couldn’t accept the revision that I put forward, entirely reconstructed from Fitzpatrick’s testimony and other statements which I put through a rigorous critical process. Instead he stuck with his old beliefs. It would have been just as easy to accept my documented case in Redeeming Fitzpatrick or at least present it fairly; but since he didn’t, I will just deal with that unapologetically as I have here.