Thomas Newman McIntyre :
A decent brave and honest man, disgracefully abused by the lies of Kelly and his supporters past and present.
McIntyres third encounter with Kelly was two months after the meeting at Glenrowan, in the middle of winter, at Kellys Committal in Beechworth. To protect him from sympathiser attack, McIntyre was housed like a criminal in one of the freezing cells at Beechworth prison, his tormenter in another cell a few yards away. He developed pleurisy and spent more time in the local hospital, and emotionally he remained a broken man:
“I also had to stand my trial, the charge against me being a moral one, charged by some of my fellow citizens with want of courage”
Despite all this, he kept himself together sufficiently to resolutely testify against Kelly at Beechworth, and again in Melbourne three months later maintaining every time that Lonigan had been shot almost immediately after the Gang emerged from the undergrowth:
“I immediately put my arms out horizontally, I was unarmed – so as soon as I did so I saw the same man, the man on the right of the party move the gun a little to his right and fire at Lonigan who had started to run……The effect of the shot on Lonigan was that he immediately fell – he ran only 4 or 5 yards before he fell, I heard him fall I did not see him fall….From the time he was shot till he ceased to struggle about half a minute elapsed all he said was ‘Oh Christ I am shot’ a few minutes after that I saw that he was dead” (Beechworth August 1880)
“I was standing with my face to the fire and my back to the speargrass when sudenly a number of voices from the speargrass sang out “Bail up hold up your hands. Turning quickly around I saw four men each armed with a gun and pointing these weapons at Lonigan and me. The prisoner who was one of the men had the right-hand position and he had his gun pointed at my chest. I being unarmed at once threw my arms out horizontally. Lonigan was in my rear and to my left. Saw the prisoner move his rifle bringing it in line with Lonigan and fire. By glancing around I saw that the shot had taken its effect on Lonigan for he fell. A few seconds later afterwards he exclaimed Oh Christ I am shot” (Melbourne October 1880)
In Melbourne, as we have seen, Kellys defence lawyer mocked him saying if he and Lonigan had been men of real courage they “might have made a good fight. But he ran away and so his account should not be taken as trustworthy”. Wisely, the Jury ignored Bindons’ taunts and believed McIntyre’s account, finding Kelly guilty of Lonigan’s murder, and a couple of weeks later Kelly was dead.
McIntyre retired from the police service the following year, on the grounds of ‘bodily infirmity’. His share of the Reward monies was added to his police pension.
“I returned to the ranges where the pure mountain air and change of employment re-established my health”
In fact, he went to live at Alexandra, and much later moved to Ballarat, and though dogged by mental health issues constantly he managed to raise his family, write poetry, dabble in journalism and write an account of the Outbreak “A True Narrative of the Kelly Gang”.(read it HERE). Once again, he recounted what happened when he and Lonigan were confronted by the Kelly Gang at SBC:
“I was standing with my face to the fire and my back to the rushes looking down the creek for the men whose approach I expected. Lonigan was standing on the opposite side of the fire into which he was gazing intently, he had been strangely silent all day, if he lifted his head he must have seen four men who were approaching us from behind the rushes before they challenged us, but he did not do so.
Suddenly and without warning I heard some voices crying out “Bail up, hold up your hands”. My first impression was that it was Kennedy and Scanlon who, coming from an unexpected quarter, were jesting; on turning quickly round I saw four men standing in the rushes, each of them armed with a gun which they held at their shoulders presented in our direction. I noticed particularly the man upon the right of the attacking party and I knew it was Ned Kelly as soon as I looked at him.
Seeing that he had me fairly and deadly covered, without the slightest tremor in the rifle, I wanted that rifle lowered before I attempted to get my firearms and accordingly threw out my arms horizontally. Immediately I did so Ned Kelly shifted the muzzle of his gun to the right and without taking it from his shoulder shot at Lonigan who had started to run partly towards and partly down the creek putting his hand down as if to get his revolver, he had no time to open the case and must have been looking over his right shoulder when he was shot in the right eye by Ned Kelly. I took a hasty glance around when Kelly fired and saw Lonigan fall heavily he said “Oh! Christ I am shot”, made several plunges, breathing stentorously, after which he remained quiet. The whole affair occurred so quickly that Lonigan did not run more than four or five paces before he was shot; had he stooped down he would have been under cover of the logs when no doubt I would have been shot as a preliminary to their shooting him.”
This is the fifth recorded account McIntyre gave of Lonigans death – his original report, his testimony at two Courts, his brief discussion with Kelly at Glenrowan and now this one. Every time he told the same thing: Lonigan was killed while out in the open, he didn’t get behind a battery of logs, and he didn’t even get his gun out of its holster, let alone fire it. Later, he produced a couple of diagram to illustrate what happened, and in both he showed that Lonigan fell only a few feet away from where he had been standing when the Gang confronted them. Heres the relevant part of the later one:
L1 is where Lonigan stood when the gang approached,
L2 is where his body lay, less than 12feet away not 18 to 20 as Kelly claimed
Kellys version of what happened, presented in the Jerilderie letter was very different: according to Kelly, Lonigan ran six or seven yards and then DID get behind a battery of logs, he DID get his gun out and he DID aim it at Kelly. McIntyre and Kellys accounts are too different for them both to be true – one of them had to be lying but who? – the ‘zealous conscientious policeman’ or the known liar?
According to Jones and Crichton et al. its McIntyre who is lying: “Kelly told the truth, and McIntyre told a big porky.”(Crichton on Facebook a week or two ago).
In a comment dripping with sarcasm and mockery, this is how Jones put it in 2014:
“A Chief Justice of Victoria and formerly an expert defence barrister the late John Phillips considered that the doctors evidence bore out Neds version of the killing of Lonigan, rather than McIntyre’s. Intriguingly, some self-styled forensic and legal experts clinging to McIntyre’s claim that Lonigan was shot before he could draw his revolver, have discounted Phillips views. They are so desperate to avoid the fact that McIntyre made a statement to Supt Sadleir only three days after the gunfight that Lonigan dived behind a log and was coming up to fire at Ned when he was shot – conforming Neds version.
McIntyre, in his most extraordinary piece of evidence at the Beechworth trial quoted a conversation with Ned shortly after his capture:
I said when I help up my hands you shot Lonigan. He said No, Lonigan got behind some logs and pointed his revolver at me, did you not see that? I said No that is only nonsense”
Sadleir, who had transcribed McIntyre’s statement was in the court. Presumably the need to convict Ned Kelly outweighed everything else, even to the extent of condoning perjury”
The reality is this: in saying Sadleir ‘had transcribed McIntyres statement’ Jones is plain wrong, utterly and completely and demonstrably wrong, no question about it! We have copies of every statement McIntyre DID make, and NONE of them said what Sadleir thought he remembered. McIntyre did NOT make a separate statement to Sadleir three days after the ‘gunfight’ (sic), so there never was some other unseen statement that Sadleir transcribed. All that happened was that Sadleir met and spoke to McIntyre several days after the murders, long after McINtyre had already submitted his statement, and then thirty-five years later Sadleir wrote down what he thought he could remember of what McIntyre told him – and got much of it wrong. He also reported that it was Dan Kelly who executed Kennedy and that “Ned Kelly insisted on each of his companions discharging their weapons into the dead bodies of the three police, thus fully implicating, as he thought, each and all in the crime that had been committed’ In relation to Lonigan, this claim was disproved by the autopsy findings which showed that every wound was inflicted on him while alive.
Jones seized on Sadleirs misremembering, and to suit his own purposes Jones misrepresented Sadleirs recollection as being a transcribed ‘statement’ made three days after the murders and promoted it as evidence of a cover up. According to Jones, McIntyre committed perjury because in Court he stuck to the account contained in every actual statement he ever made but not to the content of the non-existent ‘statement’ that Jones invented. This is complete and utter nonsense.
The idea that anyone would seriously believe it made sense to overturn McIntyres written accounts of what happened, repeated five times within a couple of years, and all saying the same thing, and even illustrated with a couple of diagrams, on the basis of a recollection put to paper thirty five years later by someone else is so absurd its laughable.
Except that it’s not really funny – it’s actually appalling for someone purporting to be writing history to get the facts so wrong and to paint McIntyre as a liar and guilty of perjury , its a malicious and baseless vilification of a decent brave and honest policeman, a misrepresentation aimed at discrediting McIntyre in order to maintain Jones fiction about Ned Kelly, that he was a victim. Either that, or it’s an innocent mistake made by deeply ignorant people who have no idea about what constitutes a balanced and rational evidence-based argument.
Unhappily, for anyone who still refuses to accept that Jones got it wrong, there is independent evidence that conclusively proves that the liar was Kelly and that McIntytre told the truth. Its in the form of the irrefutable forensic evidence derived from Dr Samuel Reynolds post mortem examination of poor Lonigans corpse. His findings can only be explained in one way : Lonigan was out in the open when shot. Its literally impossible to recreate a scenario that matches what Kelly claimed, and in which the laws of physics are not violated where someone hiding behind a battery of logs with just his head emerging from above them, could end up with the pattern of wounds Lonigan sustained. The liar was Kelly and the motivation is obvious. End of story. You can read all about that HERE, where the puzzle of Lonigan’s multiple wounds, and the forensic reports are fitted together in the only possible way. Its illustrated with a simple drawing that makes it obvious – this drawing :
As for Crichton’s ridiculous attempt to explain how Lonigans injuries were received I won’t post a link to it but it can be found in his Letter to Thomas on the Iron Outlaw site. Read it if you can be bothered and if you’re not overwhelmed by nausea, have a laugh.
(Thanks to Johhny Reardon for the colourised image at top of page)
I have absolutely no respect for Ian Jones or Peter FitzSimons. Both degraded honest, decent police officers throughout their books. Hard to find anywhere in their books that police are not accused of perjury, and of course their hero, Ned Kelly, is always described as telling the truth. They must have known that Ned Kelly was lying, as he was so often caught out telling lies where ever he went. His hostages giving statements to the police after their ordeals show in no uncertain terms that Kelly was a prolific liar. He wasn’t very good at telling lies. So often his lies found him out, and there is a large amount of evidence displaying his lies in clear and concise language.
Both Jones and FitzSimons are being exposed for the fiction they have written. They disgrace themselves with their dishonest writings.
To three brave men, 26 October 1878, memorial erected by public subscription.
Attachment
Hi David, as luck would have it, that web page link to the Victoria Police Museum that you gave for McIntyre’s “True narrative of the Kelly gang of bushrangers”, also has McIntyre’s Record of Conduct and Service a bit further down the same page, https://www.policemuseum.vic.gov.au/collections
An excellent record, no doubt about that.
The McIntyre perjury claim is another longstanding SNAFU by Jones. I had thought it could be traced as far back as the 1967 Wangaratta Kelly seminar, but it dates back to 1962, in Jones’s Walkabout article titled ‘The years Ned Kelly went straight’. In it he claims, “At the trial, the chief police witness, Constable McIntyre, perjured himself on a small but vital point. He said that L.onigan, challenged by Ned Kelly, was shot as he ran towards cover. … The official
first account of the shooting given by him tallied with Ned Kelly’s. In all subsequent versions, including that given at the trial, this part of the story was amended to make the shooting appear more cold-blooded.”
Jones’ incompetent misreading of Sadlier, his apparent early ignorance of the VPRO Prosecution file that contains McIntyre’s first statement, and his conviction that Kelly had been misunderstood by everyone except himself, led him to romantically claim, “The Ned Kelly who emerged from Pentriidge was the Ned Kelly who has been almmost forgotten: Kelly the honest man, Kelly the timber worker, Kelly the boxer, Kelly the overseer, Kelly the shearer.”
This is the earliest published claim by Jones I have so far found, of his ham-fisted idea that McIntyre perjured himself over Lonigan’s death at Stringybark Creek. Jones’s bungling has powerfully infected Kelly studies for almost 60 years, and is long overdue for dismissal. He mislead a string of legal eagles including Professor Louis Waller and Chief Justice John Phillips who were unaware of Jones’ inept misreading of the source documents, and his maintaining of that idiotic fiction by never recanting the perjury claim through all the years that he did have access to and familiarity with the Proscuction file with McIntyre’s first statement for all to see. Jones maintained that lie through to his last edition of “Short Life”, 2008, p. 362. The book is a disgrace to historiography. Riddled with errors and here with a major outright incompetent lie, it is long overdue to be reclassified as fiction. Certainly no government-funded institution shoud be relying on it for anything factual in the Kelly story. At least Carey’s Kelly novel had the decency to acknowledge it was fiction. An accurate Kelly history is long overdue. Jones “Short Life” is not remotely recommendable as anything like that. It is hard to see that the people currently revising the Ned Kelly Touring Route are going to get much right at all if they keep relying on Jones as a reference, especially with anything to do with Fitzpatrick, Stringybark Creek, Glenrowan, or Kelly’s trial.
Attachment Jones-Straight-Years-1962-Walkabout.pdf
When you remove Jones’s idiotic McIntyre perjury claim based on his bungled misreading of Sadleir that goes all the way back to 1962 if not earlier, what you have left is McIntyre’s consistent statements and testimony including under cross examination that disprove any notions of self defence on the part of Kelly. The forensic evidence of Lonigan’s bullet wounds directly corroborates that testimony, as David and others have been pointing out for a couple of years.
The only question with any remaining bearing on the self defence claim is whether the police party went into the bush intending to kill rather than capture the Kelly brothers for whom they were searching. Jones’s ridiculous body straps theory based on no evidence at all has been critiqued out of existence repeatedly, countered by an assortment of evidence such as that the police party had borrowed a couple of long guns at the last minute, borrowed the tent, and had no idea they were anywhere near the Kelly’s log hut.
Most importantly and something that Kelly seems very confused about in his two letters (Cameron and Jerilderie), the Kelly brothers were not outlawed at the time of the Stringybark murders. The more one looks at the sequence of events, the more it looks like Kelly decided to have it out with the police as a result of his mother’s gaoling, or at least was not fussed if his claimed attempt to take the police guns, equipment and horses turned into murder. This interpretation would seem not inconsistent with McIntyre’s manuscript account of the encounter?
To the commenters who say I should leave Ian Jones alone, go and read the victim impact statements of the effect of over 60 years of Ian Jones’ lies and drivel about Ned Kelly on the descendants of the police murdered at Stringbark Creek, in Doug Morrissey’s “Ned Kelly: the Stringybark Creek Police Murders”. Jones labelled McIntyre a perjurer for over 60 years in numerous publications and speeches. And he kept the lie going to the end even when it was obvious to anyone who read the VPRO Kelly prosecution file that it was total rubbish. Inexcusable. Even worse than what he did to Fitzpatrick’s reputation. This is not something that can be passed up, as so many publicly funded institutions perpetuate Jones’ lies and fabrications. Any genuine Kelly enthusiast would do their bit to correct that rubbish in the interests of accurate history, but they seem happy to just let it go on in institution after institution, talk after talk, handout after handout. It’s a mindless, uncritical cult.
Very interesting to read that PDF of Jones article “The years Ned Kelly Went straight” – thanks for that Link Stuart. Jones sure had it in for McIntyre from a long way back. Ive just been looking through Ned the Exhibition and there too he repeats that same lie about McIntyre. We really do have to smash that one – poor McIntyre deserves better.
The modern Kelly Sympathiser is almost as much a Jones devotee. Jones has the status among them of a cult leader whose every word is accepted without question and woe betide the person who dares criticize him!
But criticize him we shall – he has led all of Australia astray with his fake version of the Kelly Outbreak which would no doubt have pleased and possibly amused Ned Kelly, but should infuriate fair minded people who would find Jones elevation of a psycho cop killer and the denigration of many good policemen hard to stomach.
Its a slow process, correcting entrenched views about the Kelly story especially when the Tourist dollar depends on it, but as we know, it IS happening, the truth is slowly emerging and the historical record is slowly being corrected. We are on the right side of history!
Well boys you’ll need to be quick because the Glenrowan herityage project with an interpretive centre as a part of the project has been announced recently.
no doubt jones will get a guernsey.
It received some press in Melbournes Age paper a few days ago
https://www.wangaratta.vic.gov.au/Development/Our-projects/Glenrowan-Heritage-Project
A request for tender for constructionn is out and closes soon
https://www.eprocure.com.au/wangaratta/
You boys need to lodge a reply so you can take charge of the job and make sure it it gets the facts straight
I would love to do that – to take charge and tell the story in a way thats true to the historical record and devoid of Jones mythology. But the actual tower – who cares about that? Whats important is what story is going to be told. If whoever it is thats going to be writing the narrative hasn’t been hiding under a rock , and if they have any integrity at all the story they will be telling will be very different to the one that everyone has become familiar with over the last Half century – THAT story is on the way out.
I am just looking forward to the day when the penny drops and everyone realises a crime story will be at least as good as a money spinner as the bullshit about Kelly being a hero and the police being corrupt and evil. At present a great deal of the true story is not told because its so embarrassing to the kelly clan descendants and so clearly a story of a criminal dynasty and so much not the story Ian Jones permitted anyone to tell – once its all out there the story will take off in a whole new exciting way as a crime story.
Hi David, I agree with that, that there is plenty of tourist money to be made selling Kelly as “dark” tourism, the worst evil criminal that colonial Australia produced. In fact I suggested that recently to the Ned Kelly Touring Route people but I am not sure how serious they and especially the Wangaratta Council are in contemplating a quite different and factual narrative from the last 60 years of bullshit dominated by Jones fairytales. I guess we’ll see when they start rolling out the projects. It seems that wannabe descendants (none of the gang had kids) have a loud and persistent manner regarding “their Ned” as a hero rather than the mate-dobbing, endlessly lying and double crossing heel that he was.
Hi Anonymouse, thanks for the link. That’s part of the Ned Kelly Alive project that was initiated in 2018. It will be interesting to see what they do in their narrative. You can see the viewing tower design on the Wangaratta council website. I spoke with them about 2 weeks ago; they wanted to know if I wanted to comment on a virtual tour of the design, but I wasn’t interested in watching it. They will build whatever they build, and it will say whatever it says, then we will see what we think of the result and comment accordingly. They have enough information to get the facts of Glenrowan right if they can be bothered reading them…. If not, they can go and embarrass themselves accordingly!
That 1962 Walkabout article by Jones attached above said another interesting thing – that Ned Kelly had learned to work granite in Beechworth gaol, and had also done building work in a convict gang. In 1875, Jones says, Kelly contracted to build a granite house for a settler near Glenrowan, which still stands today. One is almost star struck by the lad’s talents… But is it true? Did he really contract to build a granite stone house? Or is it just Jones’ early enthusiasm for Kelly the wunderkind? First question: why would a settler contract with an ex-convict with no stone building track record and who failed grammar and arithmetic in third grade, managed to pass arithmetic (but not grammar) in March the next year (Jones, Short Life 2008: 24-25), then left school. Hardly the background education from which a fully planned stone house would be successfully designed, contracted and built? Why would the settler have signed a building contract with such a semi-literate character as Kelly? Perhaps there is some flight of fancy here, dating back to 1962, worth further enquiry… I think so.
So the claim is he built a granite house for a settler while his mother and all his siblings were living in a shack with a mud floor and blankets for walls? Really? What a wonderfully kind and considerate young man he was!
Actually we are learning that every claim Jones made needs to be fact-checked! In that same article Jones gets wrong the important detail of the incident where Wild Wright borrowed the Mansfield vicars horse, saying Kelly was convicted of ‘receiving’ and Wright of ‘stealing’ it – No, sorry, Kelly was convicted of “Feloniously receiving” which is a whole quantum of criminality greater than mere ‘receiving’ and Wright was convicted of ‘illegally using’ which is not stealing at all.
Jones also screwed up the narrative about Kellys arrest for drunkenness, saying Fitzpatrick wanted to handcuff him as they were about to cross the road and called this ‘remarkably sinister’ – Well again, sorry but No Ian, – if we believe what Ned Kelly himself wrote about this in the Jerilderie letter, the police permitted Kelly to walk across the road WITHOUT handcuffs and the fool took advantage of this leniency and made a run for it. And then, as we all know the idiot ended up trapped in the bootmakers shop, where there wasnt a back door he was hoping to find and escape through, and THAT was when the handcuffs were applied. The facts of that episode show it in a completely different light.
Yep, as you say, Jones granite house claim requires that Kelly was building it while his mother’s own bush hut was the squalid dump described by Nicholson in the Royal Commission.
It seems like Jones had formulated some of these theories very early in the piece, then arranged or modified the bits of evidence he came across later to suit his evolving fantasy narrative.
From some further reading I have done tonight it looks fairly certain that Ned didn’t learn or practice stone masonry at Pentridge or later. I’ll set this out in detail but it will take a couple of days. If this is right, then did he learn stone masonry during his time in Beechworth Gaol? When he was 16-17 years old? This seems to be what Jones’s claim requires….