In early colonial Australia, the term “bushranger” referred to convicts who had escaped from custody to survive by foraging in the unsettled areas or “bush” [2]. Later, it was used as a term to describe outlaws who also took refuge in the bush, often in gangs, who robbed banks and farmhouses and who stole cattle and horses from sharecroppers. Ned Kelly (Fig. 1), one of the better-known bushrangers, was executed on 11th November 1880 for the murder of Constable Lonigan, although he and his gang also killed two other police officers, Sergeant Kennedy and Constable Scanlan, in a carefully orchestrated ambush at Stringybark Creek [3]. Kelly was later captured during a siege at Glenrowan where he had held up to 62 hostages in preparation for killing a number of police officers and Aboriginal troopers who had been despatched to the area by train [4]. Had he succeeded, it would have been the largest single massacre of police in Australia to date.

A photograph of Ned Kelly taken in 1880 A (National Archives of Australia, Public Domain) and a woodcut of his trial in Melbourne B (State Library of Victoria, Public Domain)

Over the years, two opposing views of Kelly have developed. Many maintain that he was a callous killer. Modern investigations and analyses have added some credence to these views. For example, it has been argued that Kelly did not fire as many rounds at Stringybark Creek, as scoring of his bullets (cutting an “x” into the soft lead) would have resulted in bullets fragmenting in the air, and thus more wounds would have occurred with fewer projectiles. This phenomenon was confirmed at a police firing range in the “Lawless – The Real Bushrangers” documentary series where a replica of Kelly’s gun was tested [5]. However, this does not address the question as to why Kelly scored his bullets in the first place. Such altered bullets are called “expanding bullets” and are known to fragment on hitting a target thus causing more tissue and organ damage. Their use was outlawed by the Hague Convention of 1899 [6].

A recent analysis of Kelly’s behaviour has also revealed disturbing trends with an assessment by a psychiatrist suggesting that Kelly was psychopathic and guilty of “pathological lying, callous lack of empathy for others and a parasitic lifestyle” [7]. Not only were his actions and police record reviewed but so were his comments. In the Jerilderie letter, for example, he said in reference to the police, “I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain. I would manure the Eleven Mile with their bloated carcasses”. He also vented his spleen against those who helped the police: “Without medicine I shall be compelled to make an example of some of them …….. pegged on an ant bed with their bellies opened, their fat taken out, rendered and poured down their throat boiling hot” [8]. In light of these sentiments, it is perhaps surprising that people continue to consider him a folk hero.

An alternative view of Ned Kelly as a champion of working-class oppression emerged in the early twentieth century. The first pro-Kelly book, The Inner History of the Kelly Gang, was published in Melbourne in 1929. The author, James Kenneally, was a journalist, trade unionist and founding member of the Country Labour Party. Kenneally’s popularisation of the Kelly story coincided with George Arnold Wood’s re-interpretation of the social origins of Australia’s convict migrants and the heightened social tensions which accompanied the Great Depression [9]. McQuilton was undoubtedly right when he argued that it was the economic hardship of the early thirties that gave the Kelly story “a new lease of life and a new significance” [10]. Ward’s attempt in the early 1950s to trace and explain Australian’s perceptions of their history further solidified Kelly’s identification as the “righter of wrongs” perpetuated by the authorities against the oppressed [11], an image that was reinforced through the painter Sidney Nolan’s many enigmatic works depicting Kelly in stylised armour.

A lasting consequence of this has been the casting of Kelly as a folk hero, a type of Robin Hood remembered by expressions in Australian parlance such as “as game [sic “bold”] as Ned Kelly” and regarded by some as “a key element of Australian identity” [2, 3]. Major sporting teams have had his image as part of their logos [1], and Ned Kelly figures borrowed from Nolan’s works featured prominently in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games [12]. A stamp was issued by the Australian Commonwealth Government to commemorate the centenary of his death [13]. He has been referred to as “the prince of larrikins”, the latter term being used in Australia for “a mischievous young person, an uncultivated, rowdy but good hearted person” or even “a juvenile centaur” [14, 15]. These are all interesting, complimentary and yet puzzling memorials to a self-confessed and convicted thief and police killer [14].

In a previous retrospective study, the association of tattoos depicting Ned Kelly with a particular manner of death was examined, which showed that in a medicolegal environment, there was a significantly higher rate of unnatural deaths due to trauma in decedents who had these tattoos [16]. As this study was criticised because of its retrospective nature, the following prospective study was undertaken to clarify this issue.