Australian Robin Hood?

How do you become a folk hero by robbing banks?  Let’s check out the interesting story of notorious Ned Kelly.

During the mid-1800’s Australia had its own version of the “Wild West”, particularly during the time of the gold rush. While the majority of people were either trying to scrape out a living as farmers in Australia’s challenging environment, or were trying their luck at finding gold, Ned Kelly and his gang decided that neither of these were good ways to make fast cash.

There seems to be a contradiction in terms – how do you rob banks and become a hero?  With his trademark big, bushy beard, Ned Kelly tried to give back to the common man just like Robin Hood. For instance, it is said that while his gang was in the bank vault loading up on money, Ned would find the mortgage papers for farmers and burn them…no record of the mortgage clearly meant that the farmers had purchased the land in full!

Ned Kelly was able to evade capture for years. Eventually, the law caught up with him. Surrounded by police, the gang decided they would go out fighting. They had one trick up their sleeves to help with their survival and possible escape…armour! The gang had outfitted themselves with armour fashioned out of iron plough blades. Each of them had a helmet with a thin slit for the eyes, a chest protector that went from shoulders down to their waist, and arm guards for their upper arms. The police were all trained to shoot for the largest part of the body – the chest. When they did so, the bullets hit the iron armour and bounced off.  Eventually the police got smart and shot him in the legs and he was captured.  Afterwards, his armour was examined and was shown to have been hit five times in the helmet, three in the chest, nine in the back and one in the shoulder.

Ned Kelly was tried and sentenced to death by hanging. His last words were thought to be “Such is life”.

All 5 sets of the armour can still be seen today, with one complete set generally kept at the Victoria State Library in Melbourne.  You can view some photos from the Victoria State Library’s website here.

One thing I really found interesting about this whole story was the use of armour by Kelly’s gang.  Of course we know about armour use in the medieval times, and I suppose that one natural progression is to use armour in more modern times.  Kelly’s use of armour brought the medieval to the present time.  Modern day armour used to protect police and soldiers is primarily made of kevlar and weighs a fraction of what Kelly wore!

In the end I’m not sure that Kelly was truly a hero.

You want more?  You guessed it…there’s a movie!  Check out this trailer…