Ned Kelly - Jerilderie Letter

Jerilderie Letter

Months prior to arriving in Jerilderie, Joe Byrne helped Ned Kelly dictate a lengthy letter for publication describing his view of his activities and the treatment of his family and, more generally, the treatment of Irish Catholics by the police and the English and Irish Protestant squatters.

The Jerilderie Letter, as it is called, is a document of 7,391 words and became a famous piece of Australian literature. Ned Kelly handed it to Mrs. Gill, on Monday 10 February 1879 during the time when the Kelly gang held up the town of Jerilderie.

Before the Jerilderie Letter, Kelly had posted a 20 page letter on 16 December 1878 to a member of Parliament, Mr Donald Cameron M.L.A, stating his grievances, but only a synopsis was published. The letter highlights the various incidents that led to him becoming an outlaw (see Rise to notoriety).

Excerpts of the Jerilderie Letter were published and then it was concealed until rediscovered in 1930. It was then published in full by the Melbourne Herald.

The handwritten document was donated anonymously to the State Library of Victoria in 2000. Historian Alex McDermott stated that "even now it's hard to defy his voice. With this letter Kelly inserts himself into history, on his own terms, with his own voice. ... We hear the living speaker in a way that no other document in our history achieves". Kelly's language is colourful, rough and full of metaphors; it is "one of the most extraordinary documents in Australian history".

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds publican John Hanlon's transcript of the Jerilderie Letter.