Ned Kelly connections

THE exploits of the Kelly gang were regularly recounted in the pages of the McIvor Times in the late 1870s.

The Jerilderie raid is one of the gang’s more famous robberies and led to the Jerilderie letter in which Kelly attempted to defend his crimes.

Most Ned Kelly accounts were reproduced from larger newspapers, but occasionally a locally written story was published.

Published Thursday, 20 February 1879

INTERVIEW WITH THE KELLY GANG

NEWS of the Kelly Gang of outlaws is always received with interest, but the news becomes more interesting still when mentioned in connection with townsmen.

Mr Thomas Merifield whose family reside at Heathcote, but who himself is at present engaged in carrying with his teams on the road between Hay and Deniliquin, had the honor [sic], if honor [sic] it may be termed, of an interview with the outlaws subsequent to their raid on Jerilderie.

He fell in with them about five miles from that township near an hotel not far from a station on the road from Jerilderie to Deniliquin, and conversed with them.

Ned Kelly principally, for some time. The bushranger recounted to Merifield what had taken place at Jerilderie, the sticking up of the bank &c., and pointed to the money taken from the bank strapped on to his saddle.

Kelly said he was fully determined to shoot Constable Devine, and was only prevented from doing so by the constable’s wife going down on her knees and pleading hard for his life.

They were then anxious to find the bank manager believing he was on his way to Deniliquin to give information, and questioned Merifield as to whether he had seen him, and afterwards searched the hotel for him, Ned Kelly stating that he would shoot him if they found him.

Ned passed some remark about Merifield’s horses, to the effect that they would be a fine set to take to Cooper’s Creek.

Merifield, however, told him that he thought they would be too heavy for him, and urged Kelly not to take them, “pitching a yarn” to him about his being a poor man.

Kelly then said he had never robbed a poor man and he never would do so, and would not take the horses.

Merifield recognised the Kellys at once by the portraits in the papers, as they rode up revolver in hand and rifles slung round their necks, and describes Ned as a fine-made man.

A person who has just returned from Jerilderie and that part, informs us that there was every opportunity afforded of capturing or shooting the gang when at the station after their leaving Jerilderie.

The Kellys are stated to have gone about the station, quite unprepared for a sudden attack, and Hart and Byrne, who kept about 200 yards off, were so drunk that they could hardly sit on their horses.

There were several hands at the station sitting and standing about outside, who took the affair very quietly.