[BITList] Fabled Ned Kelly Set to Get His Final Resting Place

[John Feltham]

Fabled Ned Kelly Set to Get His Final Resting Place

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/246619/20111110/fabled-ned-kelly-set-final-resting-place.htm
By Erik Pineda | November 10, 2011 1:25 PM EST

The law regarded him as a blight to the society but many who had allegedly rubbed elbows with Ned Kelly attested to his hero status among the masses, who reportedly adored Kelly for standing up against abuses and corruption.


Reuters.


A photograph of a police mugshot of Ned Kelly, aged 16, at the Old Melbourne Gaol, March 13, 2008. Kelly, immortalised for using home-made armour in a final shoot-out with police, became a folk hero of Australia's colonial past with his gang's daring bank robberies and escapes. Kelly was hanged at the Melbourne Gaol in 1880. Australian archaeologists believe they have found the grave of Kelly on the site of an abandoned prison.


Yet to the surviving members of Kelly's family, giving him a proper burial more than a century after he was executed is the most important thing, effectively eclipsing any talks of vilifications and praises reaped on the man convicted for killing three law enforcers.

Kelly lived in an era when British rule was in effect in Australia and his accounts of criminal campaigns were somewhat got entangled with tales that highlighted his exploits of going against the excesses of authorities, then manifested by unjust land owner abuses with the perceived protection of the colonial government.

Almost eternally eluding arrest, the law finally caught up with Kelly in Victoria on 1880 where authorities had him hanged and his body lumped with other unknown criminals in a common grave, punctuating an undignified end for a person who courted controversy, peril and mystery during his lifetime.


On Wednesday, the Victorian government announced its intention to return Kelly's skeletal remains, which authorities have pinpointed and identified earlier in September this year, to his family.
The bones, which remained unidentified for 131 years, according to Agence France Presse (AFP), are without a head but Anthony Griffiths, a Kelly descendant, doesn't mind at all and is more focused on finally laying to rest the man he had traced as his relative.

"Our family, like every family, likes to be able to bury their own family members. Our aim is to give him a dignified funeral, like any family would," Griffiths was quoted by the AFP report on Thursday.

Most likely, Kelly will be buried near Glenrowan, where according to Victorian state attorney general Robert Clark his relatives were entombed, including his mother Ellen.

Clark added that the state government's act was also a form of fulfilment for Kelly's last wish of being interred with his relatives, which he allegedly made known a day before his hanging.

Prior to his bone rediscovery, Kelly was known to Australians via the countless depictions of his activities in books and films, including two movies that according to AFP were starred on by the late Heath Ledger and rock icon Mick Jagger.
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