Did Dan Kelly and Steve Hart survive the Glenrowan Inn fire?

by Trevor Percival

History tells us that an enterprising woman named Ann Jones established the Glenrowan Inn in 1878 to service travellers, but that it only ran for two years before it was the scene of the last stand the Kelly Gang. By the time the siege was over, with Ned Kelly captured and the rest of the gang dead, the inn had been destroyed by fire, lit by police to flush out gang members. Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s charred bodies were returned to Kelly family members in the evening of the siege, on Monday 28th June, 1880. The body of Joe Byrne, who was killed earlier in the siege by a police bullet, was retrieved unburnt from the inn. Ann Jones’s 13-year-old son, John, and the hostage, Martin Cherry, later died from wounds suffered in the shootout. There were in fact more than 60 hostages in the Glenrowan Inn when the first shots were fired. Ned Kelly was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was hung at Old Melbourne Gaol on 11th November, 1880, aged 25. His “reported” last words were “Such is life”. This is what history tells us. But what if some of that history is wrong. What if Dan Kelly and Steve Hart didn’t perish in the Glenrowan Inn fire? One year, while fossicking on Chinaman Creek, I met an elderly gentleman who said he had met Steve Hart’s sister who claimed Dan Kelly had moved north to live in a hut outside of Mitchell in western Queensland. The gentleman, in his travels, had also met Steve Hart who had shown him burn scars on his back and said that he and Dan had hidden in the cellar and escaped during the night. A Queensland Sunday Mail article by Wayne Kelly (no relation to Ned and Dan) which published on 17th July, 1988, said that one person who scoffed at the stories of Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s escape was Frank Rolleston of Eton near Mackay. Rolleston said that because of the rumours of an escape, for years afterwards, any old greybeard camped in isolation was not only suspected of being Dan Kelly but a published series about a man who said he was Dan Kelly had brought protests from at least five other “Dan Kellys” living in various corners of Australia.

But the article also suggested that Dan and Steve, after learning of Ned’s capture and therefore his certain death by hanging, went by ship to Argentina and then to South Africa. Long-time Kelly researcher, Kieran Magill, of Redbank Plains, told the Queensland Sunday Mail that it was indeed possible Dan and Steve had escaped. Mr Magill, who had studied official records of the Kelly Gang, including those of the Royal Commission which followed, said an escape could have been made in the final hours of the Glenrowan siege.

Glenrowan Inn

Amateur historian, Hilda Hornberg, of Redland Bay, also told of a meeting she had had in Roma in 1933 with Dan Kelly, then in his seventies. Ms Hornberg said Dan was on his way to a station to see Steve Hart and the man calling himself Dan Kelly had shown her and others his burn scars. Another person, J. Hunter, of Ipswich, contacted the Sunday Mail saying his sister, who had been a trainee nurse at Royal Brisbane Hospital, had told of a dying patient with burn scars who said he was Dan Kelly. The man would have been in his eighties. No-one disputes the fact that the remains of two very burnt bodies were later retrieved from the smouldering ruins of the inn and it was simply assumed they were the charred corpses of Dan Kelly and Steve Hart. Their identification however, was solely based on the word of Matthew Gibney, a priest from Western Australia, who was on a trip to the colonies on the east coast of Australia and was travelling by train between Benalla and Albury when he heard about the siege while the train was stopped at Glenrowan. Gibney decided to go and take a look. Gibney had never set eyes on Kelly or Hart but later, when he heroically entered the burning Glenrowan Inn in an attempt to rescue anyone inside, he said he had discovered the then unburnt bodies of Dan Kelly and Hart, who he surmised had committed suicide.

Dan Kelly - Bushranger

But the bodies were never positively identified by the police and the Kelly family, who took charge of the blackened remains, refused to give them up for an inquest. In a second Sunday Mail article, this one by Ken Blanch, which published on 26th November, 1989, it was revealed that a man by the name of William Bede Melville, in August 1902, had cabled several Australian newspapers from Capetown in South Africa, that two men had identified themselves to him as Kelly and Hart. Melville, an ex-Sydney pressman, was at one time private secretary to Sir George Dibbs, three times Premier of NSW. Melville said the two Australians were brought to his hotel room in Pretoria one night in Africa at midnight by a mutual acquaintance. What follows is part of Melville’s account of the discussion that took place: “A bottle was opened, pipes were filled and long after midnight, Dan Kelly combed his tangled hair with his fingers and said, ‘Steve here, and me, and Joe Byrne was in that pub all right. Ned got away nicely, and we was to follow him, but Joe Byrne was boozed and we couldn’t pull him together. When we wasn’t watching, he slipped outside and was shot. After that, two drunken coves was shot through the winder. They wanted to have a go at the traps, so we give them rifles, revolvers, powder and shot. The firing where they dropped was too hot for us to reach them, so our rifles and revolvers were found by their remains. This was why they thought we were dead. I’m sorry for those coves as they didn’t take my tip and go out with a flag, but they’d the drink and the devil in them. Well, Steve and me then planned an escape. We was in a trap and we had to get out of it. The next thing was how to leave the pub.

Joe Byrne - Bushranger

We had spare troopers’ uniforms with caps that we always carried so we put them on. There were some trees and logs at the back so we hung along the ground for a few yards and then blazed away at the pub just like the troopers and you couldn’t tell us from the bloomin’ traps. We retreated from tree to tree and bush to bush, pretending to take cover. Soon, we was amongst the scattered traps and we banged away at the bloomin’ shanty more than any of them. The traps came from a hundred miles around and only some of them knowed each other. They didn’t know us anyhow. They couldn’t tell us from themselves. We worked back into the timber and got away. Soon afterwards, we saw the old house nearly burnt to the ground and we thanked our stars we was not burnt alive. Well, we got to a friend’s (shepherd’s) hut and we stayed three days and the shepherd brought us papers with whole pages about our terrible end, and burnt up bodies and all that sort of stuff. We read of Ned’s capture and we was for taking to the bush again, but the shepherd made us promise to leave Australia quietly. He gave us clothes and money. We got to Sydney and shipped to Argentina. We had a good time of it and didn’t get interfered with and we didn’t interfere with anybody also. We pretty much kept to ourselves so as not to bring attention to us. A few years ago we crossed to South Africa where the Boer War broke out, and being out of work, we went to the front. We had some narrer escapes but nothing like the Glenrowan pub. We’re off in an hour or so but we don’t want the world to know. You can say what I tell you, but wait three weeks or a month. Listen, if you give us away, this little thing in my hand, a friend of mine, will blow you out.’ And he put the point of the revolver into my eye. I looked at him sharply, and the awful glare in his eyes and the suspicion that convulsed his face, convinced me he meant it. The other day, six weeks later, I was surprised to encounter Dan Kelly and Steve Hart in Adderley Street, Capetown. ‘Well,’ said Kelly, ‘You kept your promise. We have not been interfered with. You may write what you like after termorrow.’ I did not enquire about their destination and they did not volunteer the information.”

Ned Kelly at Old Melbourne Gaol

Some more of the details in Melville’s account appeared years later in a story that published on 18th December, 2007, in the Brisbane Courier Mail. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Mr Collin Sippel of Murgon. Mr Sippel and Bill Roberts, a former Mayor of Murgon, were investigating the deathbed confession of a gentleman, Bill Meade, who had died in the nearby Wondai Hospital in 1938. Meade went to his grave claiming he was actually Steve Hart of the Kelly Gang. Mr Sipple was six-years-old when he first met Meade who taught him leatherwork when he was living in the Redgate area near Murgon. Mr Roberts had also known Meade in his younger days. There was talk of raising money to have the body of Meade exhumed for modern DNA testing. Mr Sipple and Mr Roberts said the Bill Meade they remembered was similar in stature, appearance and age to early photographs of Hart. In September of 2009 I rang Mr Sipple to enquire how the investigation was progressing and was told that they were having problems in raising enough money or getting a sponsor to invest in the process of finding out if Bill Meade’s statement that he was Steve Hart, was true or false. Nothing ever came of the matter and Bill Meade’s bones lie undisturbed in his grave. Bill Meade was 78 or 79 when he died in 1938 so he would have been born around 1860 making him either 20 or 21 at the time of the Glenrowan fire. Steve Hart was born on 13th February, 1859. He was 21 when he “died” at the siege of the Glenrowan Inn.

So, did Dan Kelly and Steve Hart make it out of the burning Glenrowan Inn all the way to Argentina and then to South Africa to fight in the Boer War, before returning to Australia decades later? The truth might never be known but it makes a good story all the same.