There were many interesting details that others may have known but which I hadn’t come across before, or else were things only mentioned in passing but here exposed in sometimes hideous detail – like Jack Lloyds brutal slaying with an axe of a neighbours horse. Kieza has pieced the story together convincingly and without sentimentality about either the Kellys or the Police. The exploits of her son Ned greatly added to the hardships and the sorrow she was forced to endure to the very end of her long life. In those difficult days, it wasn’t unusual for a mother to lose an infant or two, but it was still tragic, but Ellen also lost a daughter in childbirth and another by drowning, she lost a son in a police siege and another by hanging, and endured the lifelong shame of being the mother of a notorious police killler, who’s life and death is the only reason we know about Ellens.
If it hadn’t been for Ned she would probably just have been another forgotten woman who like many others of her time, was poor, married young, never learned to read or write properly, had many babies and lost several of them, was widowed and married again, raised grandchildren, worked extremely hard all her life just to survive, and rode horses. Ellen Kellys life was different from the thousands of other Irish immigrant women who settled in Victoria in the 19 thcentury because of one thing : she gave birth to Ned Kelly, an Australian with a combination of social and character traits that resulted in him becoming a notorious outlaw.
0 kommentar(er)
