Setting The Record Straight On The Death Of An Outlaw.
Australia's leading legal historian examines the chain of events that occurred between Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan and the day he faced the public executioner revealing the truth behind the drama, intrigue, and pathos of the death of Australia's most notorious outlaw.
In 1880 Ned Kelly was a great deal more than just an outlaw who had to be punished for his crimes. He stood for many things to many different people - from the most powerful man in the colony to a school child in a small country town - but whatever their reasons they were all united in the belief that the bushranger must die.
'Ned Kelly's Last Days' is about the chain of events that occurred between Ned's last stand at Glenrowan and the day he faced the public executioner, a hangman's noose around his neck. It's about extraordinary political maneuverings, blatant cover-ups, corruption at the highest level and a rampant press baying for blood. Most of all it's about the public and not-so-public figures who surrounded him in his last months, from the fiercely puritanical Chief Secretary and his gambling socialite Chief of Police, to the haunted lone survivor of Stringybark Creek and the woman known as Ned's 'fiancée'.
Piecing together a vast jigsaw of obscure records and unpublished material, 'Ned Kelly's Last Days' sets the record straight on the highly questionable judicial processes of the time and sheds a whole new light on the life and death of the most famous bushranger of them all.
