The Age (60)

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The Age continued with its report of efforts to save Ned Kelly

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The execution of Ned Kelly will take place in the Melbourne Gaol this morning at ten o'clock. It is anticipated that a large concourse of people will assemble in the vicinity of the gaol, but a strong body of police will be in readiness to meet any emergency. No disturbance, however, is anticipated. The sympathisers with the condemned man Edward Kelly congregated in large numbers yesterday at the Robert Burns Hotel, where relatives are staying. A deputation, headed by Mr W Gaunson, waited on the Chief Secretary, at seven o'clock, to know the result of the meeting of the Cabinet, and were informed that the original decision of the Cabinet could not be alerted. A meeting was then held, at eight pm, at the hotel, when a large number of people assembled, drawn principally from the lowest classes.

The crowd was harangued by some of the persons who are making themselves so prominent in the Kelly agitation, and it was then resolved that a deputation should wait on the Governor, and in the event of his refusing to see the deputation, to wait on the Chief Secretary, for the purpose of asking him to still further consider the question. On the deputation arriving at Government House, they were informed by Captain Le Patourel that his Excellency had fully considered the matter, and must positively decline any further interview.

Mr W Gaunson next led the deputation to the Parliament House, where Mr Berry was interviewed. That gentleman informed him that no good could be derived by further agitation; that every latitude had been allowed the prisoner, and the jury having found him guilty he must suffer the extreme penalty of the law. He considered that the people who were getting up this agitation were by no means friends of the condemned man or his family, for they were trying to raise false hopes which had no foundation. The interested parties in the case were misguided people , who were travelling in an undesirable path, and the sooner they recognized this fact the better. He advised them to go back and disperse the crowd quietly. The party next went down to the hotel and communicated the result to the crowd. Mr Hamilton, a travelling phrenological lecturer, who has busied himself in the matter, attacked the action of the Governor and the Chief Secretary, and William Gaunson inveighed against the press. The crowd, after listening for a time, quietly dispersed.

During the past day Kelly has been very reticent in his manner. He was visited at the gaol yesterday by his sisters Kate and Grace, and his brother James, and took a farewell parting. The mother, Mrs Kelly, was also allowed to have a parting interview with her son. Kelly has requested that his body be handed over to his relatives, and that Mrs Kelly be released from gaol. Precisely the same course will be followed as in the case of any other criminal.

A warrant taken out by the police for the arrest of Mrs Ann Jones, the licensee of the Glenrowan Hotel. was yesterday executed by Detective Eason. This person, it will be remembered, was in occupation of the hotel at the time destruction of the Kelly gang, but since then she has been residing at Wangaratta, until recently, when she came to Melbourne, and took lodgings at the Robert Burns Hotel, Lonsdale street where the friends and relatives of the surviving outlaw have also resided. A good deal of sympathy has been expressed for this woman on account of her son, a lad about 15 years of age, having been killed in the encounter which the police had with the gang, and also for the loss she was understood to have suffered through the burning of her house.

She lodged a claim against the Government on this account some time ago. From the first, however, the police have had grave susprisous that she had a closer connections with the outlaws than she cared to acknowledge. For some time past Dectective Eason has been stationed at Glenrowan, and, with Inspector Kennedy, who also visited the locality, succeeded in quietly collecting evidence which the authorities consider quite sufficient to base a prosecution upon against Mrs Jones for knowingly and wilfully harboring the gang. When arrested she protested her innocence, and complained of having lost enough already without being subjected to prosecution. She was duly lodged in the watchouse, and will be brought before the Police Court this morning, when a remand to Wangaratta will be asked for.


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