The Argus at KellyGang 1/12/1881
The Glenrowan Board has recommended the payment of a sum of £305 to Mrs ANN JONES as compensation for the destruction of her hotel in the final fight with the Kelly gang. The woman claimed much more, but the public, after a perusal of the published evidence, may well be surprised that there should be an award at all in her favour. The claim was opposed on behalf of the Crown, on the plea that Mrs JONES brought what happened upon herself, and the case established will seem to most people tolerably conclusive. So strongly do the police feel on this point, that Mrs JONES was arrested and arraigned for sheltering and succouring the outlaws, and though a Beechworth jury acquitted her, yet it is one thing to say that she is not so clearly guilty that she is to be punished, and another to resolve that she is innocent, and should be compensated.
It is in evidence that immediately before the out-rage she expressed admiration for the outlaws to Constable BRACKEN, saying to him that if Sergeant KENNEDY had been her son, she "could not help but like them," i.e., the KELLYS. Her conduct to the outlaws was of a piece with this declaration. That she entertained them, and danced with them, and allowed her son to sing the "Kelly song," counts for little, because coercion is a reasonable plea in excuse. As a matter of course, the woman would not dare to offend the gang. But it is sworn that she sat with her arm round NED KELLY'S neck, and that she boasted of kissing the ruffian; and behaviour of this kind was certainly unforced, and it cuts the offender off from sympathy. Above all, there is the statement that when the KELLYS were willing to let the prisoners out before the police arrived, Mrs JONES interfered, and stopped their departure in the interest of the gang. They were not to go, she said, until they had been "lectured," a word which they seem to have interpreted as meaning "warned” about giving an alarm to the police. If this statement be true, and there seems no reason to suppose that the witnesses invented the story, then it is not too much to say that the woman was answerable for the innocent lives that were lost in the fray. Without the captives to look after, the gang probably would not have remained in the house, and the Glenrowan Hotel would have been standing to this day, and, at any rate, the sacrifice of noncombatants would not have had to be deplored. No act could be more disgraceful than this interference between the gang and the prisoners, and none, as the event proved, more hurtful in its consequences. It is reported that the woman is dissatisfied with the award, as her claim for consequential damages is not recognised.
Neither should the Government be content with the recommendation. What-ever claim the Glenrowan landlady has it is a legal, and not an equitable right, and we would submit that the better course is to leave the woman to her legal remedy.
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