Changing times !

Ned Kelly certainly made his mark on the history of this country.  He is probably our most famous outlaw and the fact that he constructed body armour and shot it out with the police made him a legend.  That was a time when the ultimate punishment for murder was to stand on a trap door with a rope around your neck and wait for the executioner to trip the release lever.

A public hanging was not the end of the matter.  Punishment reached beyond the grave and the executed were denied burial in consecrated ground.   Like other executed murderers, Kelly's body was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison grounds, and there it remained until the gaol was closed and those remains ordered to be removed.

Ned Kelly was executed in 1880 and despite the passage of 132 years there was still controversy about what would happen to his interred bones.   DNA testing revealed their authenticity, but Kelly's head was    not buried with his body and today it is described as " missing " !

At the time of his execution, hanging was not the ultimate state revenge available to a court.  British law still contained the penalty of having the deceased " hung, drawn and quartered " - but that penalty was never handed down in Australia.    Probably because the thought of ripping the body apart and consigning parts of it to the four corners of this continent was too daunting a task to be even considered.

We live in changing times.    Today, few murderers serve more than twenty years in prison - and the death penalty has been long abolished.    Theoretically, a particularly gruesome crime could attract a sentence of " life without parole ", but even then the sentence would be subject to later review by appeal judges.

Ned Kelly is being rehabilitated.   The bones of this outlaw legend will at last lay in consecrated ground.  They will be handed back to his family and - following a church service open to all - be interred in an unmarked family plot in the area where his family still lives.    The absence of a marker is intended to prevent his resting place from becoming a shrine for those who today still oppose the rule of law.

Some people still oppose this recognition of Ned Kelly as a person.   The fact that he killed police officers is behind the animosity and his restitution by way of reburial in consecrated ground is bitterly resented.  That opposition is clearly out of step with the customs that now prevail.

Kelly lived in an age when many things on both sides of the law were cruel - and unjust.   It is unfair to judge him on the morality of today when the circumstances that prevailed belonged to a far different era.

He has served his sentence - let him now rest in peace !