Content

For his 1929 book, Kenneally put together police statements made under oath at the time of the Kelly break-out and the events leading up to it, with the findings of the 1881 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Victorian Police. Many of the policemen involved in the saga were subsequently demoted and pensioned off or, in the case of Constable Fitzpatrick, the constable whose initial charges against members of the Kelly family ignited the war between the Kellys and the police, dismissed. He also interviewed Tom Lloyd, a Kelly cousin^[4]: 9 and so-called fifth member of the Kelly gang, whose information was previously unpublished,^[2] such as the whereabouts of the gang when they were in hiding, the manner in which the gang approached Jerilderie (crossing the Murray River at Burramine, New South Wales, arriving from the south^{[4]: 88–89} instead of from some other direction,^[10]) for example. He also incorporated fresh statements from others like William Williamson, whom with Kelly's mother and infant sister, was wrongfully arrested after the Fitzgerald incident^{[4]: 37–38} and witnesses like Aaron Sherritt's young wife and mother-in-law, Mrs. Barry, who were present at Sherritt's killing, and James Reardon and his wife, and members of the police force who were present at Glenrowan from the commission testimony.

Kenneally profiled the main spies for the police and their methods, the treatment of the gang's prisoners at Jerilderie, Euroa, and Glenrowan, the procedures of Supeterintendents C.H. Nicolson and Hare and Captain Standish, all charged at different times with directing the search for the Kellys before the showdown at Glenrowan,–even which members of the police merited the Kellys admiration. Finally, he also established the difference between Kate Kelly and her older sister Margaret Kelly (Mrs. Skillion) and Steve Hart when the police could not^[4]: 28 and the press at the time did not: Ned Kelly had a total of five sisters.

His author profile in The Inner History of the Kelly Gang describes Kenneally growing up "alive to the reactions of the people who lived in the Kelly country" and "to the treatment to which the Kelly family was subjected": The book was his life's project.^[4]: 2 It was also one of the first sympathetic accounts of the Kelly Gang, and Kenneally believed it to be the first impartial one^[11]). It ends with reviews by Ned's sole surviving brother, Jim, then-aged 70,^[2] and a cousin, James Ryan, whose brother Joseph, was one of the 22 held for nearly four months without trial in 1879 for being an alleged Kelly sympathiser.^{[4]: 202–03}

Critical reception

The book was generally well received. The reviewer for the Melbourne Herald wrote that Kenneally's "facts are ably presented," noting "most of his evidence is drawn from official sources—police evidence—showing the conduct of the constables and their immediate superiors in a very poor light."^[11] The reviewer for the Franklin and Somerville Standard wrote that Inner History makes "fairly good reading, especially to those whose only knowledge of the gang has been derived from folk tales and the reading of previous works of fiction founded on fact." His one criticism was that although the author seemed determined "to paint every action of the police as black as possible," the book throughout "has the ring of truth."^[12]

Copyright infringements

The book was plagiarised twice by J.M.S. Davies in 1930, the year after its publication, in serialised accounts of the Kelly Gang for Adelaide's Register News-Pictorial^[13][14] and for the Melbourne Herald. Kenneally had writs from the Supreme Court issued^[15] against both papers' publishers, and the latter were forced to pay him compensation. The Herald again managed to ignore Kenneally's copyright four years later in its publication of Roy Bridges' centenary history of Victoria and was again forced to pay Kenneally for breach of copyright.