The arrests and detentions of Kelly's sympathisers continued with increased vigour. "Wild" Wright and his brother Tom, relatives of the Kellys, Frank Hart, brother of the bushranger, the Lloyds and others, passed a considerable portion of their time in the cells of the various lock-ups around the district. Robert Miller was arrested and detained because his daughter, a daring horsewoman, was observed to go into the mountains at night with what were supposed to be provisions for the bushrangers. She was followed more than once, but contrived to elude her pursuers by plunging up or down a steep mountain, or across an almost impassable gully. She never started twice in the same track, sometimes going up one spur or ravine, and next time choosing a different one, and leading even the black trackers astray. The newspapers frequently urged the folly of detaining the father while the daughter was left free to furnish the outlaws with food and news. The plain fact is, that when special laws have to be applied, there should be no exceptions; otherwise they are valueless. In this case the women were far more active and reliable partisans of the Kellys than the men, and, as there can be little doubt that the Outlawry Act was strained, to put it mildly, by the police and the local magistracy, with the connivance of the Government, another turn of the screw would not have made the actions of the authorities any more illegal, and might have made them efficient. However, determined as the authorities were to stamp out lawlessness, they did not carry their own illegal acts to this extreme point, and probably this postponed, though it did not prevent, the end which was inevitable, as it always must be when a few array themselves against an overwhelming majority.
It was about this time that the name of Aaron Sherritt was first heard of in connection with the bushrangers. Sherritt was the son of an ex-policeman. He was about twenty-four years of age and had settled in the district some time earlier. He selected one hundred and seven acres of ground on the Woolshed Creek, and the Kellys and Byrnes helped him to fence it in and clear part of it. He had, however, recently sold his farm to a Mr. Crawford, of Melbourne, and had built himself a hut at Sebastopol, about two miles away, until he could take up another selection. He was engaged to be married to a sister of Joe Byrnes, and was regarded as one of the family. He was suspected of having taken a share in some of the extensive horse-stealing raids in company with the Kellys and their friends, and had been in consequence an object of police suspicion and supervision. This was the man to whom the police made advances, and, by promising him the whole of the eight thousand pounds reward offered for the capture of the bushrangers, on condition that it should be through his aid and assistance that this capture was effected, they succeeded in winning him over to their side. He led Superintendent Hare and a party of police into the innermost recesses of the mountains, and pointed out several camps where the bushrangers had been; but, in each case, the bushrangers appeared to have received warning and to have removed before the police came. Some thought that Sherritt was playing a double game, and that he contrived to let the bushrangers know when the police might be expected to arrive, but there appears to be no foundation for this opinion, as it delayed his chance of obtaining the reward. At first he was careful not to be seen in company with the police, but their association could not be kept secret for long, and Sherritt soon became suspected by the Kelly family. One day Mrs. Byrnes openly accused him of trying to betray her son. There was a row, and Sherritt was ordered from the house, his engagement with the daughter being broken off. After that Sherritt appeared more openly in company of the police, parties of whom were constantly watching the homes of the four bushrangers on the chance of capturing them should they visit their parents or other relatives. Sherritt married the daughter of another settler in the district, and all communications between him and the families of the bushrangers were broken off. Sherritt instead of being a friend was considered an enemy of the bushrangers.
During the latter half of 1879 and the first half of 1880 nothing of any importance was heard as to the movements of the bushrangers. More than once it was reported that they had left the country, sometimes it was said for New Zealand, and at other times for America, but these reports were invariably contradicted within a few days, and the Kellys were said to be still somewhere in the ranges. Sometimes it was said that the money stolen from the Jerilderie Bank must be all expended, and that the Kellys would be forced to leave their hiding-place shortly, but frequently, during the twelvemonths following that raid, nothing would be heard of the bushrangers for weeks, and the public almost forgot that there was such a gang in existence. Then suddenly came the news that the robbers had shot Aaron Sherritt on June 27th, 1880.
For some weeks a party of police had been secreted, as much as possible, in Sherritt's house, for the purpose of watching Byrne's mother's house, and four of them were quietly sitting in the inner room at the time of the murder. The particulars of the murder were as follows:—A German market-gardener named Antoine Weeks was living on the Woolshed Creek, not far from Sherritt's and Byrnes's houses. He was walking home on the evening of the day mentioned when he was met by Dan Kelly and Joe Byrnes. "Do you know who we are?" asked Dan. "No," replied Weeks. "Well, we're the Kellys," said Dan; "you do as we tell you and no harm will come to you." They handcuffed the German, and led him along the road to Sherritt's house. Here Dan told him to shout "Aaron." Weeks did so, and on Aaron Sherritt coming to the door to ascertain who wanted him, Byrnes shot him dead without a word. The bushrangers took the handcuffs off of Weeks and told him to go home. Then they went to the door of the hut, called Mrs. Sherritt out, and told her that she had better send some of the—— traps in her house out to bury her husband, because "We've shot him for being a traitor." The Kellys were fully aware that the police were in the house, and called on them to come out and "fight like men." If the constables had come out as invited they would have been courting almost certain death. A bright wood fire was burning in the hut and the front room was as bright as day, while all outside was as dark as possible. Had the police therefore left the shelter of the inner room and entered the front apartment they would have been shot down before they could have seen their enemies, whose whereabouts could only have been guessed at from their shots or from the flash of their revolvers. Going to the door under these conditions would have been almost tantamount to committing suicide. The bushrangers raged round the hut calling the police the most opprobious names and threatening and taunting them in hopes of inducing them to come into the light, but as the police kept quiet and made no reply whatever to their taunts the bushrangers swore that they would "burn 'em like rats in a trap." They fired through the windows and doors, but they appear to have been just as unwilling to enter the lighted room as the police were. In fact neither party would give the other a chance. The robbers remained round the hut at this labour of hate until two a.m., when they departed. At daybreak one of the troopers went to where the horses were kept, and rode to Benalla to give information of the reappearance of the Kellys, while the other three followed on the tracks of the outlaws.
Fight Between the Police and the Bushrangers at Glenrowan; The Railway Torn Up; Attempt to Wreck the Police Train; The Glenrowan Inn Besieged; Ned Kelly in Armour; His Capture; The Burning of the Inn; Deaths of Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, and Joe Byrnes; Trial and Conviction of Ned Kelly; His Death; The Kelly Show; Decrease of Crime in the Colonies.
As soon as the news of this fresh outrage was telegraphed to Melbourne, Sub-inspector O'Connor of Queensland, with his six black trackers, with Superintendent Hare, Inspector Pewtress, and several other officials of the Victorian police, a number of newspaper correspondents, and a few other favoured persons, started by special train for the scene of disorder. Eight troopers were picked up at Benalla, and at twenty-five minutes past three p.m. the train was stopped near the Glenrowan platform by Mr. Curnow, the local schoolmaster, who stood on the line waving a red scarf. He informed those on the train that the robbers had torn up the rails a short distance ahead, with a view to wrecking the train, and that they were waiting near to shoot the police or any one else who might be sent to capture them. A consultation was immediately held to decide as to the next step, and while this was going on, Constable Bracken, the local representative of the police force, arrived and reported that the bushrangers had taken possession of the Glenrowan Inn, not much more than a hundred yards distant, and that he had just made his escape from them.