Sir, — I have the honor to furnish the following report for your information of such of the proceedings of 28th ult. in relation to the capture of the Kelly gang as occurred whilst I was in command of the party of police carrying on the attack.
Category: Superintendent Sadleir
All about John Sadleir, who was in charge of police in the district where the Kelly Gang were at large, and policing in Benalla where he was based.
A magisterial inquiry was held this day at Powell’s Hotel, Benalla, on the body of Martin Cherry, who was shot at Glenrowan on Monday.
“Speaking about the black trackers reminds me of a humorous incident which occurred during the attack on Jones’s hotel to one of these gentlemen. Constable Milne and Constable Gascoigne were standing behind a tree in front of the house keeping a steady fire directed towards it, when a black boy of O’Connor’s, standing under cover a few yards off, called out at he wanted to light his pipe, and asked the constables for a match, Milne thereupon placed a few matches in a blank cartridge, and plugging the end with a piece of paper, threw it towards the tracker. The cartridge, however, did not fall within three or four yards of the tracker, and for a moment the latter was puzzled how to reach it without exposing himself to the fire of the outlaws. At last, after glancing earnestly towards Jones’s hotel, he called out, ‘Ned you —— ; don’t shoot me till I get the matches,’ and sprang forward at the same instant as one of the outlaws sent a bullet within an inch of his head as he stooped, and which would have gone through his body if he had been standing straight. In return for this salute — as soon as the tracker got back to his shelter — he delivered the contents of his rifle into the house, with the remark, ‘Take that Mr, Kelly, and put it in your pipe.'”
Mr. John Sadleir, who died at Elsternwick (V.), on September 22, aged 86 years, was born in Ireland in 1833, and arrived in Victoria on November 12, 1852. At the suggestion of an ex-officer of the 75th Regiment, whom he had known in Ireland, he joined (on December 1, 1852) the Police Cadets, a special corps formed by Governor Latrobe. Many members of this corps subsequently rose to high rank in the police force of Victoria, and it is believed that Mr. Sadleir was one of the last two survivors of it.
Extracts from Superintendent John Sadleir’s memoirs concerning the Glenrowan Siege and the events that led to it.
The following information comes from the evidence of Henry Armstrong who had been one of the constables stationed with Aaron Sherritt the night he was murdered. It concerns the events leading up to the murder that may have played a role in Aaron’s death, and follows the narrative through the murder with the occasional detour. These are merely extracts from the evidence, rather than the evidence in its entirety in order to keep it as focused as possible on the subject of Aaron Sherritt.
When Kelly lay on the floor in the railway van Inspector Sadlier appealed to him to send some signal to his comrades and spare further bloodshed, but he replied, “I cannot. They will never give up, and you cannot take them alive.”
Glenrowan 