NED KELLY was a poor white settler man who lived in australia in the mid-to-late 1800s. He was by all accounts kind of a dipshit, but a lucky dipshit who managed to survive quite a long time as a dirt-poor man doing petty crimes in a time where that was hard to do without getting killed by authorities. Obviously being white helped, but also, he was Irish, which the other white people didn't like at the time.
Oh, and later in the story, he made a SUIT OF ARMOR that he used to SURVIVE A FIREFIGHT WITH THE POLICE. we'll get there hang on
anyway, Ned Kelly was in and out of prison for a while before becoming a bushranger, a sort of runaway squatter who lived in the bush of australia and survived mostly through subsistence farming, petty theft, and staying out of the way of authorities.
in 1877, while in his early 20s, Ned Kelly was involved in at least two cases of being part of a horse-stealing gang. He had a number of warrants out on his head for a bit.
In 1878, Kelly shot at a police officer who entered his family home. Depending on who you ask (the cop or Kelly) it was either a virtuous revenge or a random act of hooligan violence. There's ample writing for either account, take it as you will. Ned fled, but his mother (at the time nursing a newborn) was given a harsh sentence for her part in the ordeal, which was generally considered Not Good by the populace. This was the beginning of public sentiment swinging to favor Ned Kelly.
Later in 1878, Ned Kelly (now on the run and the leader of the Kelly Gang) was pursued by a group of policemen. The Kelly Gang ambushed four of them, and after a firefight they killed three, and only one escaped. In October, the reward for the Kelly Gang reached £800 (which adjusted for inflation is something insane like £80k).
Over the rest of the year and into the next year, the Kelly Gang's notoriety raised as they wrote a few letters pleading their case to the public and to sympathetic judges, as well as a few very public cases of hostage-taking and robbery. One of those was in the town of Jerilderie, and prior to that incident Kelly himself wrote the now-famous Jerilderie Letter, which is worth a read if you want to get a feeling for who this guy was. Here's one of my favorite parts:
Any man knows it is possible to swear a lie, and if a policeman loses a conviction for the sake of swearing a lie he has broke his oath -- therefore he is a perjurer either ways. A policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him, in the first place he is a rogue in his heart but too cowardly to follow it up without having the force to disguise it.
From 1878 to 1880, the Kelly Gang was on the run, until the final confrontation. A train of police was to be sent to gather reinforcements and kill the gang outright, so the gang decided to ambush the train and "send the occupants to hell". They took hostages in a nearby town (many of whom claimed their "hostage" status was quite benign, and there was a reasonable amount of drinking and dancing among the company) and waited for the train.
This is, of course, where the armor comes in. At some point in the two years of the bush, the Kelly Gang had created at least two suits of armor that were heavy enough to repel bullets. The train arrived, and the gang donned their armors.
A massive firefight ensued, and the armor worked -- unless a bullet hit where there wasn't armor, which Ned unfortunately didn't have much of a plan for. After the conflict, Ned miraculously survived, but he was wounded. He was tried for the murder of two constables and executed.
