Starting in 2021, I taught a writing seminar at Princeton called “Outlawed and Infamous.” The class examined popular fascination with crime and lawbreakers, bringing classic theories of “social banditry” together with psychological studies on true crime, and digging into source material ranging from government-issued wanted posters to contemporary songs, ads, and films.
A module within the seminar was all about the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly and his tiny gang of bushrangers. While few of the students had ever heard of Kelly, all students could cite their own examples of adored outlaws or folk heroes on the lam. We looked into the demographics of colonial Victoria and the “Felons Apprehension Act” used to proscribe Kelly and his brother as outlaws. We compared more and less glamorous film portrayals of Kelly.
Two of our key sources were Kelly’s suit of homemade armor and the Jerilderie Letter – which Kelly dictated to a member of his gang and tried to get published while on the run. Both sources are held at the State Library of Victoria (but only the armor is on display there).
After several years back in Australia, I finally had a bit of time for a trip to Melbourne, and the State Library was the first thing on my must-see list (everything else on the list was actually a must-eat). During my visit, the library itself felt like the absolute heart of the city. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a library so thoroughly embraced, so actively in use in so many ways at once. I wondered how people were managing to get work done there – but so many people were working there.
Kelly’s homemade armor occupied a display case at one end of a busy, studious reading room. From one angle, it was a solemn space reserved for a relic, but from another angle it was just one small section of the room, and certainly not the most actively used. A passing parent asked their kid if they wanted a photo with the armor – the kid emphatically did not.
What stood out to me – what we couldn’t see when viewing the online version of this exhibit – was how small the armor was. Kelly in the armor was described as this kind of monstrous presence looming over his pursuers, but not only is the suit quite small, but it provides only very partial cover. The armor certainly repelled a number of bullets – the points of impact are obvious. But the suit overall spoke more of vulnerability; while hand-making a suit of bullet proof armor is quite the accomplishment, it wasn’t what the gang needed at it, and it probably never had a hope of helping them.
Teaching “Outlawed and Infamous” helped me to reframe my PhD research into a book project. The more we read Kelly’s own words on his life and crimes, the more he seemed an early example of the phenomenon I had researched in Mexico: the pivot by criminal figures from secrecy to publicity, and their use of communication to build their infamy. Kelly started dictating letters and trying to publish these after he was outlawed – the very situation in which we might have expected him to lie low, to avoid drawing attention to himself. Eventually I included Kelly in the book project, an example to show that this kind of activity occurs well beyond Mexico in the early 2000s. I even called this phenomenon “outlaw infamy.”
