Mrs Kelly was in gaol at the time of the Stringybark Creek murders. It is difficult to say what her feelings were. On one hand she would have known that the gang's destruction would now only be a matter of time. She would have felt a mother's distress at knowing her sons were to die. On the other hand she was a person whose final words to Ned were, "Mind you die like a Kelly, Ned"; a person who deliberately sent Ned to be a bushranger with Harry Power, who never tried to correct Ned or Dan during their criminal activities, who refused to let Ned go to a property in New South Wales after Superintendent Hare had tried to get him away from a life of criminal activities, knowing full well what the final outcome would be, and a person who herself was involved in petty crime. She was not a nice person.

She hated the police whom she considered were harrassing all her kinfolk and at best would have been indifferent to the murders. She probably was glad that Ned had killed them, particularly Constables Scanlon and Lonigan, as she would have seen this as a form of revenge for her own treatment. Ned often claimed he had become a bushranger to force the authorities to release his mother.

"Were the Kellys worried about them being caught?" I am unsure what Kellys are referred to here. The family would have secretly known the gang would eventually be caught because they did not leave the area and head for Queensland as Gardiner had done. However, publicly they were very scornful of the police and their inability to catch up with the gang. They openly boasted Ned would never be captured. When the gang was finally destroyed and Ned captured, his sister Ellen appeared on stage boasting about her brother's acitivities. The family seemed to be proud about what he and the gang had done. The bad blood which broke out with the Sherritt family after Aaron's murder would be addressed separately. So, they would have been worried and hoped Ned got away, but made no attempt to pursuade him to surrender or flee and were proud of him for what he was doing. The gang itself had no ilusions. Ned was hoping that publication of the Jerilderie Letter would swing public opinion behind him and cause the authorities to release his mother and leave him alone, possibly with a pardon. This was partly why he claimed the murders at Stringybark Creek were in self defence. Apart from that, despite their open mocking of the police, they knew they would be taken. Hence their boast of 'here's to a short life and a merry one.

This answer © Andrew Stackpool, 1998.