HOLDING UP A TOWN 



the qualification of hacks because he had been used as 

 a hack just before and had been ridden to the meeting. 

 We could only get a few quid on him, and how they 

 bellowed when parting ; it was worse than the way the 

 Belgian ring screamed when Alf Spalding and Billy 

 Doyle won a parcel at Ostend a few years back over 

 Ouadi Haifa. The ring had to pay, but my layers 

 had to be coerced into parting, — only about forty 

 pounds. 



At Jerilderie I slept in the room which had been the 

 bank parlour when the Kellys stuck up the bank and 

 the town about three or four years before. They all re- 

 membered the incident, and although it was a memory 

 they were prepared for any other similar incident, 

 which of course never happened. It was funny how 

 the women extolled the bushrangers ; I believe they 

 would have subscribed to a monument to Ned Kelly, 

 He was a man of iron nerve, and successfully out- 

 manoeuvred the police, and helped himself, when occa- 

 sion demanded, at various places, following similar 

 methods whenever he and his three "aides" went 

 to transact business. There was something Gilbertian 

 in the way they would clean up a branch bank. On 

 one occasion they were credited with saying, like the 

 Hebrew in the chestnut Jew story : " How much have 

 you got ? " when asked by the stuck-up manager : 

 " How much overdraft do you want ? " Before 

 telling some other experiences about the Kellys, their 

 raid on Jerilderie can be mentioned. One day nearly 

 all the men had gone off to a big stock sale when Ned 

 Kelly and his brother Dan, Steve Byrne and Hart 

 cantered up the street. They soon had the hands of 

 the bank clerk held up, and proceeding leisurely to 

 round up all those in sight, women and two or three 

 men, locked them all in the dining-room, while they 



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