Informer who spilled the beans on the Ned Kelly gang
This is an account of Aaron Sherritt who informed on the notorious Ned Kelly Gang. His mother came from Knockbride. Jonathan Smyth recalls the tale in this week's Times Past column...
Informers are rarely going to be flavour of the month, especially with those they are reporting on. In recent months, a fascinating radio documentary from the Assume Nothing series on BBC Radio Ulster dramatised the memoirs of a North of Ireland special branch officer who recruited a slew of informers during the Troubles.
The four part programme is titled ‘The Handler: Six Months in Hell’ and it discusses the dangerous situations that they placed themselves in to persuade others to provide information. It offered a mind-boggling insight into the murky world in which they chose to operate.
The subject of this week’s Times Past column is Aaron Sherritt, an informer who betrayed one of the most terrifying gangs of the 19th cntury. Slang words used to describe such an occupation are hardly endearing and include terms like canary, snitch, squealer, rat, and a tout. Aaron Sherritt’s life came to a sticky conclusion when the notorious Kelly Gang were confronted during the Glenrowan Siege. Another Cavan link to the story to follow was through the priest, Fr Matthew Gibney (born in Killeshandra) who gave Ned Kelly the last rites at the same siege.
Aaron Sherritt’s parents were John Sherritt and Anne Nesbitt Sherritt. It seems that his father was, for many years, a London policeman. At some point he came to Ireland and that is when he met and married Anne Nesbitt, from Knockbride, Co Cavan. She was a daughter of Hugh Nesbitt, a local farmer.
John became an RIC officer and joined the Orange Order in Knockbride, according to Sherritt family history. John and Anne’s wedding took place in Knockbride church in 1853 and, in the following year, they left Cavan and migrated to Melbourne, Australia, and headed to the Ovens Gold Fields where Aaron was born in 1855.
The other Sherritt children were Bessie, John James, William George, Anne Jane, Julia, Esther, Mary Jane, Maria, Martha, Hugh and following the eldest son’s death, another son, also named Aaron was born in 1883. The Sherritt family bought land and settled at Sheep Station Creek, near Beechworth, where the children attended ‘the Sheep Station School’.
The Singleton Argus, dated February 14, 1925, carried an article on the Sherritts and it explains that from John and Anne’s large family there emerged a black sheep. From infancy, Aaron was ‘an incorrigible youth’. At school, Aaron and his friends Joe Byrne and Wallace James were always together. Joe’s mother was a widow and both the Sherritts and Byrnes got on well. Wallace James escaped trouble by training as a teacher. But Aaron and Joe drifted, and their first jail term was a six-month sentence for ‘skinning a beast’ they did not own.
The notorious gang, led by Ned Kelly, became outlaws when they murdered three policemen at Stringybank Creek in 1878. Aaron Sherritt wanted to join the gang but the gang, although on friendly terms with him, did not let him. When the gang was formed, Joe Byrne had the misfortune of finding himself drafted into its ranks. The police who knew of Aaron Sherritt’s association with Joe and the Kelly Gang began putting pressure on him to inform on them. The Sherritt family and Pat Quinn, an uncle of Ned’s, were ordered to assist in bringing about the downfall of the criminals. To protect the informers, the police assigned each of them a code name. Aaron was known as ‘Moses’; Quinn was called ‘Foote’, but the gang gave him another name when they found out he had betrayed them and nicknamed him ‘The Blacktracker’.
To complicate matters, Aaron Sherritt became engaged to Byrne’s sister and, after visits to his fiancée’s home, he would go the police station. On one occasion, he told the police that Kelly and his men had visited Mrs Byrne who provided them with clean clothes and provisions.
The law sent 25 officers to hide in a cave out the back of the Byrnes’ house. Orders were given to capture Joe Byrne alive should he visit his mother alone, but if Kelly and the three gang members showed up, they were to shoot Ned. The cave was in close proximity to Mrs Byrne’s home, so they could not light a fire. John Sherritt was given the job of secretly supplying necessities to the police.
Everything was fine and dandy, until the day Joe Byrne visited Allen’s grocery store in Beechworth. Mr Allen the shopkeeper was preparing a huge order of provisions for John Sherritt who planned to bring it to the police in the middle of the night. Joe wanted to know who the food was for, and Allen said he had deliveries to do, including a big order for his mother. The outlaw looked puzzled before replying: ‘But mother is already in your debt, and you’re not the person to give too much credit.’ Allen had to bite his lip.
One morning Mrs Byrne passed the cave only to see someone sleeping there. The hiding place was discovered. Later, it emerged that the sleeping beauty she saw was Aaron Sherritt. Following the ‘incident’, the engagement was broken off between Aaron and Miss Byrne and she sold the horse he had given her and proceeded to buy another one with the money.
Angrily, Aaron stole the new horse and gave it to Kate Kelly. Miss Byrne learned of the horse’s whereabouts and told the police who in turn did not want to lose Aaron’s ‘services’ and therefore they did not charge him. Aaron Sherritt used the situation to take revenge by planting a woman’s side saddle at Mrs Byrne’s and then reported it stolen by a brother of Joe Byrne’s and his mother. The police dropped the charges, but for Joe Byrne this was the tipping edge. Joe already suspected his old friend had become an informer.
On June 26, 1880, Joe Byrne and Dan Kelly went to Aaron Sherritt’s ‘one roomed little hut’ and in the presence of police officers, Aaron was shot dead by the gang members. Afterwards, the Sherritt family were abandoned by the authorities and received no recognition for their years of service. Jack and Willie Sherritt were urged by a superintendent to join the police and, having paid £33 each for uniforms, were ‘dismissed’ by Mr Nicholson, the assistant commissioner. No explanation was provided.
Were the family unfairly blamed for Aaron’s misgivings? Certainly, they received shoddy treatment. To discover more, a good book to read is ‘The Friendship that Destroyed Ned Kelly: Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt’, by Ian Jones.
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