Aussie bandit Ned Kelly ‘no hero’, says author who found Fore links

There was a time when Sligo man Michael O’Connor, like many Australians, was, as he puts it himself, “a big fan” of the notorious Australian bandit, Ned Kelly.

“I’m not any more,” says Michael, author of a new book ‘From Sligo to Stringybark’, which tells of how in October 1878, Kelly mercilessly murdered three Irish-born policemen – Sergeant Michael Kennedy, who was from Tonaghmore, Fore, Constable Thomas Lonigan, from Sligo, and Constable Michael Scanlan from Kerry.

Launching the book at Fore Abbey Coffee Shop on Saturday, Michael explained that what opened his eyes was when he visited the grave of Constable Lonigan during a visit to Australia in 2004 and realised that like himself, Lonigan was a Sligo man.

“I was a big Ned Kelly fan at the time – I’m not anymore by the way – but I went to all the areas that were associated with Ned Kelly. One of them was Mansfield, and even though I knew there were policemen murdered by him in Stringybark Creek, I didn’t really pass that much notice of it.

“But I went into the cemetery and I looked at the headstone that said ‘Thomas Lonigan, a native of Sligo’,– like myself, and that hit me like a bolt from the blue. I said: ‘Oh! Hold on a moment, what’s this guy doing here? Why was he here?’ So that was the inspiration for the book. It developed from that, it went into why he went over there in the first place, what happened, family still alive over there, family still alive here? What part of Sligo he was from.”

Michael had a bit of a lucky break in his researches when he made contact with Leo Kennedy, great grandson of Sergeant Michael Kennedy; he then also came across a Facebook post about the Kennedy murder and saw that Jane O’Reilly of Fore Abbey Coffee Shop had responded with some info about the family, which opened a new area of research.

Michael received assistance from the Ballinacree Historical Society, especially Seamus Smith, who was at Saturday’s launch, and who explained that he had worked on tracing the Kennedy family roots: “Jim Herlihy, the Garda archivist, mentioned that Sgt Michael Kennedy had come from this area – or more the Drumcree area – and I looked it up in the parish record but all I could find was three brothers and no sign of Michael. It was only when Jane contacted me about the book that I went through the Collinstown Fore parish records and found the brothers, Lawrence and Michael.”

It was then a case of turning to Griffith’s Valuation, which gave a fuller picture of where the family came from – which was land under the name of Hugh Kennedy. Michael says it was through Seamus’s work that more of the Kennedy links have been established – and also their connections with the Gibney family from Moate.

“The result now is that there’s a lot of contact between the Gibneys here and the Kennedys in Australia and we’ve had two or three groups of people over to see the old homestead and all that. So it’s important for them and they’re thrilled to find all this. Everybody else around here is thrilled because very few knew about Michael Kennedy, or this connection to Australia.”

A plaque erected at the coffee shop two years ago commemorates the link. There’s a wealth of history in the 510 pages of ‘From Sligo to Stringybark’: “I’m getting a lot of very positive reactions from people who would normally support Ned Kelly – even though I lacerate him when I take him apart.

“He’s no hero. He never was and never will be.”