How did Ned Kelly make his armour?

Ned Kelly was born in December 1854 at Beveridge, a rural township north of Melbourne, to John “Red” Kelly, a former Irish convict who had served his sentence and tried to build a life as a small farmer.

The Kelly family was frequently targeted by police suspicion and often involved in legal disputes, which endured a long period of poverty and hostility from colonial authorities.

By age 14, Ned had already been arrested after he had helped a known bushranger escape police custody. 

As a result of this early experience, Ned’s relationship with the authorities worsened quickly.

After he had served time for horse theft in 1870, he developed an intense anger towards the police and publicly accused them of treating his family unfairly.

In 1878, a violent incident involving Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick at the Kelly homestead, which triggered a warrant for Ned and his brother Dan.

Rather than surrender, they fled into the bush and formed a gang with two close members, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne, whose loyalty remained constant throughout the years that followed. 

Over the course of two years, the Kelly Gang committed a number of well-known bank robberies.

One of the most dramatic occurred at Jerilderie in 1879, where they robbed the National Bank and held the town hostage.

During this event, Ned wrote his justification for the gang’s actions in a long document, which became known as the Jerilderie Letter, in which he accused the Victorian police of corruption and brutality and claimed that his crimes were acts of resistance against injustice.

The original copy of the letter disappeared, but a written copy eventually surfaced and was published decades later.

As the authorities increased their efforts to capture the gang, Ned devised a plan for a final confrontation and prepared an unusual form of defence: iron armour forged from stolen agricultural equipment. 

Ned Kelly and his gang constructed the armour in the weeks before the planned derailment of a police train at Glenrowan.

They selected thick iron sheets taken from plough mouldboards that local farmers used, as these sheets were believed to be able to stop rifle bullets.

These mouldboards, which farmers used to break hard soil, were known for their strength and were readily available in rural Victoria.

Some had been stolen during earlier raids, and others may have been supplied by local supporters, some of whom were blacksmiths who either assisted or refused to report the activity.

At least one police report later suggested that a supportive blacksmith near Greta had helped alter the iron. 

To convert agricultural iron into protective body armour would have required blacksmithing skills and basic tools, a process that saw the gang cut the mouldboards into workable sections, heat the metal over open fires until it softened sufficiently so that they could form it and hammer the plates into curved pieces that fit the human body.

They heated the metal over open fires and formed it with hammers and anvils, which they likely borrowed or improvised from local stations.

Some historians believe that the forging work occurred at a farmstead forge near Glenmore Station, while others suggest locations near Greta or Everard’s farm.

Bullock Creek was used as a hideout, but no firm evidence confirms that it was used as a forge.

Since each gang member required a different fit, the suits largely lacked consistency.

However, they shared the same basic elements: a breastplate, a backplate, shoulder guards, and a helmet with a narrow slit for vision.

Four suits were made in total, but only Ned Kelly's and Joe Byrne's suits were reportedly fully finished and battle-ready. 

For attachment, the men fastened leather straps to the plates and added cloth padding to soften impacts and prevent rubbing.

Ned Kelly’s helmet, which was made from two joined iron pieces formed into a rounded form, included a slit cut across the front to allow limited vision.

Its weight, when combined with the rest of the suit, forced him to walk in a slow, stooped posture.

Each suit weighed between 36 and 44 kilograms and measured up to 6 millimetres in thickness, which likely placed a strain on the body and greatly limited movement. 

Importantly, the Kelly Gang likely understood the psychological effect of the armour because they knew that men who walked through gunfire would probably confuse and alarm the police.

Some officers reportedly believed that Ned was a ghost or supernatural figure, when bullets had failed to bring him down.

According to police sources, the gang had put the suits together at their hideout near Bullock Creek and had practised how to put them on.

The Glenrowan siege on 28 June 1880 tested the armour in battle for the first and only time.

When the police surrounded the Glenrowan Inn, Ned Kelly walked out in full daylight as he wore his suit and carried a rifle.

Dozens of officers opened fire. However, several bullets struck his torso and helmet without piercing the iron.

Sparks flew from the breastplate, and the police, unaware at first that he wore armour, became alarmed at the sight of a man who appeared invulnerable as he advanced through gunfire. 

As the battle continued, the weaknesses in the design soon became clear. The gang had left their arms and legs unprotected, apparently to allow better movement.

Because of this, all four men received injuries to their limbs. Joe Byrne collapsed from a gunshot that severed his femoral artery, while Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were later found dead inside the inn, though it remains unclear whether gunfire or suicide caused their deaths. 

During the long firefight, Ned reportedly continued to fire at police until he could no longer stand.

His legs, which were riddled with bullets, gave out under the weight of the iron plates until a shotgun blast to his thighs caused him to fall.

Moments later, several officers overpowered and held him. His helmet, which had shielded him from direct hits to the head, had also probably blocked his vision and hearing.

This made it nearly impossible for him to react to the officers who approached from behind. 

After the siege, police recovered the gang’s armour and transported it to Melbourne as evidence.

Later, parts of the suits were displayed at times in public institutions, including the State Library of Victoria.

Ned’s own suit, which was disassembled and reassembled multiple times, had some original components go missing.

In later years, efforts were made to reunite the original pieces and preserve them for study.

Over the decades, public interest in the iron suits largely persisted and, today, they are widely regarded as among the most well-known objects from colonial Australia. 

To some extent, the armour provided an advantage in battle as it gave the gang a short-lived sense that they were invulnerable and disrupted police efforts during the early phase of the firefight.

However, the design flaws led to injuries that ultimately ended the confrontation.

Even so, for many observers, the sight of Ned Kelly as he walked through bullets in a hand-forged iron suit became a lasting image.