MCINTYRE SURVIVOR

Constable McIntyre was the sole survivor of the shootout between the police and what
then became known as 'the Kelly Gang'.

Constable McIntyre was unarmed when the Kelly's snuck up on him during his cooking duties.
He managed to escape the battle on his Sgt's horse and survived this ordeal making his way to Mansfield.
McIntyre would be haunted his entire life by the events at Stringybark Creek, he was concerned that he may
be seen as a coward. However Ned said that McIntyre knew his position.

It appears that McIntyre perjured himself at Ned's trial and changed his account several times.

CONSTABLE THOMAS MCINTYRE

Thomas McIntyre was born in 1846 in Ireland. He was a member of the
Irish Constabulary before coming to Australia in 1865.
He was a schoolteacher in NSW before joining the Victorian Police in
1869. He served in many districts, ultimately ending up at Mansfield.

In October 1878 he was a member of the four man party sent out to
apprehend Ned and Dan Kelly in the Wombat Ranges. Leading the party
was Sgt. Michael Kennedy, also along were Constables Michael Scanlon
and Thomas Lonigan. They set out on October 25, 1878 and camped near
Stringybark Creek. The next morning Kennedy and Scanlon went out on
patrol leaving Lonigan and McIntyre in camp. McIntyre, being the
party's cook, had gone out during the day and shot at some parrots,
but missed. The shot was heard by Ned Kelly who was staying in a
fortified hut nearby with his brother Dan along with Steve Hart and
Joe Byrne. After investigating, Ned decided that they should bail them
up and take their horses and guns.
When Ned and the other three snuck up on the camp where Lonigan was
reading and McIntyre was tending to cooking, he shouted bail up!
McIntyre put up his hands but Lonigan ran for the cover of a log and
raised his head to fire and was shot through the eye by Ned and
killed. McIntyre was taken prisoner, but Ned did not handcuff him as
Dan wanted him to. McIntyre shared a smoke with Joe Byrne and the gang
ate some of the camp provisions, including ham and some freshly made
bread. Oddly, McIntyre later wrote in his memoirs that "I feel
pleased, now, that they all expressed so much approval of my bread
that I believe I could have gotten a testimonial from them as a first
class baker."

Ned Kelly instructed McIntyre to get Scanlon and Kennedy to surrender
upon their return. When Scanlon and Kennedy rode into camp McIntyre
said to them that the camp is surrounded and you better surrender, but
Kennedy thought it was a joke and smiled and put his hand on his
revolver. Ned said "bail up!" and fired a warning shot. Soon after
Kennedy was off his horse and returning fire and Scanlon fired a shot
while on horseback but was shot and fell off and was shot again.
McIntyre grabbed Kennedy's horse and fled the scene on it. Kennedy was
later killed after a running gun battle, even though in one of his
many different versions of the events, McIntyre said he thought that
Kennedy was already dead when he took his horse.

McIntyre rode as fast as he could, all the while being scratched and
bruised by branches, eventually being knocked from the horse by a low
limb. Bleeding profusely, he got back on, but the horse would not get
out of a walk and he feared the horse may have taken a bullet. He
dismounted and took off the saddle and bridle and let the horse go.
McIntyre continued the rest of the way on foot, for a while taking
refuge in a wombat hole which he crawled into feet first.

He later said in his memoirs: "I have often regretted that I mentioned
this place of concealment, there was no necessity for it, I could very
easily have said that I concealed myself without mentioning in what
particular manner I had done so, it would have injured no person and
saved me from many humiliating and vexatious remarks."

(As an aside, Sidney Nolan did a painting in the Ned Kelly series in
1946 called "Policeman in Wombat Hole" in which the policeman,
presumably McIntyre, was headfirst in the hole!)

The next day he made his way to a farmhouse and from there help was
summoned. He refused to go to the hospital as advised but insisted on
helping to find the bodies of his fallen comrades.
After doing so, he went into the police hospital for three weeks.

He eventually returned to light duty.

On Sunday, June 27, 1880, he was off duty and did not know what was
going on in Glenrowan until he read Monday's paper telling of Aaron
Sherritt's murder. He went in search of information and was told of
the unfolding events in Glenrowan, so he headed there along with other
police. When he arrived, he saw four bodies (Steve Hart's, Dan
Kelly's, Joe Byrne's and Martin Cherry's) and Capt. Standish asked him
if he recognised any of them. He pointed out Joe Byrne as one of the
men who attacked him and the others at Stringybark Creek.

McIntyre rode in the same train van to Benalla as the captured and
injured Ned Kelly. He met with Ned the next morning in the cells.
The same day, an inquiry into Joe Byrne's death was held at the
courthouse and McIntyre again identified Joe's body for authorities.

McIntyre returned to Benalla and became an office clerk at the depot
and was soon to go again on a train with Ned Kelly as he was to
testify at Ned's committal hearing in Beechworth in August of 1880. He
also gave evidence at the trial in Melbourne in October.

He applied for a portion of the Kelly reward money but was denied.
However, he did get some money from the government for his part in the
affair, but it was not drawn from the official reward fund. He asked
that it be added to his pension.

In September of 1881 he was invalided out of police service due to his health.

He lived in Ballarat until his death in 1918 at age 72 (having lived
on another 40 years after the events at Stringybark Creek). He and his
wife had eight children.

Interestingly, Thomas McIntyre kept a scrapbook on the Kelly outbreak
he also wrote poetry which was published in the local paper and even
wrote his memoirs (which I have quoted from above) which was entitled
"A True Narrative of the Kelly Gang by T.N. McIntyre,
Sole Survivor of the Police Party Murderously
Attacked by those Bushrangers in the Wombat Forest, on the 26th
October, 1878." It was never published, but copies of the manuscript
are held at the State Library of Victoria and also at the Victoria
Police Museum. Recently, the Museum made the memoirs available online.

Footnote: Liz Marsden from The Victoria Police Historical Unit has informed me that the McIntyre scrapbook
is being digitised.
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HOWARD Humffray was delighted when his mother told him he had "a similar nature" to her father — the lone survivor of the
Stringybark Creek police killings in which three colleagues were shot dead by the Kelly gang.

"My mother thought the sun shone from her father," Mr Humffray, 80, says of Constable Thomas McIntyre, who gave crucial
evidence at Ned Kelly's trial 125 years ago this month. "Her mother died early and he brought up his family."

McIntyre died a few years before the birth of Humffray, now a retired mechanical engineer. But his mother, Florence, would
regale him with stories about McIntyre, and the family prizes a little-known manuscript containing the policeman's reminiscences,
now held at the Police Museum in Flinders Street.

Mr Humffray is heir to two iconic Australian stories. His paternal great-grandfather was John Basson Humffray, who presented
the Eureka diggers' charter to Governor Hotham in 1854 and became Victoria's first minister for mines.

He believes his maternal grandfather's reputation suffered as a result of attempts to make a folk hero of Ned Kelly. "(My mother)
regarded him as a criminal and I do too," he says of the bushranger, who was tried on October 28, 1880, and hanged on November
11 for shooting Constable Thomas Lonigan.

He says McIntyre has been maligned in the media and historic accounts by those seeking to lionise Kelly.

"It ruined his life, the Stringybark Creek episode, according to my mother," Mr Humffray says.

Thomas Newman McIntyre, born in northern Ireland in 1846, was unmarried when he rode north from Mansfield in a police party that
unwittingly set up camp on October 25, 1878, close to the Kellys' hiding place. Sergeant Michael Kennedy and Constable Michael
Scanlon left to patrol the area the next morning.

McIntyre was cooking when four men — brothers Ned and Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart — crept up on the campsite and
demanded they surrender. McIntyre, who was unarmed, raised his arms but Lonigan, reaching for his gun, ran and was shot by
Ned Kelly.

In one of 11 meticulously typed chapters he titled A True Narrative of the Kelly Gang, McIntyre wrote of Lonigan's murder: "He…
must have been looking over his right shoulder when he was shot in the right eye by Ned Kelly. I… saw Lonigan fall heavily and (he)
said 'Oh Christ! I'm shot', made several plunges, breathing (heavily), after which he remained quiet."

When Kennedy and Scanlon returned, they ignored McIntyre's call to lay down their guns. Scanlon was shot in a shoot-out and Kennedy,
who fled on foot, was pursued and shot dead by Ned Kelly. McIntyre rode to safety on Kennedy's horse.

Mr Humffray says many thought McIntyre "should have stayed there and been shot with the others" — but had he not escaped, "I wouldn't
be talking to you now".