‘Under Siege’ the newly published book about Francis Augustus Hare is sub-titled ‘The Man Who Caught Ned Kelly’. The author is his great-great grand niece Sue Hare.
Sue has written in the first person so that the book reads like an autobiography, giving voice to a man who played a key role in the capture of the Kelly Gang, but who history has not treated kindly. Given that this is Hare himself talking, it is not surprising that he presents himself in a positive light.
Hare starts his story (let’s assume this is an autobiography) by acknowledging the siege at Glenrowan as having been the pivotal point in his life. Indeed, had it not been for his role in the Kelly hunt and the siege, he would have been largely forgotten to all but his family.
As with everyone, there is more to a life than a pivotal event. Sue has put on her genealogical cap and filled in the gaps in Hare’s life by telling us (through his voice) of his formative years spent in Cape Town and his early life in Australia before he joined the police force.
Hare was the 14th of 16 children in a family which I would describe as being typical of the English gentility. His father had been a British army officer who sold his commission and married into an influential and well-off second-generation British family in Cape Town.
Hare had wanted to follow in the footsteps of some of his siblings by joining the British East India Company, but his application was rejected. We learn later in the book that Hare believes his parents may have had a hand in this due to an awareness of proclivities which in those days were something to be ashamed of.
So, instead of going to India, Hare went to stay with one of his brothers who ran a sheep farm in the interior before a hunger for adventure saw him try his luck in Australia. He would have been only 22 years of age when he arrived in Melbourne in 1852. The lure of gold eventually took him to the Bendigo and Ovens goldfields where he had some success – at Read’s Creek his share of the proceeds of one claim amounted to £800, which was an enormous sum back in those days.
Hare had an early brush with fame in 1854 when he single-handedly apprehended a man named Meakin who was attempting to commit a robbery at Dr. Mackay’s station on the Ovens River. Another brush with fame occurred in 1870 when Hare and his rival Nicolson captured the bushranger Harry Power, an incident which saw both men try to claim the credit.
Hare was very familiar with the North East as a result of his early mining and police work, and contrary to what is generally believed he was very comfortable in the bush. He was a physically imposing man and not one to back away from a fight.
The Kelly years were the high point of Hare’s career, and it is interesting to read his take on those years. We know already of course that Hare’s methodology was to actively pursue the gang after every reported sighting, whereas Nicolson placed more value on collecting information though a network of spies and agents. In this book, Hare acknowledges the differences and makes a strong case for himself.
Following the destruction of the Kelly Gang, the Royal Commission into the Police Force of Victoria made findings which were scathing of police command. Police Commissioner Standish, Assistant Commissioner Nicolson and Superintendent Hare all came out of it badly. Hare’s position of course is that he was treated unfairly, not just by the Royal Commission but also the press of the day. Whether this is Sue’s position or not (and I think it is), the fact that she has written this book in the first person means we are seeing things as Hare himself would have seen it all.
The years after Glenrowan make up Part Three of the book. His police career cut short, Hare spent a lot of time at the country estate of his nephew William Clarke, and in pursuing his interest in sports such as cricket and horse racing. For more than a decade, he worked as Police Magistrate, which he took to with ease and which allowed him to enjoy ‘Marvellous Melbourne”.
In this book, Sue has not shied away from Hare’s sexuality. She has Hare from his early days suspecting that others knew of his ‘sinful’ thoughts, and has him more or less acknowledge his marriage in 1867 to Janet Snodgrass (who Sue has fictitiously nicknamed ‘Nettie’ as a means of differentiating her from Janet the wife of Hare’s friend William Clarke) as being a marriage of convenience for both of them.
Hare died in 1892 from diabetes at the age of only 62 years, by which time he had been retired for over a decade. This reinforces to me how young many of the people involved in the Kelly saga had been. The man James Wallace, who I had written my own book about, was only 56 years old when he died (also from diabetes) in 1910 – he was only 26 years old at the time of the Glenrowan siege. Likewise, the Kelly Gang members were very young men at the time – Ned and Joe were about the same age as Wallace, while Dan and Steve were not even 20 years old.
Hare left an estate of some £4741 which surprisingly included no property. Most of his worth comprised what I guess could loosely be called ‘bling’ .
Sue has a chapter at the end of the book titled “Heroes of Latter Days” where she talks of how she became aware of her ancestor and spent years researching records at the SLV and PROV and on sites like Ancestry.com. I know from my own experience in researching James Wallace and my own family history what an arduous journey that can be. When I bought a copy of her book from her at Glenrowan, Sue told me she had spent 12 years doing her research. I can relate to that, having spent about 8 years on Wallace. Filling in the gaps becomes an obsession. You collect so much information and then it is a case, as Sue says, of deciding what to include and what to exclude. Including every bit of minutia is tempting, but doesn’t make for easy reading. Sue is an accomplished writer and has managed to edit it all down so it is all very readable.
Sue acknowledges the criticisms directed towards her great-great-granduncle both in his day and subsequently, but “started to feel Hare had been a little hard done by (by) some of those who took ownership of the Kelly narrative, as well as (by) certain members of the police force”. In her view, “the constant criticism and denigration of Hare, which occurred in later publications, did not stack up against the contemporary reports of the man.” In her view, there needed to be a villain and by the mid-twentieth century, writers clearly had the police in their sights.
In this book, Sue has made a strong case for her ancestor. I don’t personally share those views, but it is good to get his side of the story.
“Under Siege” is a very well written biography. Anyone interested in the Kelly story needs to read it.