Poor old Ned

"Such is Life" Ned Kelly's reported last words before the executioner pulled the lever and the door opened that ended the life of one of Australia's Bush ranger legends. I guess Such is life is a polite way of saying shit happens!

Yesterday I did a tour of the old Melbourne gaol what a place to spend your last day's on earth. For those that haven't been through the Gaol I recommend it.

There was one particular case that was very interesting and quiet sad, there was a fellow who was hanged in the 1920's ( not sure of the exact date) apparently the police nabbed him for murdering a young girl that was found in a Melbourne back alley, the only evidence they had was that they found an hair on a blanket that the fellow owned that the cops claim matched the girl's hair, and without the use of microscopes or DNA the poor sod was convicted and sentenced to hang.

There was a big outcry in the papers of the time for a conviction. The man maintained his innocence right up to the day he was hanged, the have a letter on display that the poor bugger wrote to his family. Also unfortunately a different type of rope was used to hang this fellow and they botched it, it was suggested that he took from 10 to 20 minutes to die.

Apparently just recently due to some research they reopened the case and they did a documentary and a book was written on the subject, the author was able to obtain information on the case and surprisingly the hair samples had been kept, a forensic expert examined the hair and proved it didn't match, the poor bugger that was hanged was given a pardon.... A bit bloody late if you ask me, more evidence to support the case against capital punishment, in fact if you read some of the information on a few of the cases at the old Melbourne Gaol you might realise that there were a number of people hanged that probably shouldn't have been.

After I spent some time looking through the Old Melbourne Gaol, I did a tour of the watchouse next door which was in use right up until the early 90's some famous in mates that spent some time in there were Squizzy Taylor and Chopper Read.

They had an actor dressed in a cops uniform and as we walked in we were treated like we were being arrested which made the whole experience even more interesting, and it reminded me of my time in the army, getting yelled at and being called Fart brain.