Peter Carey on Kelly Gang member Steve Hart:
"It has been often reported that one gang member wore a dress but when I read
R.F Foster's Modern Ireland (1600-1972) I began to imagine how this might
re-shape our understanding of the Kelly Gang.
"Writing about social bandit groups in Ireland, Foster wrote: 'In all the
societies traditionalism was stressed, in the ritual masks, white shirts worn
over clothes while out on a raid, the formal appointment of 'captains', the
association with the high point of rural festivals, the symbolic
transvestitism. Tactics were equally traditional: the arms-raid, the
threatening letter, the disguised visit at midnight, the mutilation of
animals as well as people'
"This was an exciting discovery for me. You see it meant that this dress was
not some personal sexual quirk, but a sign that some members of the gang at
least had a notion of acting within a particular Irish social and political
convention."
