The story of this place
On 11 November 1880, 25-year-old bushranger Ned Kelly walked to the gallows at Old Melbourne Gaol in homemade iron armour, reportedly uttering 'Such is life' before the trapdoor opened. He had been convicted of murdering three police officers, but to half of Victoria he was a working-class hero who had taken up arms against corrupt squatter landlords and brutal colonial policing. The prison opened in 1845, built of bluestone quarried by convicts, and over its 79 years of operation hanged 133 people — their death masks, made from plaster poured while still warm, stare at visitors from glass cases today.
Kelly's execution was not simply a legal proceeding — it was a contested political act. Petitions carrying 60,000 signatures demanded a reprieve. Crowds mobbed the outside of the gaol. Inside, Kelly was said to be calm. His skull disappeared from a mass grave at Pentridge Prison and wasn't positively identified until 2011 via DNA analysis from his great-great-grand-niece. The gaol also held serial killer Frederick Bailey Deeming and houses the world's largest collection of death masks.