The witness

Thomas Newman McIntyre was born in Ireland in 1846 and joined the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1863. He was drilled at Belfast and, as he later wrote, never fired a shot in the service. At nineteen he emigrated and taught school in New South Wales until 1868. The reference his school board wrote when he left survives in a public collection: they had found the advancement of the children as satisfying as it was surprising and hoped he would come back. He did not. He moved to Victoria, taught at Mansfield, and on 14 December 1869 joined Victoria Police as constable number 2384.

He was at the Richmond depot when Harry Power broke out of Pentridge in 1870 and, being a good rider, carried the despatches to the north east warning stations to watch for Power and, in time, for his young offsider Ned Kelly. He served at Swan Hill, Castlemaine and Stawell. His record called him a very steady, well conducted constable. He was at Mansfield by early 1878 and the two Michaels took to calling him Mac.

Kennedy chose him for the Wombat Ranges. John Sadleir told the Royal Commission he was specially chosen by the sergeant, that he was zealous and conscientious, and that Sadleir could see no difference between him and the others as to bravery. He could cook, which helped. On the Saturday at Stringybark Creek he had spent the day cutting bark for a table, baking bread and padding the tent floor with fern, and was cooking two parrots with his back to the long grass when the camp was taken. His revolver and the borrowed shotgun were twenty yards away by the tent with the fire between.

He put his hands up. He watched Lonigan shot. For about half an hour he was searched, threatened and questioned, and kept himself from looking at the body of the man he had shared a fire with because, as he wrote later, he was afraid it would unnerve him. When he heard horses on the bridle path he stood, raised his arms and told the sergeant to dismount and surrender because he was surrounded. Kennedy laughed and rested a hand on his holster. The first shot missed him. Kennedy's horse bolted toward the creek with McIntyre hanging off the bridle. He got a foot in the stirrup and went with it.

He rode north until the horse fell, turned it loose so its tracks would draw pursuit, hid the saddle, and crawled into a wombat hole behind a log. Two riders came near enough for him to hear them talk, searched for an hour and gave up. While there was light he wrote notes of what had happened. About midnight he took off his wet boots, struck a match to read his compass, and walked, wading the creek to leave no trail. He came out of the ranges the next afternoon at a farmhouse where several women rose from their chairs and stared at him. By four he was at the Mansfield police station. He wrote his statement then, and at dusk went back into the ranges with the first search party. He came out on Monday with two bodies, arrested a Kelly associate named Wild Wright in a hotel on the Tuesday, was examined by a doctor on the Wednesday and found black and blue from his fall, and went back out that afternoon. On the Thursday they found Kennedy. After the funeral on the Friday he collapsed and was sent to the police hospital at Richmond, where The Argus reported his nervous system badly shaken and his back so injured that it alone would have taken him off duty.

That was the first week. He spent the next two years as the only living witness. Wright had muttered to him during the arrest that he had escaped once and would not next time, and the papers reported other threats. The force kept him in Melbourne. He married Eliza Ann Fowler in 1879; they would have eight children. There is a saying in police lore that a trooper does not take another man's horse, and it followed him. Sadleir went to see him early on, by his own account, to put his mind at rest about the cruel stories that called his escape a desertion. At Glenrowan in June 1880 McIntyre asked the captured Kelly to his face whether he had shown cowardice, and whether his statement had been correct, and got no to the first and yes to the second. Kelly's counsel later held that visit up in court as proof of a guilty conscience.

He was the first witness at the Beechworth committal in August 1880 and at the Melbourne trial in October, and at Beechworth he slept in the cell beside Kelly's as a last line of watch. In 1881 his papers went to the Royal Commission, which examined him and was asked to report on the special circumstances of his case. He told it the party had expected no danger, that the first they knew was the call to bail up, and that he did not know whether the men who came to the camp intended murder, only that their leader seemed not to care much whether blood was shed. He left the force on ill health in August 1881, aged thirty five, worked as a wharf inspector, kept a business at Alexandra for more than twenty years and moved to Ballarat. About 1900 he wrote a memoir of his police life, Reminiscences of a Victoria Mounted Constable, which the Victoria Police Museum holds. He died in 1918, aged seventy two, still on a police pension.

Later writers have argued that he changed his story about Lonigan. His first statement, dated 27 October 1878 and held at Public Record Office Victoria, says Lonigan made a motion to draw his revolver and was shot. That is what he said at the inquiry, the committal, the trial and the Commission, and what the doctor found.

The Kennedy family's view of him was mixed and stayed that way. Bridget, the family recalls, thought he should never have taken the horse, and said in the same breath that without him there would have been nothing but Kelly's version of that day.