Michael Edward Ward
Irish-Australian detective
Michael Edward Ward (1845 – 27 May 1921) was an Irish-Australian detective, best known for his role in the capture of Ned Kelly and his brother Dan Kelly during the Kelly Outbreak of 1879/1880.
Early and Family life
Ward was born the second son to John Ward, a large farmer, in Kidlawn (a townland in the parish of Moore) near Ballinasloe, County Galway, Ireland in about 1845. He had at least two other brothers; Peter and James. In 1865 at the age of 20, Ward emigrated from Liverpool to Melbourne on board the Marco Polo.
By 1869, he had settled in the Benalla/Beechworth area where he remained for about 11 years. In 1880, he moved to Melbourne where he met his first wife, Ellen "Nellie" McDonald, whom he married in 1882. Ellen died in 1890 at the age of thirty of a pelvic abscess. Twelve years later, Ward married Margaret Mary Aiken, a native of Benalla with whom he lived until his death in 1921. The couple adopted Charles Eustace Hayes, an English orphan born in Blackpool in about 1912. Hayes had his name changed by deed poll on 12 March 1920 to Charles Hayes Ward
Career
Michael E. Ward joined the police force in October 1869 and was stationed at Benalla and Beechworth.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21069520. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1845, 1921, 1879 and 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Edward Ward” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.