Long before we had Carl Williams, Judy Moran and the Underbelly TV series, the Australian media had developed a fascination with our crime figures.

And few captured the newspapers' interest quite like the Kelly gang, led by the now infamous Ned.

Author and journalist Grantlee Kieza has delved into the archives to write a book on the outlaw's mother, Ellen Kelly, whom history shows was never far from a headline.

"She was portrayed as a notorious woman because of her association with her sons," Mr Kieza told ABC News Breakfast.

"You have to remember that the sons were very heavily involved in criminality ... they were still dangerous criminals.

"She was seen as harbouring them and giving them support and so she was portrayed as a notorious woman."

A photo of Ned Kelly taken the day before he was hanged. ( Supplied: Harper Collins )

Ellen Kelly's life was punctuated with heartache, right from the moment she left poverty and sectarian violence in Ireland to make a life in Australia.

She would go on to outlive seven of her 12 children and spend three years in the Old Melbourne Gaol over an altercation with a policeman who had come in search of her sons.

In fact, she was still a prisoner in the very same gaol on the day Ned was hanged there.

But her name appeared in the press long before that day and a particular picture was already being painted.

In October 1871 the Benalla Ensign and Farmer's and Squatter's Journal covered a court case in which Mrs Kelly was trying to get the father of one of her children to pay a version of child support.

The man's argument was that he could not be certain he was the father, and the local readers were treated to descriptions of Mrs Kelly's supposed sex life and allegations that many men frequented her bed.

It would not be the last time the newspapers would speculate on what happened in her home.

By the late 1870s her sons were involved in horse stealing rackets and other violent activities and the press rounded on Mrs Kelly.

The Ovens and Murray Advertiser reported on October 12, 1878:

"There are several amongst them reared up in crime, who have for years past been making a dishonest livelihood by thieving. "It is one of the strangest phases of our human nature that with some, crime is hereditary."

Mr Kieza said it was important to consider the local papers as a barometer of community sentiment towards the Kelly family at the time, and that while Ned Kelly may have been "mythologised" in recent decades, at the time he was mostly seen as a criminal who should be stopped.

An artist's impression of Ned Kelly being led to the gallows to be hanged. ( Reuters )

"You have to remember this was a frontier community with most people trying to make a go of it, not wanting to be stuck up down the road by some kid with a gun in his hand," he said.

"So I think a lot of the authorities at the time did lay the blame for what he was doing at [Ellen Kelly's] feet.

"She's sort of the mother of all crime gangs, isn't she, whether she really wanted to be or not."

By the end of October 1878 the Melbourne Argus newspaper declared Mrs Kelly a "notoriously bad woman".

Mr Kieza said it was hard to be certain how fair the characterisation was.

On the one hand there is evidence she did harbour her violent sons, but at the same time he believes Mrs Kelly would have had little control over Ned and his actions.

One thing is for sure, however, and that is the media view of Ned Kelly towards the end.

Ellen Kelly at her home in rural Victoria in the late 1800s. ( Supplied: Harper Collins )

After he was seriously injured then captured in a police shootout, he was taken to Melbourne gaol to be nursed so he could be formally executed later.

In response the Hamilton Spectator posed the question:

"Why is Kelly like bacon? Because he is being cured before he is hung!"

The Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter General Advocate wrote:

"Had society been ridded of a horde of hyenas, wolves and tigers, thirsting for human blood, the joy would scarcely have been greater than that felt at the hunting down of this band of unmitigated ruffians and murderers."

In the years following Ned's execution, Ellen Kelly appeared to garner a level of sympathy and reprieve in the press, according to Mr Kieza.

Ned Kelly's exploits would cast a shadow over his mother's reputation. ( Supplied: National Archives of Australia )

"You can sense that ... the media at the time felt, well she's paid a very, very heavy price so let's go a little bit easy on her," he said.

"Certainly by the end of her life ... they portrayed her as very much of some affection in her community."

It may have helped that, somewhat incongruously, one of her sons went on to become a policeman himself while Ellen would live a relatively quiet life as a humble community member.

In March 1923 Ellen Kelly gave her last interview to a reporter named Bartlett Adamson, who worked for Smith's Weekly.

In the days after her burial — in an unmarked grave at Greta Cemetery, in northern Victoria — Adamson described her as "a sad old figure deserving neither blame nor praise".

"For she was the begetter neither of an heroic personage nor of a criminal brood, but merely, by force of circumstance, the mother of a tragedy."