Over the years there have been claims that Hart and Dan Kelly did not die at the hotel, but escaped and went to live in Queensland. A man named Billy Meade, as he was dying in 1938, told a nurse he was really Hart. Another story says Hart and Dan Kelly went to South Africa. After serving in the Second Boer War; also called the South African War, they went to India, where Hart is said to have drowned himself in Calcutta in 1917. There is no evidence to prove these stories.