The 19th-century scientists complicit in body mutilation and theft

1 week ago 5

By Philip Deery

May 10, 2024 — 4.00pm

HISTORY
A Very Secret Trade: The Dark Story of Gentleman Collectors successful Tasmania
Cassandra Pybus
Allen & Unwin, $34.95

This is simply a disturbing and, astatine times, heart-wrenching survey of an appalling signifier that was agelong shrouded successful silence. Throughout overmuch of the 19th and aboriginal 20th centuries, the skulls of Indigenous Tasmanians were exhumed from burial sites, stolen from morgues and autopsy tables and retrieved, aft decapitation, from random killings and targeted expeditions.

Cassandra Pybus became physically sick erstwhile examining the archives successful 1 museum.

These skulls were highly prized because, it was erroneously believed, Indigenous Tasmanians were much primitive and distinctive than peoples connected the mainland and, astir importantly, were connected the borderline of extinction.

The dismembered heads and skeletal remains were harvested by settlers, surgeons, “naturalists” and authorities officials and sent oregon sold to royal societies, museums, assemblage anatomy departments, and backstage collectors.

Cassandra Pybus is simply a well-established historian.

This atrocity was not random oregon isolated. It was, Cassandra Pybus tells us, “a systematic process baked into the assemblage task from the precise beginning”. Much of it was clandestine: small of the prolific commercialized was listed successful authoritative customs records, income and donations were unrecorded, and the origins of the displays successful British museums and elsewhere were ne'er revealed. The “gentlemen” perpetrators knew, then, this commercialized was illegally sourced and ethically unsound.

Much wealth passed hands betwixt London and Hobart, much truthful if an Aboriginal skeleton were intact and authenticated. Possession guaranteed presumption and lasting to the instauration successful the British technological community. Possession besides provided self-aggrandising individuals with leverage to participate eminent technological bodies arsenic “fellows”. Those aesculapian men of 19th period subject – anthropologists, anatomists, eugenicists and phrenologists – were each complicit.

Truganini’s skeleton was yet cremated successful 1976 and scattered successful the waters disconnected Bruny Island.

Cassandra Pybus is simply a well-established historiographer who lives adjacent to the tract – Oyster Cove successful south-eastern Tasmania – wherever predominant pillaging of graves and mutilations of bodies occurred. Her probe often near her “haunted” arsenic good arsenic aghast. When examining the archives of 1 museum, her absorption was visceral. She became physically ill, “so sickened that I had to leave”. For the reader, too, parts of A Very Secret Trade are harrowing.

It is good known – successful portion from Pybus’ ain Truganini: Journey done the Apocalypse (but retold present successful 2 unbearably bittersweet chapters) – that Truganini, mistakenly declared the “last Tasmanian Aboriginal”, was hopeless not to beryllium mutilated. On her deathbed she pleaded to beryllium buried successful “the deepest portion of D’Entrecasteaux Channel”. Her wishes were callously ignored: her bones were packed successful a basement pome lawsuit and her skull was enactment connected nationalist display. It was not until 1976 that indignity ended: her skeleton was cremated and scattered successful the waters disconnected Bruny Island.

Another acquainted story, but engagingly told by Pybus, concerns the effort by Lady Jane Franklin (far much formidable than her hapless husband, Governor John Franklin) to “civilise” an Aboriginal girl, Mathinna. She lived with the Franklins successful Government House, for 3 years but retained, successful Lady Franklin’s exasperated words, “the unconquerable quality of the savage”. She was sent to Flinders Island, wherever she was brutalised connected a regular basis: she told an enquiry “I was erstwhile flogged erstwhile humor ran down my caput … [but] I ne'er complained astir being flogged”.

The representation of Mathinna commissioned by Lady Franklin.

Lady Franklin commissioned a representation by Thomas Bock of the melancholy Mathinna wearing her trademark scarlet frock and sent it to London; aboriginal it was repatriated to the Tasmanian Art Gallery and is present beautifully reproduced successful this book.

Lady Franklin sought, relentlessly, to beforehand the colony to the imperial centre arsenic an important spot of technological probe and learning. After she founded a section Royal Society, her estimation was ensured. She besides impressed visiting naval officers with her ain postulation of Aboriginal specimens and skulls connected show successful Government House.

One root of this collection, Pybus believes, was the ambitious George Augustus Robinson, who obtained skulls portion overseeing Wyballena Aboriginal presumption connected Flinders Island. This was earlier helium assumed the ignominious relation of Chief Protector of Aborigines of the Port Phillip District.

Pybus has managed to assistance the veil from an highly acheronian section successful Australia’s assemblage history. But A Very Secret Trade is not without flaws. The astir striking is the full omission of citations and accompanying endnotes (there is besides nary index). This disapproval whitethorn look churlish, but footnotes and endnotes are the signature of scholarly work. They supply the span betwixt the author’s assertion and the root utilized to enactment that claim. They connection empirical scaffolding for stories told, a instrumentality for identifying root types, and confirmation of the book’s credibility and veracity. Ultimately, they licence the scholar to reply “how does the writer cognize this?”

In their absence, the scholar and aboriginal researchers are incapable to place the sources of the galore quotations oregon measure the grade of indebtedness to existing secondary literature, with which Pybus does not engage. We indispensable instrumentality the writer connected trust. This is simply a pity. That said, this remains an important publication that deserves to beryllium wide read.

Phillip Deery is an emeritus prof of past astatine Victoria University.

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