WHOSE BODY?

In its first edition of 1869, the Mercury found it difficult to find anything positive to say about the year that had just come to an end: 'a failing revenue, declining trade, circumscribed commerce at home and abroad, decaying industries, absence of

enterprises, and general stagnation form a dreary catalogue of adverse circumstances'.2 The year had begun with aplomb. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, had arrived as the colony's first royal visitor. Hobartians illuminated their windows, created extravagant arches and watched with awe the flotilla of ships and grand display of fireworks. No doubt, some of the Crowther children, taken through their steps and dressed

immaculately by Gertrude, would have joined the vast youthful choir that sang patriotic songs especially written for the occasion by Louisa Anne Meredith.3 Only a block away from Albert Terrace thousands congregated along Murray and Macquarie Streets to watch His Royal Highness laying the foundation stone to the city's new cathedral.4 At the Regatta, while William and Victoire Crowther presented prizes to race-winners, the Prince came face to face with William Lanne, now hailed by the British as King Billy, the last man of his tribe. How fitting, some might have thought, that the whaling ship Lanne was about to rejoin as a sailor, was the Runnymede, named after the place of the historic Magna Carta signing.5

1

Much of this chapter is based on the correspondence between W L Crowther and W Flower held at the Royal College of Surgeons. I first approached the College in 2001 and in 2003 went through the correspondence. A draft of this chapter followed and in the summer of 2004, I presented a paper, 'The Savagery of Civility' based on this at the Colonialism and Its Aftermath Conference in Hobart. Here I found myself on a panel with Helen MacDonald who was giving a paper covering much of the same ground, and with similar conclusions. Her thought-provoking book, Human Remains: episodes in human dissection, came out later that year. For the most part I have adhered to my original research here, and referenced Human Remains wherever

MacDonald's research has taken her further. Stefan Petrow preceded both of us in investigating the William Lanne mutilation, although without the benefit of the RCS Hunterian Museum archives. His research focussed on the multiple responses within Tasmania. Stefan Petrow, 'The Last Man: The mutilation of William Lanne in 1869 and its aftermath', Aboriginal History, vol. 1, 1997, pp. 90-112.

2

Mercury, 1 January 1869.

3 _{Poet and writer. She was also the wife of Charles Meredith MHA, a colleague of William}

Crowther in the 1876 Cabinet. Sally O'Neill, 'Meredith, Louisa Ann (1812 - 1895)', ADB, vol. 5, 1974, pp. 239-240.

4 _{Mercury, 31 January 1868.} 5

Just over a year later, in the early afternoon of Saturday, 6th March 1869, the crowds outside St David's Cathedral Church were not quite what they had been when HRH Duke of Edinburgh laid the foundation stone, but at least fifty gentlemen, perhaps even William Crowther, had followed a coffin covered with a possum skin and a Union Jack entwining two spears and waddies from the General Hospital.6 Many, many more onlookers, quite probably Gertrude Gordon and her charges among them, came to watch William Lanne being carried first to the church and then to St David's graveyard. After a voyage of nearly a year, the Runnymede had come into harbour in mid February, and its crew, including William Lanne, had felt their land-legs again in the streets and pubs of Hobart. But after a few days in port, Lanne had fallen ill at his lodging house, the Dog and Partridge Hotel in Goulburn Street, and had died on Wednesday, 3rd March.7 A member of the North West Tribe, William Lanne's family were the last Aborigines in Tasmania to be captured and exiled to Flinders Island. A young adult at the time of his capture in December 1842, Lanne had escaped the fate of Aboriginal children who were separated from their families and sent to the Orphan School; and as an able- bodied man, working as a seaman, was not subjected to the appalling conditions of Oyster Cove after the Flinders Island Station was closed.8 There was a sense of occasion on this March day of William Lanne's mourning, a sense of historic moment attached to the funeral procession, as there had been the year before on the Regatta grounds. But there was a small group of people – William, Victoire and Bingham Crowther among them, possibly Gertrude too – who knew that the body contained in the coffin had been mutilated.

The events surrounding William Lanne's death expose the lengths to which William Crowther was prepared to go to secure a reputation in the metropole, and the degree to which colonial identity was unstable, somehow inauthentic, not quite English. The

6

'Among the mourners were nearly all the masters of vessels in port, and a great many gentlemen connected with the whaling trade'. Chief mourners were Captain McArthur, Master of Lanne's previous ship, Aladdin and Captain Bayley, owner of the Runnymede. Captain Hill, Master of the Runnymede and three 'colored' seamen, John Bull of the Sandwich Islands, Henry Whalley of Kangaroo Island (whose mother was probably a Tasmanian Aborigine), and Alexander Davidson, an American, were the pallbearers. Mercury 8 March 1969.

7

Mercury, 4 March 1869.

8

They were captured on land granted to the Van Diemens Land Company where the worst massacre of Aborigines in Tasmania had taken place. The sealer who captured the family was granted a £50 reward, and the family was brought to Hobart and housed in the gaol before being sent to Flinders Island. Soon after their arrival, Lanne's mother, Nabrunga, and one of the children, died. Brian Plomley, Weep in Silence: a history of the Flinders Island Aboriginal settlement, Hobart: Blubberhead Press, 1987, pp. 140, 852, 882 p. Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1981, pp. 135-9; HTC, 23 December 1842.

allegorical figure of Fama moves restlessly over Tasmania, the feathers of her large wings covered with eyes, seeing all; in either hand a trumpet, one dark, one light for the broadcasting of good and bad fame. Historia selects and records for posterity.9 Gertrude would at the very least be witness to the battle and defence of the Crowther name in 1869 and aware of the stakes involved. Ten years later she, too, would find herself in Fama's sights.

When the Crowthers removed the words 'Long Live the Prince' from the fanlight, and Macquarie Street had been cleared of its spectators, it was not only the depressed state of the colony that preoccupied the minds of the occupants of Albert Terrace, but a personal setback that had brought gloom to its master and mistress, though a brief reprieve, perhaps, for Gertrude Gordon. Victoire had never been reconciled to life in Tasmania10 and with their daughter, Victoire Marie, to marry off, Edward and Willie in England and Bingham soon to go, she and her husband increasingly yearned to visit the metropolis. William had devised a plan, in which responsibility for the medical practice would be devolved to Edward whose studies had come to an end in 1866.11 By the end of 1868, it became clear that Edward was not interested in returning to Tasmania. He had married in England in 1867 and set up a practice in Hogsthorpe, Lincolnshire.12 Crowther's fury at Edward is manifest in the drafts of the dissolution of partnership with their false starts and crossings through:

9

See Hendrik Goltzius, Fama and Historia (1586) in Neubauer, p. 56. Neubauer refers to a scene in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary when Emma sees a image of Fama on the wall of the cottage of her children's nurse. p. 55.

10

W E L H Crowther, 'An Account of the Life of my Father'.

11

'Time rapidly passes, the boy becomes the man, and those whose education we have been hatching and for whose welfare we have been so solicitous appears upon the field ready to do the battle of life and supply the places of those who have gone before. Another year , if all goes well, will see Edward in this position, ready and able to relieve me from the labours and anxieties of a profession which if practised in the spirit of philanthropy must be one of [?] responsibility. I have now been 24 years steadily at work and with the exceptance of a period of eight or nine weeks in the neighbouring colonies I have never had a holiday. I am most anxious to visit the great Metropolis, feeling assured by this step mental if not bodily vigour would be increased, old appreciations revived and the flight of time so rapid in Colonial life, in a measure arrested. 23 May 1866. Flower correspondence.

12

Whereas the above mentioned Edward has never returned to the colony in accordance with the provisions of the… but continued resident in England and practicing his profession there and has never acted…13

William's anger had barely subsided three years on: 'Edward committed a fatal mistake in not having carried out the plan I laid out for him', he wrote to Flower.

Perhaps Gertrude Gordon had been incorporated into Crowther's plan to go 'Home'. In 1866 her charges would have still required a nursery governess. She might have travelled with them to England. Or, after Edward's marriage, there might have been a suggestion that on his expected return, she would be employed to raise the children he would undoubtedly have. But the tenuousness of both these possibilities may have contributed to her actions in 1869. So may have other events whose seeds had been sown in London way back in 1864 and whose realisation would be felt at Albert Terrace with reverberating effect. The legacy of 1869 would inextricably link the fate of

Gertrude Gordon to that of the Crowther household.

Although the bottom had dropped out of the whaling industry with the advent of the American Civil War, and Crowther's entrepreneurial endeavours were at an ebb, his status was on the rise.14 And in spite of his murmurings about returning Home, by the beginning of 1869, William Crowther's local involvement showed no sign of diminishing. He had decided to run for parliament again, this time as the Hobart member of the Legislative Council.15 For all his posturing and self-promotion, Crowther's policies encouraged the working man and the lower middle class, people of Gertrude Gordon's background. He stood on a platform of increased suffrage, proportional taxation and more equitable land distribution; and it looked as if he would be returned unopposed.16 Furthermore, although unable to physically travel back to England, this colonial doctor was at last finding some recognition in the Metropole. Largely through his efforts (driven, perhaps, by his ambition for his sons), the Hobart General Hospital had been

13

6 November 1868. Dobson and Mitchell Papers, W L Crowther, AOT NS 1123/10/4

14 _{23 May 1864. Flower correspondence.} 15

He lost no opportunity for ensuring his name and views were in the press under whatever guise. For instance, he presented a report running for four newspaper columns as Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the Railway and Progress Association, expounding amongst other things on his view, as 'the working man's candidate' in favour of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. Mercury, 5 January 1869.

The poll was scheduled for 26 March. Mercury, 17 March 1869.

16 _{He was pushing for freehold suffrage in the Legislative Council and household suffrage in the}

recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons as a teaching hospital.17 He had been elected a corresponding member of the Royal Zoological Society for his contributions to the knowledge of cetaceans,18 and his relationship with Flower was promising to reach a new level of intimacy with a visit from Flower's nephew anticipated at the end of the 1869:

He will receive at the hands of Mrs Crowther and myself that attention for which I am happy to say not only the Antipodes but Tasmania in particular is justly celebrated…a little conversation with anyone from the Old Country is at all times a treat.19

One can imagine the anticipation with which the event of letters from 'Home' was awaited at Albert Terrace, and the monthly ritual of opening them; the gathering of family members as they were read aloud. Gertrude Gordon is likely to have received her own mail, but also to have been part of selected readings, or at least received second- hand news of letters from Edward and Willie. William Crowther set enormous store on the Flower correspondence, and with the volume of specimens being sent over to the Royal College of Surgeons Museum, she was probably privy to aspects of these letters, too. William Crowther's standing in the Metropole reflected on her status as one of his household.

Although William Crowther's letters have been preserved in the archives of the

Hunterian Museum, there are only a couple of drafts of those sent by William Flower to him. One of these, with many crossings out and insertions, is a carefully composed letter, one that hides its most consequential element within the generalities and lesser points of the whole. Crowther appears to have offered to procure land animals as well

17

The push for the Hobart institution becoming a Teaching Hospital had been one of Crowther's main aims during the devolution of power, and Edward one of the first four pupils to enrol in October 1861. (Mercury May 21, 1862). Part of his push was Hobart's excellent position for surgical training: 'Where is the School of Anatomy? Where the Lectureships, medical, surgical or anatomical? Where the students?' It was difficult in England, he said, for students to gain experience, but in Tasmania ' the elements of scientific wealth [bodies] are there in abundance, elements that are not available in our crowded establishments in Great Britain'… In no part of the world could a better groundwork be obtained than here.' Mercury, 30 November, 3 September 1859.

18

29 January 1869, Flower Correspondence. He wrote that it was unnecessary to think of any reward: 'As a member of the RCS I felt it to be my duty to supply material of which the Museum stands in need and shall continue to make additions as long as the means are at my disposal.'

19

as cetaceans but Flower says that they are already well-represented in English collections, both alive and dead. He writes about cetaceans and the difficulties of obtaining whole skeletons and then segues so seamlessly - both in and out - that one has to read twice to realise that in the midst of this writing of whales, he is couching a desire for two human skeletons, one each of a male and female Tasmanian Aborigine.20 From 1864, when this letter was received, there must have been this thought: not only were there Aborigines living just down the track at Oyster Cove, but there were

Aborigines buried there too. And at the hospital where William Crowther was honorary surgeon and instructor, not only did sick Aborigines come to be cured, but the bodies of those who died were available to surgeons and their pupils for post-mortems and dissection. At first Crowther wrote to Flower that he thought there would be no difficulty, and that he would either try to ensure that sick Aborigines would be sent straight to the hospital, or try to gain access to those already buried. But he soon realised other collectors had beaten him to it. 21 In discourses of full-bloodedness, and Tasmanian Aborigines were cast as the most primitive race on earth, their remains had become highly sought after.22

20

3 March 1864, RCS. In the twenty years leading up to 1884, Flower increased the Hunterian collection of human remains from eighteen skeletons to eighty-nine and 242 crania to 1380, excluding the extensive Davis collection bought in 1880. 'It was largely owing to his alertness and watchfulness that the college seized every opportunity of acquiring specimens.'(Obituary, Times, 3 July 1899). There had been an upsurge in interest following Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859). Darwin's friend (and Flower's predecessor in the Chair of the Hunterian Museum), T H Huxley, argued that Tasmanian Aborigines were 'the missing link between ape and man' (Petrow, p. 92; Times, 15 February 1870, p. 10). Britain's Secretary for the Colonies, the Duke of

Newcastle, had asked the Tasmanian Governor, T Gore-Browne, for a pair of skeletons for the Ethnological Society in Oxford in 1861. Ex Tasmanian Governor Denison, during his later Governorship of Madras (1861-1866), wrote for crania to be sent to him. The rising interest was coupled with an anticipation of scarcity because of the concept of Tasmanian Aborigines becoming 'extinct'. In December 1864 the Times ran two long articles, the first entitled 'The Last Man' (December 28, 1864 and December 30, 1864).

21 _{In May 1864 he wrote: 'Our aborigines are now reduced to about 5 and I will not forget the}

hint you have given relating to the skeletons. I will try to get an order sent to the Establishment where they reside (25 miles from here) that in the event of serious illness they should be forwarded to the Hospital where if they depart this life attention will be paid to the maceration … of their osteological remains. I will make inquiries for 2 feel assured with no very great trouble a couple could be exhumed from their burial ground.' By early the next year he was less

optimistic: 'With regard to the skeleton of the Aboriginal pairs I think there will be a little difficulty as I find that for some time back those running such matters have forestalled all the heads' (23 May 1864, 23 January 1865). RCS

22 _{The Superintendent of Aborigines at Oyster Cove, Dr Milligan, failed to record most of the}

deaths in the early 1850s (Plomley, p. 945). It does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that these bodies were made available to collectors.

The battle that was to ensue over the remains of 'the last Aborigine' was fought

materially, politically, in the press and in the public domain. It exposed questions about the legitimacy of colonial rule and the supremacy of race. It saw fissures of class, and reactions against a medical profession that had, by this middle period of the nineteenth century, assumed such ideological supremacy; and it reignited longstanding feuds. Gertrude Gordon was able to witness at first hand the tactics William Crowther was