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

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Cassandra Pybus uncovers the details of the harvesting of Indigenous Tasmanians’ skeletons.

This is a disturbing and, at times, heart-wrenching study of an appalling practice that was long shrouded in silence. Throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the skulls of Indigenous Tasmanians were exhumed from burial sites, stolen from morgues and autopsy tables and retrieved, after decapitation, from random killings and targeted expeditions.

Much money passed hands between London and Hobart, more so if an Aboriginal skeleton were intact and authenticated. Possession guaranteed status and standing to the institution in the British scientific community. Possession also provided self-aggrandising individuals with leverage to enter eminent scientific bodies as “fellows”. Those medical men of 19th century science – anthropologists, anatomists, eugenicists and phrenologists – were all complicit.

 

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