Speaker 1: It is the probably one of the most significant colonial
Speaker 1: sources that we have, and he's been kind of saddling
Speaker 1: neglected except by me, because it's such a complicated character.
Speaker 1: He's so the good is so interwoven with the evil,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to pull them apart.
Speaker 2: I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is
Speaker 2: In Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's
Speaker 2: forgotten characters. I need to tell you up front that
Speaker 2: today's episode will not be for everyone, but for those
Speaker 2: who choose to listen, it's one of the most compelling
Speaker 2: and disturbing episodes we've produced of this podcast. Just a
Speaker 2: warning to listeners, this episode contains extremely dark content and
Speaker 2: graphic details of the deaths of Indigenous people, particularly in
Speaker 2: relation to the horrific crime of grave robbing. Today we
Speaker 2: are speaking with Tasmanian historian Cassandra Pybus, who is the
Speaker 2: best selling author of Traganini, who we spoke with four
Speaker 2: years ago about that wonderful book. Now Cassandra is here
Speaker 2: to talk about her new book, which is called A
Speaker 2: Very Secret Trade, The Dark story of Gentlemen collectors in Tasmania,
Speaker 2: and she'll talk about one of those collectors in particular
Speaker 2: who was named George Augustus Robinson. Welcome back to the podcast, Cassandra.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be here now.
Speaker 2: The last time we spoke was back in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: when we talked about your last book, TRAGANINNI Journey through
Speaker 2: the Apocalypse, which has now sold over thirty thousand copies.
Speaker 2: So well done, very well done.
Speaker 1: How you like it now?
Speaker 2: That was such a compelling story and if any listeners
Speaker 2: want to hear that episode, they should scroll back to
Speaker 2: March twenty three, twenty twenty, and I highly recommend it
Speaker 2: was such an amazing episode to listen to be Cassandra,
Speaker 2: I thought that it was an obvious starting point for
Speaker 2: us today because it was towards the end of you
Speaker 2: writing that book that you first stumbled across this horrific
Speaker 2: secret from the past. Can you explain what you found
Speaker 2: and how it all unraveled.
Speaker 1: Well, I was just about to send my manuscript to
Speaker 1: the final manuscript to the publisher, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I just better double tech something. The man who transcribed
Speaker 1: George Augustus Robinson's journals on which most of Chugliny is based,
Speaker 1: has an archive up in Lonceston, and I thought there
Speaker 1: must be something in there that I might need to see,
Speaker 1: or something that I've missed. And so I'm sitting in
Speaker 1: this little archive and lon system push it, going through things,
Speaker 1: and I suddenly see this letter he's transcribed from a
Speaker 1: colonial lawyer who basically name didn't mean much to me,
Speaker 1: who describes that in the museum of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: of which he is the curator, the honorary curator, they
Speaker 1: had the complete skeleton of one of tugging in his
Speaker 1: best friends, who died several years before she did. And
Speaker 1: I was just literally for a moment stop breathing. I
Speaker 1: was so shocked, so shocked to read this, And I thought, goodness,
Speaker 1: if this shocks me, who else is going to be
Speaker 1: shocked by this? And what more is there? And so
Speaker 1: I go and find his letterbook, his business letter books,
Speaker 1: his lawyer's letter books. It's full of stuff about wills
Speaker 1: and you know, interest payments and stuff like that and
Speaker 1: touched away and there are several letters to overseas museums
Speaker 1: about the skeletons that he's complete and perfect skeletons that
Speaker 1: he's sending them, that he has gone to great expense,
Speaker 1: and personal trouble to get from the graves of Aboriginal
Speaker 1: people on Flinders Island and wait for it at Oyster Cove.
Speaker 1: And who knew, Well, no one knew, because this is
Speaker 1: a very secretive business, and as the title of my
Speaker 1: book suggests, a very secret trade. So I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: here's something. And so it's taken years and years and
Speaker 1: years of work to uncover a whole network of grave robbing,
Speaker 1: basically so much so that I would think that there
Speaker 1: was not one a known Aboriginal burial site. And I
Speaker 1: think it's important to know that the indigenous people of
Speaker 1: Tasmania burnt their dead, cremated their dead, and so that
Speaker 1: it was only after they came into contact with them
Speaker 1: were put into what some people would refer to as
Speaker 1: concentration camps, but or settlements offshore settlement at Flinders Island,
Speaker 1: where they buried in traditional kind of Christian burial, even
Speaker 1: if they weren't Christian. And so therefore all those known
Speaker 1: burial sites eventually were raided for their schleetal remains. How's
Speaker 1: that for shocking?
Speaker 2: That is shocking. And interestingly enough, Tragerini had always made
Speaker 2: it clear what she wanted to happen to her body
Speaker 2: after she died, didn't she?
Speaker 1: Yes, she got a very sympathetic clergyman downe at Oyster
Speaker 1: Cove where that she were. She was the last survivor
Speaker 1: to row her out into the middle of the very
Speaker 1: deep and very broad don Tree Casto Channel and said
Speaker 1: to him, bury me here, it's the deepest place. Promised me,
Speaker 1: promise me. Because she knew what would happen to her body,
Speaker 1: and there was attempts to make to bury her secretly
Speaker 1: and to make sure that nobody got hold of her body,
Speaker 1: but they did two years later. Some years after that
Speaker 1: it was put on public display.
Speaker 2: So you think she was quite aware of this practice.
Speaker 1: Of course she was aware of it. They've been digging
Speaker 1: up the graves of Oyster co for at least fifteen
Speaker 1: years before she died. I discovered and who was it
Speaker 1: who was organizing that. Two separate governors, two separate governors,
Speaker 1: first Governor gor Brown and then Governor James Duquet, trying
Speaker 1: to please people in London who were collecting these remains
Speaker 1: because they considered the Tasmanian First people to be a
Speaker 1: completely unique race, completely unique, nothing like anybody else in
Speaker 1: the world. They placed them somewhere between neanderthor Man and
Speaker 1: modern man. And so they thought, oh, these are really curious.
Speaker 1: You know, rare rare verity is a big thing if
Speaker 1: you're a collector. And there's a lot of nonsense talked
Speaker 1: about this being a scientific inquiry, and it was scientific
Speaker 1: in so far as they decided that this were These
Speaker 1: were the skulls mostly what they were interested in of
Speaker 1: a people unlike any other people. But my but they
Speaker 1: did very little. They've never done very much scientific investigation
Speaker 1: on these skeletal remains. I think it was really about
Speaker 1: collecting verities.
Speaker 2: Now, your new book A Very Secret Trade tells the
Speaker 2: story of what you term grave robbers or gentlemen collectors
Speaker 2: as they're called in Tasmania. But today we're going to
Speaker 2: tell the story of one in particular who featured very
Speaker 2: heavily in Tuggerini's story. And there's obviously a lot of
Speaker 2: crossover in the two stories. So where does Robinson's Where
Speaker 2: does Robinson's story begin?
Speaker 1: Well, basically, he comes from London. He was a working
Speaker 1: class Londoner. He was a bricklayer. I think came to
Speaker 1: the colony in the late twenties, eighteen twenties and set
Speaker 1: up building houses. Quite successful builder he became. But of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the colony is just a kind of mirror
Speaker 1: image of the imperial world. So of course his London
Speaker 1: lower class accent would have always given him away. He
Speaker 1: would never have been able to pass himself off as
Speaker 1: a gentleman or anything close to one, so that he
Speaker 1: might have been making quite a bit of money as
Speaker 1: a tradesman, that he would always be looked down on
Speaker 1: by the colonial elite. And so he seems to have
Speaker 1: a genuine, deep religious conviction about saving the indigenous people
Speaker 1: of Tasmania from destruction that he could see was you know, inevitable,
Speaker 1: and bringing them into the light of God. And so
Speaker 1: he went around Tasmania over a period of four years
Speaker 1: with a handful of his mission guides or hissabled companions
Speaker 1: as they called them, including Kragnini and her husband Worriedy,
Speaker 1: conciliating the different clan groups all around Tasmania and persuading
Speaker 1: them that if they didn't come with him and put
Speaker 1: themselves under the Governor's protection, they would be annihilated. And
Speaker 1: I think they could see enough of the riding on
Speaker 1: the wall to often agree with him that they that
Speaker 1: their life, their way of life was completely under attack
Speaker 1: and they would not survive. But others were just persuaded
Speaker 1: by at gunpoint eventually that this is what they should do.
Speaker 1: And he never understood until quite near the end that
Speaker 1: the intention was to remove these people from the island
Speaker 1: colony completely. And so he then becomes the instrument of
Speaker 1: taking them to a settlement on Flinder's Island in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Bass Strait, knowing full well that this
Speaker 1: is a betrayal, fundamental betrayal of what he had promised them,
Speaker 1: that they would be somehow allowed to stay in, if
Speaker 1: not exactly their own country, at least in a part
Speaker 1: of the country that they had the islands they had
Speaker 1: inhabited for forty thousand years. And so then he becomes
Speaker 1: the commandant of the Aboriginal settlement on Flinders Island. That's
Speaker 1: the title he's given, and so this is a huge
Speaker 1: step up in the world for him. But it's terrible
Speaker 1: because not unsurprisingly, these less than three hundred people who
Speaker 1: just died. There's a myth that circulated around when I
Speaker 1: was a younger person in Tasmania about how they died
Speaker 1: of a broken heart or they died of loneliness because
Speaker 1: they'd been taken away from their country. They died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: they died of measles, they died of they basically tuberculosis
Speaker 1: ran rife through that population, and so they were all
Speaker 1: very susceptible to any kind of respiratory viruses that came
Speaker 1: in when ships came to bring the salted food that
Speaker 1: they were being fed, so the water they drank was salty.
Speaker 1: Their health was just they went from being very healthy
Speaker 1: people to being extremely unhealthy people who died very quickly,
Speaker 1: and they had no proper medical treatment. And so he
Speaker 1: just wanted to get out of there as soon as
Speaker 1: he could and became the protector of the protector interesting
Speaker 1: terminology of Aborigines in Victoria, which was then called the
Speaker 1: Port Phillip Settlement.
Speaker 2: Did he put his hand up for that role?
Speaker 1: Oh, he begged and begged and he basically created the role,
Speaker 1: the idea of the role, and then begged and cajoled
Speaker 1: and wheedled the governor of New South Wales to give
Speaker 1: it to him.
Speaker 2: And why was that? Was that because he saw that
Speaker 2: as a way to move up in the world, or.
Speaker 1: He thought the way to get away from the graveyard.
Speaker 1: He was living in and to take the remaining people
Speaker 1: with him, but the governor wouldn't let him take all
Speaker 1: the people from why Berlina. He said that he could
Speaker 1: take one family, now that would have been drugging and
Speaker 1: we're already and we're ready his two sons. But in
Speaker 1: fact he couldn't leave behind the people who'd been with
Speaker 1: him for all these years, and he took them all,
Speaker 1: fourteen people and because they were all family to him,
Speaker 1: and that caused a huge amount of trouble for him
Speaker 1: in Victoria because he then became responsible for them. Because
Speaker 1: these are Tasmanians, they're not Victorians. They've got nothing in
Speaker 1: common with the people. They've been separated from Victoria twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand years. He got nothing in common with people
Speaker 1: from Victoria. It was a disastrous thing to do, and
Speaker 1: basically they were Eventually what was left of them were
Speaker 1: returned to Flinders Island, including Drugnenni and he then went
Speaker 1: on to have a short lived career in Victoria before
Speaker 1: he retired and went to live in England. And in
Speaker 1: that time he made himself a very rich man because
Speaker 1: he traded in land in Port Phillip when it became
Speaker 1: became Melbourne, and then there was the gold rush and
Speaker 1: he was one of the first people to buy gold
Speaker 1: nuggets from guys who came in from finding the gold.
Speaker 1: And then he had huge land grants in Tasmania that
Speaker 1: he sold, and he sold them all up and went
Speaker 1: to England as a very wealthy man. His first wife
Speaker 1: had died. He left all his kids behind, bereft and
Speaker 1: without any money into the gentry class because they had
Speaker 1: the money to do it, and then went off to
Speaker 1: Europe for three years and taught himself foreign languages, which
Speaker 1: got rid of his accent.
Speaker 2: So you talked about how his motivations were genuine at
Speaker 2: the beginning. Did they stay that way? Did he always
Speaker 2: believe that he was doing the right.
Speaker 3: Thing by these aboriginal people, or did his motivations changed
Speaker 3: because he obviously made a lot of money. So did
Speaker 3: he just become very greedy and see this as a
Speaker 3: way to make his fortune.
Speaker 1: Anyone who comes to the colony of Van Diemen's Land,
Speaker 1: as Tasmeia was known as a free settler is wishing
Speaker 1: to increase their status in the world and make money.
Speaker 1: Has five children and he's got to provide for those children.
Speaker 1: So always in what he is doing. There is this
Speaker 1: pecuniary interest in land grants, getting more the lang grands,
Speaker 1: in particular getting as a tradesman, he wouldn't have normally
Speaker 1: got land grants. He gets a lot of lang grands
Speaker 1: as a reward. But he would always have said, and
Speaker 1: I have often defended him to a degree of saying, well, Georgia,
Speaker 1: Gustus Robinson's the best, you're going to the best of them.
Speaker 1: He always believed that bringing these people into the light
Speaker 1: of into God's life would save them. He didn't expect
Speaker 1: that God would allow them all to die, and so
Speaker 1: that's why there's this sort of desperate desire to try
Speaker 1: and move them to Victoria where they might be healthier
Speaker 1: and they could integrate with the Victorian first people. And
Speaker 1: of course that didn't happen, because that's not how the
Speaker 1: world works. And in Victoria that the task that faced
Speaker 1: him with the Victorian clans was so overwhelming that he
Speaker 1: just couldn't handle it. And so building a big house
Speaker 1: for himself in Victoria and buying up land cheaply to
Speaker 1: sell once prices boomed with the gold Russian stuff became
Speaker 1: much more of a driver for him because I think
Speaker 1: he couldn't face the fact that he was failing at
Speaker 1: his god given task of saving the indigenous people. So
Speaker 1: there's always been this balance between his ideal his idealism,
Speaker 1: and his his desire to rise up in the in
Speaker 1: the status he felt bitterly the way in which even
Speaker 1: the convicts used to make fun of him, how lowly
Speaker 1: his status was, and he wanted to have you know,
Speaker 1: he wanted he wanted respect, he wanted to be treated
Speaker 1: like a gentleman, and eventually he was.
Speaker 2: Now. I'd love you soon to take us through some
Speaker 2: of the very specific discoveries that you made about George
Speaker 2: Augustus Robinson, but first to understand that we really need
Speaker 2: to hear about his journal. So can you explain to
Speaker 2: us the family connection that you have to Robinson.
Speaker 1: And ancestor mi colonial ancestor. The first first Pybus to
Speaker 1: come to Tasmania took up the first land grant on
Speaker 1: big Land Grant on Brunie Island, and within months of that,
Speaker 1: that was in eighteen twenty nine, George Augustus Robinson was
Speaker 1: given a very small grand Land Grand immediately adjacent to
Speaker 1: the Pybus Land Grand to set up a kind of
Speaker 1: mission station. It didn't last for very long, because an
Speaker 1: epidemic of influenza wiped out the people of Bruney Island
Speaker 1: very quickly in eighteen twenty nine. But that those two people,
Speaker 1: Robinson and Richard Pybus, became close friends and stayed close friends,
Speaker 1: so that Richard Pybus was his agent when he was
Speaker 1: in Victoria, and he sold his property for him and
Speaker 1: looked after his property and then sold it for him.
Speaker 1: And I was directed to read George Augustus Robinson's journals.
Speaker 1: Turns out he was a great scribbler, and he wrote
Speaker 1: a journal long often item every day by the great
Speaker 1: Lindall Ryan, Australian historian, to whom I'm very indebted, who
Speaker 1: died yesterday, oh published which has touched it. And she said, ah,
Speaker 1: you know you should read Georgia Augustus Robinson's journal. He
Speaker 1: talks about your grand great grandfather, great great grandfather. Oh
Speaker 1: oh god no. And so I started reading this journal,
Speaker 1: this daily account of his association with the people are
Speaker 1: the first people of the island, and what he was
Speaker 1: doing and the justifications he was making about what he
Speaker 1: was doing and removing these people, and it was it
Speaker 1: just turned my life around. And now I hear I
Speaker 1: am with my third book about George Augustus Robinson and
Speaker 1: his vision for the people of Tasmania and where that led.
Speaker 1: It is probably one of the most significant colonial sources
Speaker 1: that we have, and he's been kind of saddly neglected
Speaker 1: except by me, because it's such a complicated character. He's
Speaker 1: so the good is so interwoven with the evil, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to pull them apart.
Speaker 2: So let's start to go through what you discovered in
Speaker 2: the journals. So Robinson returned to Australia before leaving Australia
Speaker 2: for good.
Speaker 3: What did he get up to there?
Speaker 1: Well, basically he I'll go back to the time that
Speaker 1: he was trying to get out of going to staying
Speaker 1: at Yvelina and just burying more people. And he was
Speaker 1: visited by the new governor of Van Dema's Land, Sir
Speaker 1: John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane Franklin, both famous names,
Speaker 1: or certainly Lady Jane Franklins, for very briefly for a
Speaker 1: sort of tour of duty of the Aboriginal settlement. And
Speaker 1: in order to get to go to Victoria, he needed
Speaker 1: the new governor to give his permission, and so he
Speaker 1: wanted to curry favor with the new governor, and so
Speaker 1: he got the people to dance for them and to
Speaker 1: pretend to be aboriginies for them, as normally they weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to they weren't allowed to take their clothes off,
Speaker 1: and they weren't allowed to wear oka, and they weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to have ceremony, but he let them do it
Speaker 1: to entertain, to entertain the governor and his wife. And
Speaker 1: as they were leaving, Lady Jane Franklin asked him if
Speaker 1: she could he could get her some Aboriginal skulls, and
Speaker 1: he had noticed that in his diary, And then a
Speaker 1: bit later in his journal he notes that he was
Speaker 1: attending auta he demanded that there be autops he's done
Speaker 1: on the bodies as people died, because he wanted to establish,
Speaker 1: if possible, what was they were all dying of, And
Speaker 1: it was all to do with disease lungs, and there
Speaker 1: it is, he says. He talks about this man called
Speaker 1: Christopher and how he ordered the body decapitated and sent
Speaker 1: it off to someone else to be have the flesh
Speaker 1: taken off the skull and then buried the rest of
Speaker 1: the mangled body. And then a little while later there
Speaker 1: was another, a woman, and then a little while after
Speaker 1: that there was the woman's husband, who was a major
Speaker 1: figure in the you know what we might have referred
Speaker 1: to as the chief and he took a trip up
Speaker 1: to see the governor and could present his case about
Speaker 1: why should be the protector of Aborigines in in across
Speaker 1: Bastradia in what became Victoria, And he undoubtedly took those
Speaker 1: three skulls with him, And that lady Jane Franklin donated
Speaker 1: those skulls to the Royal College of Surgeons in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. Shouldn't say where she got them from, but
Speaker 1: she donated three Tasmanian skulls, and I can only presume
Speaker 1: that they were the three skulls that George Augustus Robinson
Speaker 1: took from the people that he'd been caring for and
Speaker 1: looking after and was and had vowed that he would
Speaker 1: look you know, that he would protect them. And I
Speaker 1: also discovered that at the same time that he was
Speaker 1: weedling to get the amulets of the dead that they
Speaker 1: would wear around their neck, small bones from the body
Speaker 1: of their children or their loved ones, and he would
Speaker 1: get hold of them and say he'd keep them for
Speaker 1: safe keeping, and in fact he was keeping them for
Speaker 1: a collection which he eventually took to England with him.
Speaker 1: So that much I knew about him from his journal,
Speaker 1: But it was only until I was looking into his
Speaker 1: life in Bath that I found out that what I
Speaker 1: had written about in his journal for those three skulls
Speaker 1: was routine. And then he probably left why Billina with
Speaker 1: at least a dozen Kasmanian skulls as well as these
Speaker 1: amulets of the dead and some other skletal material and
Speaker 1: bits of their hair, obviously building a collection. And I
Speaker 1: can tell you I was pretty shocked about this, because
Speaker 1: I'd always given him much more the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: He knew, he knew, absolutely knew these people very very well.
Speaker 1: He knew they had a complete abhorrence, a horror of
Speaker 1: anybody interfering with their bodies after death. He knew that,
Speaker 1: but he did it anyway, And to my mind, that
Speaker 1: makes him the most abhorrent of all of these skull collectors,
Speaker 1: because he understood at a profound level what a terrible
Speaker 1: betrayal this was.
Speaker 2: Tell us more about the journal entries and exactly what
Speaker 2: they said. Was he talking about them in sort of
Speaker 2: scientific terms or medical terms. Was he showing any sort
Speaker 2: of sense of guilt.
Speaker 1: No, he was just being completely pragmatic about it. He
Speaker 1: describes the state of their diseased lungs and then casually,
Speaker 1: basically casually says, you know, I ordered the skull that
Speaker 1: I ordered the body to capitate it in the skull
Speaker 1: s off for you know, to be stripped, and then
Speaker 1: he doesn't say anything more about and then then then
Speaker 1: their extentry will be talking about the funeral. Now, it
Speaker 1: was quite interesting that before George Augustus Robinson came to
Speaker 1: Flinder's Island and there were other people in charge, people
Speaker 1: were not buried in coffins, but he insisted that they'd
Speaker 1: be buried in coffins. Now I think he insisted they
Speaker 1: would be buried in coffin was because the bodies were
Speaker 1: so mangled by the time the surgeon had cut them
Speaker 1: open for him to look at and take bits off,
Speaker 1: that the people would be just horrified and so distressed
Speaker 1: if they got to see the state of the body.
Speaker 1: So they would have these Christian burials of mangled bodies
Speaker 1: in what whilst he was going off with their heads.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many, but I can account for
Speaker 1: about a dozen.
Speaker 2: Now you were able to visit Robinson's final resting place
Speaker 2: last year, weren't you. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took a bit of finding. I always knew
Speaker 1: he was buried in Bath, and I knew that there
Speaker 1: was a kind of engraved thing I thought on her headstone.
Speaker 1: It turned out he didn't have a headstone to say,
Speaker 1: you know, here lies George Augustus Robinson, the Protector, the
Speaker 1: Protector and Pacificator of the Aboriginals of Australia, or I
Speaker 1: think that's what it says. But the two terms that
Speaker 1: stuck in my mind were protector and pacificator. And it
Speaker 1: was a graveyard that was clearly a private graveyard that
Speaker 1: was clearly for the gentry class, that had huge, great
Speaker 1: statues and stuff, and you know, all that kind of
Speaker 1: fancy Victorian graveyard. But you know, the wealthy people of
Speaker 1: Bath were buried there, and that's exactly where he wanted
Speaker 1: to find himself. But it was really only until I
Speaker 1: got up to the top of the hill and looked
Speaker 1: at the extraordinary house that he had built, which was
Speaker 1: on the market for four point five million pounds at
Speaker 1: that point, that I realized just how much he had
Speaker 1: managed to turn himself inside aft and into it to
Speaker 1: a completely new person. And I always had this suspicion
Speaker 1: that there were more too. There was a great, a
Speaker 1: famous skull collector who was sniffing around George Augustus Robinson
Speaker 1: in his later years, trying to get He got some
Speaker 1: of the amulets of the dead, and lots of lots
Speaker 1: of the wonderful drawings by Thomas Block of his of
Speaker 1: his aboriginal guides. He got all of those of him,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't and he got one skeleton, one skull
Speaker 1: of a boy and one skull of a man. But
Speaker 1: there was the assumption was there that there were many
Speaker 1: more that Robinson wouldn't give him or sell him. And
Speaker 1: so where did they go? I mean, I presume they disappeared.
Speaker 1: And then when I was in the a Museum and
Speaker 1: which apparently had some Tasmanian aboriginal hair, I was looking
Speaker 1: at a little card on which a famous anthropologist had
Speaker 1: written that she got this hair from a professor in
Speaker 1: Germany called von Lucian, who had got it from George
Speaker 1: Augustus Robinson's widow when he bought seven Tasmanian skulls. So
Speaker 1: I count three, go to the Franklins, two go to
Speaker 1: three go to skull collectors I know about England, and
Speaker 1: then there's seven that go to Von Lucian. So that's
Speaker 1: at least a dozen that I know about. And so
Speaker 1: this again is just I mean, it's all very shocking,
Speaker 1: Jen the whole saga, not just Georgia Gousta's Robin, the
Speaker 1: whole saga of what happened to the bodies of the
Speaker 1: Tasmanian First people is all very shocking. But this one
Speaker 1: really cut to the quick for me because I had
Speaker 1: somehow trusted George Gustus Robinson to be a good man
Speaker 1: at heart, and I just couldn't see it in this.
Speaker 1: This was just he bought these skulls and the relics
Speaker 1: of the dead and all kinds of bits and pieces
Speaker 1: that he got from them and the people of Victoria
Speaker 1: back to London in order to prove that to get
Speaker 1: entry into the gentleman class, because they were all these
Speaker 1: gentlemen collectors were really interested in that stuff. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a betrayal. I mean, so the
Speaker 1: protector and pacificator of the first people of this country,
Speaker 1: basically at its root, saw them as a commodity to
Speaker 1: advance his own self interest. Now he's alone in that
Speaker 1: because that's basically part of the course. But I thought
Speaker 1: he was better than that. And you know, it's been
Speaker 1: difficult for me, after thirty years of being attached to
Speaker 1: the journals of the dogged and broken backed journals of
Speaker 1: George Augustus Robinson, to realize that his betrayal was that
Speaker 1: deep that he would betray them after death.
Speaker 2: And it's amazing when you think about how much he
Speaker 2: did turn his life around off the back of his
Speaker 2: exploits in Australia. I was interested to see that you
Speaker 2: wrote that this house that he lived in in Bath,
Speaker 2: that he actually entertained Lady Franklin, so you know, another
Speaker 2: skull collector and several other important people who came to
Speaker 2: Bath for the.
Speaker 1: Actual He gave one of his skulls to who was
Speaker 1: the president of the Ethnological Society, that he wanted to
Speaker 1: be joined, that he wanted to become. And this is
Speaker 1: what this is, the story behind the whole made is
Speaker 1: that they don't want money. They're not selling these things.
Speaker 1: What they want is to be made a fellow of
Speaker 1: the Royal Society, a fellow as the Theological Society a
Speaker 1: fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, because back down here
Speaker 1: at the end of the world, in a colony, a
Speaker 1: pen or colony at the end of the world, this
Speaker 1: gives them real status because this is the recognition from
Speaker 1: the highest kind of intellectual centers of the center of
Speaker 1: the universe, London. And so that's what that's what drives it,
Speaker 1: and that's what drove him. This is a kind of
Speaker 1: recognition of his not you know, being a gentleman and
Speaker 1: living in a big house is one thing, but this is,
Speaker 1: you know, this being admitted as a member and being
Speaker 1: able to entertain these people in his house is the
Speaker 1: living proof that he has become a gentleman.
Speaker 2: M Now tell us more about these skull collectors. What
Speaker 2: did they do with skulls? Were they put on display
Speaker 2: in their homes?
Speaker 1: Eventually, the major driver of it in Tasmania was the
Speaker 1: Royal Society of Tasmania, which was initially set up as
Speaker 1: a little scientific society by Lady Jane Franklin, and that
Speaker 1: eventually became got royal assent to be called the Royal
Speaker 1: Society of Tasmania and they started collecting aboriginal remains for
Speaker 1: their museum in the eighteen thirties, in eighteen forties, I
Speaker 1: suppose you know, so some people might have had skull
Speaker 1: collections in their family. Now why would they have those
Speaker 1: the world because when they went out on killing parties,
Speaker 1: they probably took trophies. So you get they keep getting
Speaker 1: donations from very well to do settlers of aboriginal skulls,
Speaker 1: so you think, well, where did they get those from?
Speaker 1: And then it becomes a big issue in England that
Speaker 1: the Tasmanians are about to become extinct. You know, we
Speaker 1: know about how they go on about the file the scene.
Speaker 1: Imagine how they're going to go on about a form
Speaker 1: of human life that's about to become extinct. And so
Speaker 1: there's this big scramble to get hold of aboriginal remains.
Speaker 1: And so the only way you're going to get them
Speaker 1: and to be sure they're aboriginal is to go into
Speaker 1: the grave sites. And the most obvious one is the
Speaker 1: one just outside of Hobart or is to Cove where
Speaker 1: people are still living, including drugging in and so there's
Speaker 1: an issue about you have to be very secretive about it.
Speaker 1: You've got to do it when they're away hunting, or
Speaker 1: take them up to town to go to a special event,
Speaker 1: like have their photograph taken, and that's when you dig
Speaker 1: up the graves. So this is why trugging In knows
Speaker 1: that this is going on, because she's not stupid. And besides,
Speaker 1: everybody a noyster cove who lived around there, the settlers
Speaker 1: who lived around there, would have known about it because
Speaker 1: some of them would have been employed to dig up
Speaker 1: the grades. And so that's why she knows that this
Speaker 1: is what's going to happen to her, because it's been
Speaker 1: happening for since. The first one that I know about
Speaker 1: is in eighteen sixty two and she dies in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, so there's a long time in which this
Speaker 1: is systematically going on. And so they're packaged up and
Speaker 1: sent off in the governors in the governor's postage, so
Speaker 1: that it's not interfered with by you know, anybody. It's
Speaker 1: governor to the Secretary of State. It's like you know,
Speaker 1: presidential communications. And so I found out about them in
Speaker 1: the in the in the records of the Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: the Duke of Newcastle, because every trace of it has
Speaker 1: been removed from the archives here in Tasmania. And then
Speaker 1: I found that those three skulls that I was looking
Speaker 1: for that were taken from graves in eighteen sixty two
Speaker 1: were still in Oxford University. After my prodding and prompting
Speaker 1: and pushing, a new curator came in and lo and
Speaker 1: behold he found them and said, oh, yeah, we have those,
Speaker 1: We have those skulls. And so how come you didn't
Speaker 1: have them the last time I was here? How come
Speaker 1: they've never been shown in the catalog? How come you're
Speaker 1: not you're denying the fact that you had them, and
Speaker 1: suddenly now you've got them. And this was a story
Speaker 1: that was being repeated time and time again that even
Speaker 1: though they were so pleased to have these special, remarkable
Speaker 1: trophies or curiosities or scientific exhibits, however you want to
Speaker 1: call it, of this extinct race of people, they were
Speaker 1: being very secretive about it always because they knew that
Speaker 1: what they were doing was immoral. And they knew it
Speaker 1: was also, and this is very important, against the law.
Speaker 1: It was against the law to rob graves, even graves
Speaker 1: of people who are not Christians but had been buried properly.
Speaker 1: And so you know, these governors, these secretaries of state,
Speaker 1: these professors of anthropology at Oxford University. They knew that
Speaker 1: if this was publicly known, there'd be an outcry about it.
Speaker 1: But they did it because you know, collectors, as you
Speaker 1: would people would not just looking at what gets paid
Speaker 1: for the watch of the man who went down on
Speaker 1: the ship they hit the iceberg and they paid this
Speaker 1: vast some money to buy his watch, John Asta. They
Speaker 1: know that people will pay a lot of money or
Speaker 1: go to a lot of troubled to get what is
Speaker 1: rare and has an amazing story attached to it. And
Speaker 1: what was rare was a race of people, human beings
Speaker 1: you had become extinct. Well, of course they didn't become
Speaker 1: extinct as we now know. And also they were the
Speaker 1: same people as the people who occupied Australia, but they
Speaker 1: didn't know that then, and they were just as adaptable
Speaker 1: as anybody else was. But they by the time they
Speaker 1: were all dead, you could make up any stories you
Speaker 1: wanted to about them.
Speaker 2: So, Cassandra, what happened to the three skulls at Oxford?
Speaker 2: Are they still there?
Speaker 1: They're still there?
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I passed that information onto the Tasmanian Aboriginal Center, who
Speaker 1: had been asking to have material returned for thirty years
Speaker 1: or more. And most of it had been, but not
Speaker 1: these three skulls. And I kind of kept looking at
Speaker 1: the records and thinking, no, there's three skulls on account
Speaker 1: for here, and I was assuming they probably got thrown
Speaker 1: out with the trash or something. But no, no, they
Speaker 1: still had them. And then there was then the same
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University. I knew that they had once got
Speaker 1: five skulls. They had once. I had read the paper
Speaker 1: of a professor there in the nineteenth century talked about
Speaker 1: the Tasmanian skulls he had. But I could find no way.
Speaker 1: And the Tasmanian Averageal Center had been asking and asking,
Speaker 1: and the Australian government had been asking about them. Nothing.
Speaker 1: But then suddenly they found them and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: do you want to see them. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: want to see them. No, but I guess I should
Speaker 1: see them, just to prove that you do have them.
Speaker 1: I still have them, And they said, yes, of course,
Speaker 1: we will repatriate them. But you've got to jump through
Speaker 1: all these hoops. You know, the lawyers are all in
Speaker 1: charge of this. Now, nothing so simple as to return
Speaker 1: their ancestral remains of the aboriginal people of Tasmania. No
Speaker 1: that would be that would be too easy. We can't
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: So were any of these skulls at the time put
Speaker 2: on display in museums or do they always remain in
Speaker 2: private actions?
Speaker 1: Well, we don't know how many skulls there might have
Speaker 1: been in private collections. I mean, I don't know. When
Speaker 1: I say we I think this, who else knows. So
Speaker 1: there's undoubtedly they're in private in class cases, in private collections.
Speaker 1: That's where Lady James would have been before she gave
Speaker 1: them to the Royal College of Surgeons. They were on
Speaker 1: display in the Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Museum until
Speaker 1: the Second World War when the Hunterian Museum was bombed
Speaker 1: that whole collection was destroyed. They were on display in
Speaker 1: the pitt Rivers Museum well into the twentieth century. That
Speaker 1: the ones in the pitt Rivers Museum have been repatriated,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, they were on display. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: face it, Trumpinese whole skeleton was on display in Tasmania
Speaker 1: until nineteen forty seven, and so when you go to
Speaker 1: the Hunterian Museum, which had the biggest collection, they still
Speaker 1: got human skulls on display from other people haven't been
Speaker 1: as the sifference about objecting to it, as the Australian
Speaker 1: Government and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Center has been so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's bizarre, but they have it. And they
Speaker 1: see they did discover when they did measurements of the
Speaker 1: skull that the Aboriginal people of Tasmania seem to be
Speaker 1: had the same sized skull brain size as modern people
Speaker 1: as them, and that was a big shock to them.
Speaker 1: So instead they lost all interest in skulls and got
Speaker 1: interested in chipped stones instead. So you see, look how
Speaker 1: primitive they are. They have their only tools, they've got
Speaker 1: a chipped stones. So they shipped out tons and tons
Speaker 1: and tons of stones to European and British museums and
Speaker 1: Australian museums is a huge one in Canberra to prove
Speaker 1: that they are really, really, really primitive, more primitive than
Speaker 1: Stone Age men.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Just as part of your research into skull collectors,
Speaker 2: you came across one collector who had more than five
Speaker 2: thousand skulls. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's one lusion. This is a German Man that
Speaker 1: lady he called for Lady Robinson, which I think is
Speaker 1: entertaining that George Augustus Robinson's widow sold his collection too.
Speaker 1: He had this massive collection of skulls, which were acquired
Speaker 1: eventually by the Natural History Museum in New York on
Speaker 1: West Park Avenue. I'm sure anyone who's been to New
Speaker 1: York has senate, not the collection, just the museum. And
Speaker 1: most of those skulls came from Africa. They came from
Speaker 1: the Herrero and Harmer people Nama people of Namibia as
Speaker 1: who were basically destroyed as a result of a genocidal
Speaker 1: war that was waged against them in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And they herded these people who were not killed outright
Speaker 1: into concentration camps. That's what they called them, and that's
Speaker 1: where the term comes from. And he von Lucian had
Speaker 1: people who worked in the camps, getting the people who
Speaker 1: living is a really grotesque story, living in the camps,
Speaker 1: to strip the bodies as there dead, for their skeletal remains.
Speaker 1: And he got their skulls, thousands of them. And so
Speaker 1: when he got the skull from George Augustus Robinson's widow,
Speaker 1: what he says about it is really very interesting. He
Speaker 1: says her husband was the commandant of the camp in Tasmania,
Speaker 1: and so that's how he has accessed to these undeniably
Speaker 1: unique skulls. So he saw that what he was looking
Speaker 1: at was people whose skulls had been taken from a
Speaker 1: concentration camp, because that's what he was familiar with. And
Speaker 1: where I read that, I thought, yeah, he's absolutely right
Speaker 1: about that. That's exactly what was going on. The first
Speaker 1: of all, you take people, you drive them off the island,
Speaker 1: you put them on an island in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: You give them no decent food, you give them no
Speaker 1: decent medical attention, You wait for them to die, and
Speaker 1: then you commodify their bodies and turn them into museum exis. Now.
Speaker 1: If that is not a description of genocide, I don't
Speaker 1: know what is. And it was something that von Lucien
Speaker 1: recognized absolutely that what he was looking at coming from Tasmania,
Speaker 1: it was the same thing that it had coming from
Speaker 1: the German West African colonies. Something the colonists did.
Speaker 2: So, as you say, George Augustus Robinson was not the
Speaker 2: worst of the traders in Indigenous Human Remains. We've already
Speaker 2: talked about Lady Jane Franklin. Who are some of the
Speaker 2: others that you mentioned in the book.
Speaker 1: Probably the worst of them is the man. I started
Speaker 1: with the lawyer Morton Allport, whose letter I read about
Speaker 1: how he had the complete perfect skeleton because this one
Speaker 1: had never been buried. This one was taken from the
Speaker 1: morgue secretly. Clander Stanley spirited away and stripped of its
Speaker 1: you know, flesh as soon as she died, as soon
Speaker 1: as she died, which started the hospital taken away to
Speaker 1: get a skeleton with the permission of the Premier if not,
Speaker 1: and the governor. But all secret, nothing written down, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing that's going to come back to bite them. And
Speaker 1: he then started to get skulls for institutions in London
Speaker 1: and then moved from skulls onto four skeletons once he
Speaker 1: realized that there were no skulls left at Oyster Cove.
Speaker 1: He then got someone to find where people were buried
Speaker 1: at Flinders Island and exhumeed seven perfect skeletons as he
Speaker 1: calls them, from there to center museums. And basically he
Speaker 1: was completely, you know, most all about this in these
Speaker 1: letters that he wrote to these museums, saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect skeleton, and I knew these people.
Speaker 1: I can guarantee who they were I mean in some
Speaker 1: cases they actually gave them their names. You know, this
Speaker 1: woman's name is Bessie. I knew her well, and he
Speaker 1: knew her because his wife was a very close friend
Speaker 1: of the superintendent of the Aboriginal station at Oysterco. He
Speaker 1: used to go down there and visit them, probably measuring
Speaker 1: them up with his eyes. You know, as soon as
Speaker 1: they were in the grave, he had them out of there. Now,
Speaker 1: no one knew that about him. I just I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's not quite true, because obviously the person who transcribed
Speaker 1: the letter that I read knew about him. And when
Speaker 1: I went looking for his letters for further evidence, I
Speaker 1: discovered that the whole letter books had been transcribed onto
Speaker 1: a typewriter, which means that it was quart some time
Speaker 1: ago that was done. And so people did know that
Speaker 1: he had done these things. And yet it never got
Speaker 1: into the public discourse. It had never become a public
Speaker 1: scandal ever. You know, people were still protecting this. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we better not talk about that, you know, we better
Speaker 1: not let anybody know about that. That's too horrible. Besides,
Speaker 1: our library is called the in all Port Library. Will
Speaker 1: be in you know, we'll be in deep trouble they're
Speaker 1: in deep trouble now, but it's taken all this time
Speaker 1: for this horrendous story to be made public. And again again,
Speaker 1: he knew these people. He used to go down and
Speaker 1: play with them and talk to them, and you know,
Speaker 1: he knew who they were and he could boast to
Speaker 1: the museum. He sent Bessie's skeleton too, that he knew
Speaker 1: her personally and that he could guarantee she was pure Tasmanian.
Speaker 1: So he's the one I most dislike. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: cut to the quick the way George, because you know,
Speaker 1: he's just an amoral man. He wasn't going around parading
Speaker 1: as the savior of the Aboriginal people.
Speaker 2: Now. One of the other ones that you mentioned that
Speaker 2: was worse was a Victorian pastoralist named Murray.
Speaker 1: Black Mary Blarry Well. One of the things is I
Speaker 1: focused on Tasmania only because the Tasmanians are the apex skeleton,
Speaker 1: if you like, in the whole skeletal collecting business at
Speaker 1: the very top of the tasman is the rarest, the
Speaker 1: most remarkable, unique. But the Aboriginal people of Tasmy of
Speaker 1: Australia were also big target and the professor of medicine
Speaker 1: at Melbourne University. Was a big collector. He had quite
Speaker 1: a few Tasmanian skulls, but he also had a massive
Speaker 1: collection of Victorian and New South Wales people that was
Speaker 1: collected by a pastor that's called Murray Black who lived
Speaker 1: on the Murray River and he collected he just robbed
Speaker 1: graves willy nilly, and he's he writes of you know,
Speaker 1: not having enough crates to put all the skeletons in it,
Speaker 1: that he dug up in and bought He had a
Speaker 1: lot of crates, he had like forty fifty something like that,
Speaker 1: and that he just threw the through the other skeletons
Speaker 1: that in the river. And then he was collecting for
Speaker 1: an institute in Canberra as well, and basically he collected
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of bones, like massive, and he's probably
Speaker 1: not even the worst of them. There was another one
Speaker 1: in South Australia who was the coroner and also the
Speaker 1: chief medical officer, whose name was Smith, Ramsey Smith, and
Speaker 1: anybody came through his hands. You know, they weren't always Aboriginal.
Speaker 1: They were made people who were seen to be mentally
Speaker 1: deficient as well, but huge numbers of Aboriginal he just
Speaker 1: basically got his hands on anybody who died, and if
Speaker 1: they were of interest to him, he would just take
Speaker 1: their goals. And he's the major supplier of aboriginal material
Speaker 1: to the University of Edinburgh, which rewarded him by making him,
Speaker 1: of course a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: Now somebody else can write about Ramsey Smith if they've
Speaker 1: got the stomach for it, or about Murray Black if
Speaker 1: they've got the stomach for it. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do it. I can't stand this stuff. When I was
Speaker 1: in the South Australian Museum and I was reading through
Speaker 1: their archives about their acquisitions or aboriginal material, I got
Speaker 1: physically ill and had to leave and never went back again.
Speaker 1: You can go so far with this stuff and then
Speaker 1: you think, no, no, it's too much. It's too much.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can understand that. I'm so sorry to hear that. Well,
Speaker 2: that's been a very dark story, as you describe it,
Speaker 2: but it's been fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing
Speaker 2: it with us Today. The book is out now, A
Speaker 2: very Secret Trade, The Dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania.
Speaker 2: Where's the best place for people to pick up a copy.
Speaker 1: Cassandra, Well, I would think the big bookshops like readings,
Speaker 1: and you know, my understanding from my publishers are that
Speaker 1: it's gone out very widely to bookshops because the first book,
Speaker 1: the book that's proceeded at trugg it Any, was a
Speaker 1: best seller and so most bookshops will be getting copies
Speaker 1: of it. I think you'll be able to get it
Speaker 1: fairly easily.
Speaker 2: And hopefully you sell another thirty thousand copies. It's now
Speaker 2: I'm amazing, all right, Thanks very much and best of luck.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, always good talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. This has been In Black and White,
Speaker 2: a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and
Speaker 2: hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Nina Young and
Speaker 2: produced by John ti Burton. You can find all the
Speaker 2: stories and photos associated with our episodes at Heroldsun dot
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