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Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on March 14, 2007
Social History of Medicine 2007 20(1):39-56; doi:10.1093/shm/hkl083
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

A Scandalous Act: Regulating Anatomy in a British Settler Colony, Tasmania 1869

Helen MacDonald*

* The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia. E-mail: h.macdonald{at}unimelb.edu.au


  Abstract

In 1869 two British-trained surgeons, William Crowther and George Stokell, engaged in a serial quest in Hobart Town's General Hospital to obtain the skeleton of the so-called last Tasmanian Aboriginal man. Crowther stole William Lanney's skull from beneath his skin, intending to ship it to the Hunterian Museum at London's Royal College of Surgeons. Stokell resurrected Lanney's body from its grave on behalf of the local Royal Society's museum. A subsequent enquiry revealed to Tasmanians how readily any of them might be turned into subjects for dissection in the colony's main hospital, whose medical men seemed able to appropriate human remains at will. This scandal precipitated the passing of the Anatomy Act. While local parliamentarians used the British Anatomy Act (1832) as their primary reference point for regulating anatomy in the colony, a close reading of the aftermath of these events reveals the specific colonial resonance of the debates. They were entangled in ongoing concerns about the management of Tasmania's premier hospital, and one surgeon/parliamentarian's attempt to gain for independent medical men the most advantageous access to hospital patients, for clinical practice and as subjects for their students to dissect.

Keywords: Aboriginal skeletons; Anatomy Acts; dissection; hospitals; grave-robbing; medical schools; Royal College of Surgeons London; Tasmania; William Crowther; William Flower; William Lanney


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