A Very Secret Trade The Dark Story of Gentlemen Collectors in Tasmania

About this book

In the nineteenth century, collectors and museum curators in Europe were fascinated by the antipodean colony of Tasmania. They cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens, including skeletons of the thylacine and the platypus. But they were not just interested in animals and plants. The belief that the original people of the colony were an utterly unique race and facing possible extinction had the European scientific community scrambling for human exhibits.

Many eminent colonial figures were involved in this clandestine trade, among them four colonial governors, several key politicians and even Lady Jane Franklin. In Britain, Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Newcastle and Professor Thomas Huxley were among many eminent men who solicited human specimens from the colony. Worse still, the men responsible for the care and protection of the few original people who had survived the ravages of disease and the infamous Black Wars were prominent in the trade.

Cassandra Pybus has uncovered one of the darkest and most carefully hidden secrets in Australia's colonial history. It is time we all knew the truth.

Contents

Maps
Preface

PART ONE
1. Desire lines
2. Not ignorant of evil himself, he learned to pity the wretched
3. King Billy is dead

PART TWO
4. Mr Hunter's collection of human miseries
5. The land is good . . . well calculated in every degree for a settlement
6. Well-watered, beautiful country

PART THREE
7. It was more as specimens of natural history that they were regretted
8. One of the remnant of a people about to disappear from the face of the earth
9. An intelligent man and one who knows natural history

PART FOUR
10. The last one of a doomed race
11. Pacificator of the Tasmanian Aborigines
12. Why in the name of Christianity cannot her wish be granted?

Appendix 1. The Worshipful Society of Body-Snatchers
Appendix 2. First People at Oyster Cove Station
Sources

Customer Reviews

Biography

Cassandra Pybus is an award-winning author and a distinguished historian. She is the author of thirteen books including the bestselling biography, Truganini and has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island.