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Just as a curiosity...

I was looking into whether or not executed criminals were dissected in early Hobart Town. I had assumed they were, but I came across a footnote in a book that referenced this, from the Colonial Times, 19th May, 1826

JEFFRIES and BRADY. Immediately after these unhappy men were taken from the gallows, two plaster of Paris casts of their countenances were taken by Dr. Scott, R. N.the Colonial Surgeon. We believe the Act of Parliament for dissection does not extend to these Colonies, which is to be lamented, not more for the advantage of science, than with reference to other considerations.


On the other hand, from the Hobart Town Gazette about two years earlier (24th July 1824) there is this:

On Monday, Alexander Pearce, for murder! and yesterday, John Butler, for sheep-stealing, John Thompson, Patrick Connolly, James Tierney, and George Lacey, for burglary and highway robbery, were executed in this town pursuant to their sentence. Pearce's body was, after it had been suspended the usual time, delivered at the Hospital for dissection.

Of course, Pearce is possible an unusual case, seeing as he'd developed a fondness for eating his companions. He is the only murderer in that lot though.

A few months after the first Colonial Times story, this appears in the Gazette on the 3rd February

An apartment is also much wanted as a lecturing and dissecting room, where the members of the medical body might not only mutually instruct each other but occasionally dispense useful information to society generally. We have indeed observed, on several late awful occasions of the condemnation of some of the worst of criminals, (as for example Jeffreys and others) that his Honor the Judge did not order their bodies for dissection, which we could only attribute to his conviction that no adequate means of carrying the sentence into effect for the advancement of medical science existed in the Town.

By 1829, the situation seems to have changed, and the bodies must be piling up at the Hospital. From the Hobart Town Courier, 7 March 1829:

After hanging a short time the bodies were out down, and carried in a cart to the Colonial Hospital for dissection.

A week later, on the 14th March the Courier has:

A few seconds put a period to his existence on this earth, and his body like those of the murderers executed the week before, was carried to the hospital in a cart for dissection.


Conclusion: more investigation needed.

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