A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900 by Steven Anderson

Author:Steven Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030537678
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Another prominent colonial phrenologist, Professor Archibald S. Hamilton, preferred to avoid the execution altogether and instead examine the culprit in the cell before death.101 That said, Hamilton was known to seek out the death masks of criminals after their hanging as he gave his lectures surrounded by ‘upwards of forty skulls, various casts, and numerous diagrams’.102 Through the display of the heads of dead criminals phrenology tapped into the sensational possibilities of hangings, especially in the visually starved era of private executions. For instance, the death mask of Ned Kelly may have been initially commissioned for medical or scientific purposes but a wax likeness of his head appeared on public display in Bourke Street the day immediately following his execution.103 Hamilton’s personal reading of Kelly’s cranium appeared in a newspaper not long after that.104

On the day of a private execution many members of the public still congregated outside colonial prisons just to partake in the drama of the event. Estimates of the crowd gathered outside the walls of Melbourne Gaol at the execution of Ned Kelly ranged anywhere from four to several thousand.105 Most were ‘larrikin-looking youths’ and ‘nearly all were of the lower orders’ according to The Mercury.106 The death of Frances Knorr attracted some fifteen hundred spectators outside Melbourne Gaol.107 Many of the women gathered were said to have ‘relieved their overcharged feelings with tears’—according to one report.108 The vast majority of estimates of crowd numbers outside the walls vary and range from anywhere from a handful to several hundred. As the sun set on the colonial era this eager group of hopeful attendees became more and more out of place on city streets. By 1901 Brisbane’s Evening Observer wrote that many people ‘hurrying to their work’ looked at a group of men waiting ‘nervously for admittance’ outside the gaol with a great deal of curiosity.109

The interaction between prison officials and the crowd gathered outside the walls was mediated by mutually understood symbolism. It was common for a black flag to be raised from within the prison to indicate to those waiting outside that the culprit was dead. At Darlinghurst Gaol it was frequently reported that a lengthy bell toll took place at the hour fixed for the execution.110 In Western Australia, the Private Execution Act stipulated that official documentation confirming the death had to be displayed for a 24-hour period at the entrance gate of the prison.111 There were some occasional interactions between the official spectators to the hanging and those gathered outside the prison. At one of the earliest private executions in Sydney, of two criminals named Samuel Wilcox and William Rogers, almost two-hundred spectators gathered outside the prison. One account states how the official witnesses to the execution were ‘deeply impressed by the melancholy spectacle’.112 The witnesses then emerged as one group from within the gaol and ‘announced’ to those waiting outside that the execution had successfully taken place.113

Sometimes the signals of a successful execution were not enough to satisfy the curiosity of the crowd outside the gaol.

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