The case against Crowther was indisputable. A surgeon and businessman,he mutilated the corpse of an Aboriginal man,William Lanne,sent his skull to the Royal College of Surgeons to support theories of white racial superiority,and put another skull on Lanne’s body. Evidence suggests Lanne was not the only one. Even at the time this was seen as an atrocity. Crowther was suspended by Hobart General Hospital,although failing the character test to practise surgery did not stop him becoming Tasmanian premier nine years later.
Crowther’s statue overlooked Hobart for 133 years. Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds called its removal “an important step towards telling a much more honest and truthful history of what happened in Hobart’s colonial past”. Nala Mansell from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre called it “a great day for Tasmania and for Tasmanian Aboriginal people”.
Historian Cassandra Pybus said other statues commemorated even more barbaric Tasmanians,including William Franklin,who gave the orders to desecrate the bodies of Indigenous men,and whose name adorns the square in which Crowther will no longer stand. Pybus said that as long as Crowther is singled out as the only colonist mutilator,“you’re not going to have the truth-telling about what a shocking and complete process was going on”.
Coincidentally,this weekend marks the anniversary of James Cook finalising his 1770 voyage up the eastern seaboard,naming Possession Island and claiming British ownership of the entire coast. Contentious statues of Cook in Sydney and Melbourne have been embellished by tins of blood-coloured paint. The 10-metre statue of Cook in Cairns,which had its own baptisms in red,was pulled down three months ago by a demolition contractor who purchased it from James Cook University (which has kept its name).
There is more than one way of looking at this. The Crowther statue,those of Cook,Lachlan Macquarie and other colonists,cause grief and pain to Indigenous people and bring shame with reminders of some of their acts. The perception that statues keep such people alive as founding heroes entrenches the insult.
On the other hand,as Liberal alderman Simon Behrakis put it when opposing the Hobart council vote,“we need to preserve our history … warts and all.[Crowther’s] appalling acts should not be minimised,should not be sanitised away,but I think removing the statue does just that. I think it does sanitise history to an effect.”
Relics of Australia’s double-edged past can stir up conversations about change. Values evolve,and erasing the evidence of outdated ideas,superimposing new knowledge over old,is a step towards forgetting the past and repeating its mistakes.