It is 1860 in Australia. An Aboriginal laborer named Jim Crow is led to
the scaffold of the Maitland Gaol in colonial New South Wales. Among the
onlookers is the Scotsman A.S. Hamilton, who will take bizarre steps in
the aftermath of the execution to exhume this young man's skull.
Hamilton is a lecturer who travels the Australian colonies teaching
phrenology, a popular science that claims character and intellect can be
judged from a person's head. For Hamilton, Jim Crow is an important
prize. A century and a half later, researchers at Museum Victoria want
to repatriate Jim Crow and other Aboriginal people from Hamilton's
collection of human remains to their respective communities. But, their
only clues are damaged labels and skulls. With each new find, more
questions emerge. Who was Jim Crow? Why was he executed? And, how did he
end up so far south in Melbourne? In a compelling and original work of
history, author Alexandra Roginski leads readers through her extensive
research, aimed at finding the person within the museum piece.
Reconstructing the narrative of a life and a theft, she crafts a case
study that elegantly navigates between the law and Aboriginal history,
heritage studies and biography. The Hanged Man and the Body Thief is a
nuanced story about phrenology, a biased legal system, the aspirations
of a new museum, and the dilemmas of a theatrical third wife. It is,
most importantly, a tale of two very different men, the collector and
the collected, one of whom can now return home. (Series: Australian
History) [Subject: History, Australian Studies, Aboriginal Studies]
