School of Historical and Philosophical Studies

This is how it might have been. Death, of course, came unexpectedly. As it does, even though. Mary McLauchlan had witnessed all the processes that led her to the scaffold - the betrayals, the black cloth on Chief Justice Pedder's head, his heavy pronouncement. Despite all that, she had continued to hope it would not come to this. As she climbed the steps to the scaffold, her eyes may have been focused straight ahead to avoid the sight of the expectant crowd of people who had gathered to watch her die; or she may have taken a quick look, searching for the face of the one woman she could count on. Imagine it how you will. This close to the end, I think her thoughts were with her girls, at home on the other side of the world. When the judge read out the whole of her sentence, both death and dissection, I hope that last word passed her by in her distress. Another time, another death. It might have gone like this. Had somebody taken the trouble to ask, this man would have replied that yes, he liked a whaler's life, including all the revelry that took place on shore. He thought he would enjoy it for years to come, unaware that this attack of belly ache, and the excrement that ran down his legs, presaged the end. The medical man issued instructions he tried to obey, half falling out of bed at the Inn in an attempt to dress and take himself to the town's hospital. I think he had resisted those instructions until it was too late, having heard bad things about what happened to people in that place - especially to a man like himself, of more value dead. than alive to some. When his body failed in the act of dressing itself, he pitched forward. There may have been a moment in which to throw out his arms to try and save himself from the fall. Anyway, he was spared knowledge of that trip to the hospital, which took place post mortem. His body was hoisted roughly up and borne by four officers of the law to the hospital's dead house. Lying there, he was gawked at, poked and prodded in any number of unseemly ways, day and night. I am glad he knew nothing of what was to follow - actions that have not ended yet. Three weeks earlier, an old man with an unsettled past, an uncomfortable present and, as it turns out, very little future, also lay in that place. He, too, had come reluctantly to the hospital. It seemed the only possibility left. He hoped to have found a man so skilled with the knife that he could stop the constant, debilitating ache in his back and the hot pain that made him afraid to urinate. The surgeon seemed caring enough. He had bent the rules to get our man admitted into a place only meant to house the destitute. The surgeon had seen how close this man was to being a pauper. One medical fee would tip him over the edge, for he had no-one else to turn to, having never properly settled in this unhomely place. So when the cure failed, nobody knew, or came to collect his frail old body for burial, and thus remove it from the surgeon's hands. Then again, look at all this in another way. That young woman's body is a valuable piece of property. it's not often a man gets to demonstrate his familiarity with women's bodies, with all their mysteries, especially on such a comely subject as this. Just think of the feelings a Colonial Surgeon can invoke in those he chooses to witness his work. Let's face it, he needs men to admire his surgical skills, for Governor Arthur is too willing to listen to his enemies. Of course, the surgeon can also teach the men who gather around his dissecting table a thing or two about anatomy, such as how, exactly, a human being dies from the effects of a sharply pulled rope; how long a heart might continue to move after that kind of death; and where a man should seek the beginnings of life, especially in the body of a young woman who has recently given birth. It will make a welcome change from all those filthy male bodies he is constantly dissecting, in a penal colony in which men die very frequently. It is otherwise forty years later, with the whaler. His body is the kind of rare object over which collectors tight, though you would not think it from the stink. They will strip it down to the bare hones as quickly and quietly as possible, then give them away to others who appreciate them more, in return for some kind of clue acknowledgement. No invited audience for this performance, for the thing has to be managed carefully. Times have changed, and men have been instructed to protect this body from the surgeons. The cutting has not - yet - been approved; which simply has the effect of ensuring it is done surreptitiously. Two men, each in his turn, each cursing the other. One working at night and taking only the most valuable part of the body; trying to arrange matters so nobody will notice that the skull is missing. But blood is spilt. Some stains the lining of the coffin. It gives the game away. The next man cuts off the feet and hands, in angry spite. The day after that he finally manages to get the rest of the bones, leaving a messy quagmire that is no longer recognisable as human remains behind him. Others can dispose of that. (Well, William Lanney, you have some revenge there. What with the smell and the mess, the whole thing is about to be discovered, and it will break careers). As for the old man, by the time the students have finished with him - which is about the same time that the whaler dies - he is nothing more than a few odd parts: an arm here, a leg there, and a skull where it can be of most use, though not for any medical reason. It travels to the grave in the whaler's body and is buried beneath the earth, though not for long. When rough hands haul the coffin back to the surface and pull the shrouded body out of the box, the old man's skull drops out and is left to lie in the graveyard, discarded. As this man had been in life, really. As he will be in histories, too.

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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