Alexander Berry, grave robbing and the Frankenstein connection
Frankenstein was a work of fiction, right? A Gothic horror by young British author Mary Shelley. Well, not quiet.... Grave robbing, attempts to instill life in dead material utilising galvanism, secret experiments on cadavers - all of these took place in her homeland during the late 1700s and early 1800s. The securing of dead bodies was key to the process. Such activities extended as far as the Antipodes - the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, as they were then known. For example, on 20 August 1827 Alexander Berry of Coolangatta, Shoalhaven and North Sydney, sent to John Fitzgerald, commandant of the Illawarra stockade at Wollongong, the skull of recently deceased, and recently buried, Aboriginal elder and warrior Arawarra. Berry dug up the body dug and shipped parts off to England for study and experimentation. Though Berry had a scientific background, his activity at the time was also mercenary, with profit overriding principle.
Doctor Alexander Berry (1781-1873) was a Scottish-born ship's surgeon and merchant with diverse scientific interests, including the study of medicine, the evolving earth-bound science of geology, and the pseudosciences of phrenology and craniology (Wikipedia 2019). From as early as the 1810s he is known to have acquired body parts for scientific research and study, both for himself and a growing network of international associates (Berry Papers, State Library of New South Wales). This was facilitated through initial travels in association with employment by the East India Company and his later branching out as a merchant supplying the young penal colony of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). One outcome of this combination of entrepreneurship and scientific wonder was engagement in, and support for, grave robbing. This became evident upon his setting up a business in Australia in 1819. It was whilst resident at his Shoalhaven grant - acquired in June 1822 and named the Coolangatta Estate after the prominent and sacred Mount Cullunghutti - that we find records of his disturbing the graves of the local Aboriginal people, including that of Arawarra, an elder of the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales.
Grave robbing was not uncommon at
the time, especially in connection with development of the medical sciences.
The acquiring of the body was generally followed by dissection for individual
study, or by groups in teaching institutions. We see examples of this in the various filmed versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and most notably in Young Frankenstein. Berry had no doubt been
introduced to, and engaged in, this practice during his medical studies at Scotland’s
St. Andrew’s University and the University of Edinburgh between 1796 and 1801. Grave
robbing, in the case of Berry, would have involved the preparation of body
parts, including skulls, for shipment to universities, museums and medical
institutions in London and Edinburgh. As an experienced surgeon, he would have
been at ease with this latter process of dissection and chemical preservation. The similarities between Alexander Berry’s
activities in this area and Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley’s fictional Doctor
Frankenstein are obvious, both in their acquisition of cadavers and
unscrupulous use of such for research and study (Shelley 1818). Berry, as far
as we are aware, did not pursue reanimation like the good Doctor Frankenstein,
though he did meet Shelley's cousin Edward Wollstonecraft in 1811 - when Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley was age just 14 - and enter
into a profitable mercantile partnership with him around 1819, the year after Frankenstein was published anonymously in London. He also married
Edward’s sister Elizabeth in 1827 and later engaged in correspondence with the
English author, largely following the deaths of Edward and Elizabeth and issues
related to their grave site in North Sydney. Is there a connection between the
writing of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) during 1816-18 and the appropriation of Aboriginal skulls and bodies by
European explorers and settlers in Australia from the time of Captain Cook (1770)
and more especially after the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney in 1788? This is a question yet to be answered.
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| Victor Frankenstein and Igor grave robbing. |
From the age of 15 Mary developed a connection with the young Bohemian poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. He, like Alexander Berry, had an interest in medicine and at one stage pursued thoughts of a medical career. He also obviously shared Mary's attraction to this darker, Gothic side of the environment in which they lived, much as young people during the 1960s were attracted to the occult practises of individuals such as Alistair Crowley. Like many good works of fiction, there is much of Mary Shelley’s own life and experiences in Frankenstein, alongside the more fantastical elements which make the book so memorable. Fiction without fact is a rare commodity, and Frankenstein is no exception. It is neither merely fact nor fiction, but a mixture of both. As such, it is, in part, a reflection of Shelley's knowledge of, and perhaps experience with, grave robbing and the process of reanimation – a topic of discussion during her lifetime but subsequently dropped pending its rebirth almost a century later around issues of eugenics, artificial intelligence, robots, androids and replicants. The dark, romantic Gothic novel of Mary Shelley’s generation was reborn at the end of the twentieth century, in part, with the youthful enthusiasm for the lighter, and more colourful genre of Steampunk. Film embraced the Gothic from the outset, and Dr. Frankenstein’s monster stood alongside iconic fictional characters such as the Evil Maria humanoid robot of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) replicants, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's indestructible nemesis in Terminator (1984).
Was Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley aware that Edward Wollstonecraft - her cousin and the Australian business partner of Alexander Berry - played a role in securing material from deceased members of the Shoalhaven native population in the 1820s for dispatch to England? There is no direct evidence at this stage. Edward does not seem to have had any qualms about supporting Berry in the procurement of bodies, and their partnership post-dates the writing and publication of Frankenstein. Apart from being an astute businessman, Edward Wollstonecraft was apparently a harsh task master towards his many convict servants, and also grew jealous of his distant cousin's success as a writer.
Were Aboriginal people murdered, or bodies stolen from families, in order to secure their corpse, as in the case of the Sydney warrior Pemulway, and Shoalhaven's Arawarra? The answer is definitely yes. Aboriginal people were murdered and otherwise died in large numbers in Australia during the first century of European settlement, and in many cases their bodies were taken and subject to dissection and study. The dispatch of skulls overseas was common. Much of this was clandestine, in order to hide the action from friends and relatives, and members of the wider community, who would object to such use of corpses. However, it was common practice by the British from the middle of the eighteenth century to do this to murderers, criminals and those in prison, and also native peoples, in the interest of science and pseudoscience. As such, this was one of the many barbaric and shameful activities the British imposed upon the Aboriginal people of Australia following the invasion of 1788.
What is the Australian Aboriginal view of death, the treatment of the physical body after death, and reincarnation – issues that are highlighted in Frankenstein? And is there a ‘Gothic’ sensibility or equivalent within Aboriginal culture and tradition? Such questions are not easily answered, due in large part to the cultural divide which has long existed between Aboriginal civilisation and the Western equivalent such that there is little shared knowledge in this area.
Alexander Berry’s participation in grave robbing and scientific study of the dead corpse has clear reference to Frankenstein, aside from the ‘creation of a monster’ element. He was in many ways an Australian version of Shelley’s original Doctor Frankenstein, though apparently not the somewhat crazed individual portrayed in theatrical and cinematic adaptations. The overriding moral tale within Shelley's book regarding the karmic repercussions of both misusing the lifeless bodies of sentient beings, and attempting to be God-like in creating life from death, are profound. Some of these obviously apply to Berry in his treatment of individuals such as Arawarra. In addition, there was an actual connection between the Shoalhaven grave robber and the author of Frankenstein, though it came later in life for both of them.
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| Conrad Martens, Coolangatta Mountain, oil on canvas, 1860. |
Connected in life and death
On 7 March 1851, Lady Jane
Shelley wrote from London to Alexander Berry in Sydney, informing him of the
recent death of her mother-in-law Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein
(Bennett 1988). Berry's wife and Shelley’s cousin Elizabeth
Wollstonecraft (1783-1832) had died in 1945 and, prior to that, om Edward in
1832. Berry constructed a special cemetery and tomb for
them on Sydney's north shore shortly after Elizabeth’s death, adjacent to St.
Thomas’s Church of England.
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| The North Sydney tomb of Alexander Berry, his wife Jane Wollstonecraft Berry and her brother Edward Wollstonecraft. |
He had also been an active correspondent with Mary Shelley during the 1840s. In the 1851 letter following on Mary’s death, her daughter-in-law Jane referred with deep feeling and obvious sensitivity to the arrangements surrounding the death and burial of the famous author. Mary had asked to be interred with her parents - Mary Wollstonecraft and William Goodwin - in the St. Pancras cemetery, London. It was here that, as a child, she spent many hours in contemplation, seeking to connect with the mother who had died shortly after giving birth to her in 1797. It was also by her mother's grave in 1815 that Mary and her future husband, the poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley, had declared their love for each other. Circumstances had changed in the intervening years to 1851, with St. Pancras a well-known haunt of grave robbers (Marshall 1995). Jane therefore noted in her letter to Berry:
It is indeed ironic that Alexander Berry and Mary Shelley should be so connected in death – she the author of perhaps the most famous piece of Western fiction dealing with grave robbing and abuse of the human cadaver; he a Dr. Frankenstein-like grave robber, surgeon and scientist, having, during the 1810s and 1820s, and possibly over a longer period, secretly secured numerous Australian Aboriginal skulls for scientific and pseudo-scientific study and repatriation to museums and universities in England and his Scottish homeland.
In 1846 Mary Shelley had written to Berry, commenting upon the topic of graveyards and in particular the tomb for Elizabeth and Edward that he had mentioned erecting for them. The following year she again inquired: ‘... How does the plantation around Mrs Berry and her brother's tomb thrive? I am interested in that subject and shall be very glad to hear from you...’ A number of letters were subsequently exchanged between the two prior to Mary’s death on 1 February 1851 from a brain tumour. Mary's ‘interest in that subject’ undoubtedly derived from her years of youth when she sat by the grave of her mother in St. Pancras cemetery, and by the later experiences with her husband Percy - who tragically died in a boating incident during 1822 - and their own children, of which three died very young. The fact that Mary encountered death from an early age – mother, husband, children - is undoubtedly reflected in her writing of Frankenstein when herself a mere teenager moving into adulthood.
In such an environment as existed in both Britain and Australia during the early decades of the nineteenth century, when Alexander Berry and Edward Wollstonecraft were securing skulls and bodies, the ill-treatment of Aboriginal corpses was seen as generally acceptable in the interests of science, though carried out in a largely clandestine manner due to the concerns of the surrounding Indigenous community i.e. family and friends. With Aboriginal people viewed at the time by the British as the lowest rung on the social scale in colonial New South Wales, beneath even the convicts, ex-convicts and poor free settlers, their treatment was often without any care or compassion on the part of the perpetrators of murder, rape, terror, violence, neglect and disregard for cultural heritage and traditions. From the likes of Governor Lachlan Macquarie between 1810-21 through all levels of colonial society, examples of such abhorrent treatment could be found. Grave robbing was perhaps the ultimate defilement of the individual, and is seen as a long past, almost forgotten practice. Unfortunately the continued (2022) harvesting of the organs of prisoners of conscience in China reveals this not to be the case.
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| Monuments to Alexander and David Berry, Nowra, 2020. |
During 2019 Jennifer Saunders of the University of Wollongong, in a paper on small, regional museums in Australia, noted the following in regards to grave robbing activities during the 1820s of Shoalhaven landholder and former naval surgeon Alexander Berry:
In order to better understand these comments, and why Berry disturbed the burials, disrespecting Aboriginal tradition and custom in the name of Western science, the following chronology is developed to provide context and further information. It will also assist in answering some of the questions posed above regarding possible, probable or other connections with Mary Shelley and the writing of Frankenstein(1818).
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Chronology - grave digging, Mary Shelley and Alexander Berry
This chronology deals briefly with the development of grave robbing in Great Britain from the late eighteenth century, with a special emphasis on Mary Shelley and her subsequent writing of Frankenstein.
1752
– The British Murder Act makes the medical dissection of all convicted murderers compulsory. The aim is to provide cadavers for medical schools (Marshall 1995).
– Dissection is seen as vital by the medical community and upper classes of society in order to advance medical science and improve health outcomes generally. It is supported legislatively and, as a result, grave robbing is only weakly criminalised when legal avenues fail to meet the demand for dead bodies (Desai 1990).
– Dissection is considered a punishment as, according to prevailing Christian religious beliefs, it is a means of denying ultimate salvation as body and soul are meant to be reunited on judgement day. This cannot take place if the body is dissected or defiled. It is therefore abhorred by the wider community (Richardson 1987).
– Grave robbing supplements the supply of corpses for medical, scientific and pseudo-scientific study during the second half of the 1700s and through much of the 1800s.
1759
– Mary Wollstonecraft - mother of Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley - is born in England, the second of seven children to Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon. Mary goes on to achieve fame as a writer, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights. Just prior to her death in 1797 she marries William Goodwin, also a progressive writer and philosopher.
1781
– Alexander Berry is born in Scotland.
1783
– Edward Wollstonecraft is born in England, the son of Edward Wollstonecraft, who is the brother of Mary Wollstonecraft (Goodwin) and himself the son of Edward John Wollstonecraft. He later becomes brother-in-law and business partner to Alexander Berry and is the cousin of Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley of Frankenstein fame.
1792
– A Vindication of the Rights of Women is published by Mary Wollstonecraft.
1796
– The pseudoscience of phrenology / craniology is developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall. It involves the physical study of the skull, and less so the brain, with interest in variation between races and social classes. The bodies of criminals, the poor and native peoples are secured for study in connection with phrenology. It is seen by some as quackery, and others as a true science.
1797
– Mary Wollstonecraft (later Shelley) is born. Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft dies shortly after giving birth, due to complications. Mary is subsequently raised in England and Scotland by her father and relatives. She develops a fascination for her dead mother.
– Grave robbing is rife in Scotland during the period in which young Mary grows up, especially in Edinburgh which is a centre of science and medicine. The securing of corpses for medical dissection becomes a priority, and respect for the deceased – especially the poor or criminal – is increasingly diminished.
– During her childhood, Mary frequently visits the grave of her mother at St Pancras cemetery, London, to write and contemplate. She is later joined there by her future husband Percy Shelley.
1803
– Giovanni Aldini animates a dead corpse with galvanism (electricity).
1812
– Mary (14) moves to Dundee, just north of Edinburgh in Scotland. Around this time she moves back and forth between England and Scotland, partially in respond to a difficult relationship with her step mother.
– Alexander Berry meets Edward Wollstonecraft and appoints him as his agent and power of attorney.
1814
– Mary meets Percy Shelley and begins a relationship.
1815
– Mary (18) travels along the Rhine and encounters places and historical elements, which would later coalesce into a work of fiction.
– Alexander Berry, Edward Wollstonecraft and his sister Elizabeth share accommodation in London, through to 1819.
1816
- March / April: Following on the massacre of a group of Aboriginal men, women and children at Appin by soldiers of the 46th Grenadiers Regiment, the skulls of the middle-aged male leader of the group Kinnabygal, and another man and woman, are collected and sent to England for study. This marks the first official sanctioning by the colonial administration of the defilement of Aboriginal bodies and collection of skulls for dispatch to England and Scotland.
– June: Mary commences writing the story Frankenstein, based on a dream she had and following a famous evening in Geneva with Shelley and Lord Byron wherein the attendees each constructed a ghost story, or Gothic piece of fiction.
– Mary Wollstonecraft marries
Percy Bysshe Shelley (b.1792). Shelley is five years older than the then 19 year old Mary.
1817
– James Curry of Guy's Hospital is the Shelley’s doctor and author of an 1815 book on the various states of death and reanimation.
1818
– The first edition of Frankenstein is published in London, anonymously.
- Comment by the monster (Frankenstein, chapter V) which points to Shelley’s empathy for Indigenous peoples subject to invasion and colonisation: I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.
- The Edinburgh Magazine review of the book states that there is ‘an air of reality attached to it, by being connected with the favourite projects and passions of the time.’ There is therefore a documentary and science-based quality about Frankenstein, reflecting the young author's knowledge of such things. It is later cited as the first modern work of science-fiction.
1819
– William Shelley, the 2 ½ year old son of Mary and Percy, is ‘reanimated’ after death by a physician and lives for 4 days before finally passing.
– The merchant and former ship's surgeon Alexander Berry writes from Sydney to the Reverend Robert Knopwood regarding craniology and the work of a Mr. Thomas Hobbs Scott, brother in law of the visiting Commissioner Bigge:
Sydney, January 29th 1819
Mr Dear Sir
I have received your favour of the 17th instant with its enclosure for which accept my best thanks. I am also aware of the trouble you have taken to procure me Skulls of the natives and therefor the obligation on my part is equal as if you had been successful. I sail for England in the course of February, but my partner Mr Edward Wollstonecraft will remain untill my return and most likely will visit Van Diemen’s Land in two or 3 months. Therefore, if you succeed in procuring a native Skull I will thank you to send it to him. As you had a visit so lately from the Dromedary, you can be in no want of English news and therefore what you require must no doubt be with respect to this country, with respect to any changes likely to take place in the Government. I am entirely ignorant as also when you may expect a visit from His Excellency and Mrs Macquarie. At present the Commissioner [Bigge] and Mr Scott are about on a voyage of observation to the Coal River and Port Macquarie, and are hourly expected back and most likely will embark for Van Dieman's Land some weeks after their return. They are well adapted for their mission and it is therefore rather ludicrous to observe men of their most discordant and jarring opinions all expressing themselves equally satisfied with what they suppose the countenance which has been given to their opinion. Mr Scott is a good agriculturist and therefore may be the best judge of the physical state of the country, and the Commissioner perhaps of the moral and political. [Allow me also to observe that although it is not generally suspected in New S. Wales, still I know it to be the case that Mr Scott is a Craniologist] Allow me also to observe that Mr Scott is a craniologist. This is not generally suspected here, still I know it to be the case, therefore you will oblige me by procuring him if possible a native cranium but it may be as well if you advise such of your friends as have any reason to be doubtful of their own heads not to allow him to feel their bumps, lest he should discover what is inside - in fact I cannot better close this letter than by copying Robie Burn's address to his countrymen on the bust of Capt. Grose the Antiquary:
Hear, Land o' Cakes, and brither Scots,
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat’s;
If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it:
A chiel's among you, taking notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it!
[Extract from Robert Burns' 1789 poem `On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations thro' Scotland, collecting the Antiquities of that Kingdom', lines 1-6]1820
– George Mackenzie includes a description of the skull of Carnimbeigle (Kinnabygal) in his book Illustrations on Phrenology, published in Edinburgh.
- 1 March 1820, Berry sails from Sydney to London on board the Admiral Cockburn. Diary of Governor Lachlan Macquarie:
This day sailed from Port Jackson for England the Private Merchant Ship "The Admiral Cockburn", Commanded by Capt. Briggs, (direct from England), with Wool & other Colonial Produce, and a number of Passengers: namely, Mrs. Lewin (widow of the late Mr. W. J. Lewin Painter and Coroner) and her son Wm. Lewin, Mrs. Kitchen, Mrs. Reibey & Daughters, Mr. Drummond (late Naval officer at the Derwent) and his Family, Mr. Kermode mercht. of Liverpool, and Mr. Alexander Berry Mercht. of Sydney. — To the latter Gentlemen I gave charge of my Dispatches for His Majesty's ministers.
- July 1820, Archives of the Board of Trading, London - Inward correspondence, being receipt of a list of body parts from Berry, seeking import duty exemption:
Second ….. / Alexr. Berry / Articles from New South Wales /…. From Mr Harrison dated 7th inst. Desiring this Board will give directions per the delivery duty free of the Articles mentioned in a list herewith submitted which has been brought from New South Wales on board the Ship ‘Admiral Cockburn’ by Mr Alexr. Berry, and are intended as presents to different public Museums in London and Edinburgh.
1821
– Thomas Hobbs Scott returns from Australia and presents the Royal College of Surgeons with skulls from New Zealand and Tasmania. It is unclear if Berry was successful in supplying him.
– 23 October: Hobbs donates to the School of Anatomy, Oxford University, the ‘…skull of a Black Male, not woolly headed, of New South Wales…’ probably with assistance from Berry.
1822
– the second edition of Frankenstein is published. It identifies Mary Shelley as the author.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley, husband of Mary Shelley, drowns in a lake in Italy.
1826
- The Monitor, Sydney, Friday 7 July, p.2: It is reported that Major M—— took home a score or two of sculls of the Aborigines slaughtered in the late war. Of course the poor fellows to whose shoulders these said sculls once appertained, were not worthy of a Coroner's Inquest, either before, pending, or subsequent to martial law. It is a pity but that with heads, the Phrenological Societies of Europe were not equally gratified with excoriated shoulder-blades, as we understand the penal settlements of this part of the world could have furnished several very well executed specimens of this description.
1827
– Alexander Berry marries Elizabeth Wollstonecraft (1782-1845), sister of Edward Wollstonecraft his business partner.
– The British Anatomy Act is passed to allow access to ‘unclaimed’ bodies for dissection and study. This means the bodies of the poor are now widely subject to dissection and study, often in opposition to the demands of family and friends.
– 18 January – a skull of an Aboriginal woman of New South Wales is presented to the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh by Sir Thomas Brisbane, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and governor of the colony between 1821-1825.
– 6 May 1827: Extract of letter from Alexander Berry to Edward Wollstonecraft re possible treatment of the Aborigines at Shoalhaven {Berry Papers, ML MSS 315/46 p.403}:
....Take care you are not humbugged by the natives. Endeavour to get them all away. Poor Lieut. Lowe is committed to take his trial for shooting one of them at Hunters River. Tom tells me that they are fully determined to kill Wylie. I shall therefore send down a couple of excellent riffles.– 10 May 1827: Extract of a letter from Edward Wollstonecraft to Alexander Berry regarding dealing with the Aborigines at Shoalhaven, in reply to that of the 6th previous {Berry Papers, ML MSS 315/46, pp.87-89}. Coolangatta 10th May 1827 Dear B.
....You desire me to turn away the Natives from the Farm - meaning, of course, to keep them away altogether. Pray how is that to be done!– 20 August 1827: Letter by Alexander Berry concern the dispatch of the skull of Arawarra, a former Aboriginal chief of the Shoalhaven, to unknown person, either 1) John Fitzgerald, commandant at the Illawarra stockade, Wollongong; or 2) Michael Goodsir (Royal Navy surgeon), possibly a correspondent at the Edinburgh Museum. It is likely that Fitzgerald sent it on to Goodsir, or that two, near identical, versions of the letter exist] {ML MSS 315/46 CY2025, pp.247-8; Turnbull 2001}:
[#1 - Goodsir version]
Cooloomgatta Shoal Haven
20th Augt. 1827
Dr Sir,
I have now the pleasure of sending you a Craniological Specimen, being the skull of a former chief of the neighbourhood, valuable on account of part of the History of the Personage to whom it originally belonged being known. He was of the rank of a German Prince, or the chief of a Highland clan, and renowned for many dark deeds of Blood. Many years before Shoal Haven was settled by Berry & Wollstonecraft it was resorted to by Parties of Cedar cutters. In course of time these were either all destroyed or driven away by the natives. Arawarra - the owner of the present specimen - attacked and destroyed a Party of these sawyers who were employed at Black Head seven miles to the north of Shoal Haven River and utterly destroyed them, and if report speaks true, afterwards feasted on their flesh. He has left a numerous Progeny behind him, and notwithstanding the bloody deeds of his youth lived to an extreme old age and died in peace. On our arrival here he was tottering on the verge of human life. About 2 or 3 years ago I met Charlie his youngest son, a peaceable well disposed native like another Pious Orcus carrying this once formidable warrior upon his shoulders. The venerable old Gentleman merely came to take a last look of Cooloomgatta now occupied by strangers, died two days after & was buried in the neighbourhood. He was buried in the sand to the depth of ten feet, laying on his face & with his head pointing to south. Thus although this man of blood escaped punishment and died in peace, yet mark eternal Justice his bones have not been allowed to rest in their grave, & it is to be hoped that his skull will throw such light on science as may sufficiently expiate the crimes which he committed.
[#2 - Fitzgerald version]
Dr Sir,
I have the pleasure of finding you a Craniological Specimen, being the skull of a former chief of this neighbourhood, valuable on account of part of the History of the Personage to whom it originally belonged being known. He was of the rank of a German Prince, or the Chief of a Highland clan, and renowned for many dark deeds of Blood. Many years before Shoal Haven was settled by Berry & Wollstonecraft it was visited by Parties of Cedar cutters. In course of time these were either all destroyed or driven away by the natives - Arawarra the owner of the present specimen attacked and destroyed a Part of these sawyers who were employed at Black Head seven miles to the north of Shoal Haven River and utterly destroyed them, and if report speaks true, afterwards feasted on their flesh. He has left numerous Progeny behind him, and notwithstanding the bloody deeds of his youth lived to an extreme old age and died in peace. On our arrival here he was tottering on the verge of human life. About 2 or 3 years ago I met Charlie his youngest son, a peaceable well disposed native like another Pious Orcus carrying this once formidable warrior upon his Shoulders. The venerable old Gentleman merely came to take a last look of Cooloomgatta now occupied by strangers, died two days after & was buried in the neighbourhood. He was buried in the sand to the depth of ten feet, lying on his face & with his head pointing to south. Thus although this man of blood escaped punishment and died in peace, yet mark eternal Justice his bones have not been allowed to rest in their grave. It is to be hoped that his skull will throw such light on science as may sufficiently expiate the crimes which he committed.
1828
– the Burke and Hare murders occur in Edinburgh, with the bodies of 16 victims legally supplied to a medical doctor in return for payment.
– Edward Wollstonecraft erroneously reports to Alexander Berry on the murder of 16 whalers at Twofold Bay by the local Aboriginal people (Organ 1989, 153; refer also a copy of original letter from Wollstonecraft to Berry in Organ 1992)
– 11 June 1828: A Prospectus of the Proposed Australian Phrenological Society is published in Sydney (Storey 2019).
1831
– the third and final, edited edition of Frankenstein is published.
1837
- Monday, 20 February: Frankenstein, or The Monster, performed for the first time in this Colony at the Theatre Royal, Hobart.
1838
– Alexander Berry records reminiscences regarding his encounters with the Aboriginal people of the Shoalhaven. One section refers to Arawarra as follows:
1842
– 4 January: Mrs Elizabeth Berry writes to Everina Wollstonecraft (1765-1843), sister of Mary Wollstonecraft and aunt to both Elizabeth and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
1843
– 25 March: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Mrs Elizabeth Berry re death and burial of Aunt Everina.
1844
– November: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Elizabeth Berry (letter lost).
1845
– 11 April: Death of Elizabeth (Wollstonecraft) Berry at Sydney.
– 30 April: Alexander Berry to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley re the death of her cousin Elizabeth and his plans to build a new cemetery and tomb for her and Edward in association with St Thomas' Church, St Leonard’s, Sydney.
– 24 October: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Alexander Berry re death of Elizabeth, in response to letter of 30 April.
1846
– 30 April: Alexander Berry to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
– 12 November: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Alexander Berry re the monument to Edward and Elizabeth and churchyards in general i.e. massed cemeteries.
1847
– 29 March: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Alexander Berry. ‘... How does the plantation around Mrs Berry and her brother's tomb thrive? I am interested on that subject and shall be very glad to hear from you...’
– 1 August: Alexander Berry to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in response to letter of 29 March.
– 17 August: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Alexander Berry re her illness and politics.
1848
– 6 January: Alexander Berry to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in response to letter of 17 August 1847.
– 30 June: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Alexander Berry.
1851
– 1 February: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley dies.
– 7 March: Lady Jane Shelley to Alexander Berry re the death of Mary. Their correspondence continues through to Berry’s death in 1873, with some 71 letters from Jane.
1857
– The Illawarra Mercury reports on the discovery of the body of an Aboriginal woman on the road between Bulli and Appin. The report notes:
…Whether the skull is that of an aboriginal or not, we are not learned in ethnological lore sufficiently to determine, but it certainly has the "forehead villanous low," extended and prominent jaw, peculiar to that section of the genus homo to which the aboriginals of this country belongs (Organ 1989, 304).
1863
– Micky Munnima of the Illawarra records the word for skull as ‘bonyow’ (Organ 1989, 315).
1873
– 17 September: Alexander Berry dies.
1899
– Anthropologist R.H. Mathews notes of Mount Coolangatta: It is believed that it was to this mountain that the dead went after burial in midden sands. The spirits of the recently buried had to ascend from a rock on the mountain’s eastern side, to a world of spirits. In doing so, they were required to avoid various dangers which were relative to their life’s deeds.
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Questions & Answers
The following notes were complied following a discussion with Dr. Marlene Thompson of the University of Wollongong on 4 December 2019. It comprises questions and, in some cases, brief and evolving answers.
Q1: Is there a connection between the writing of Frankenstein by Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley and the appropriation of Aboriginal skulls and bodies by European explorers and settlers in Australia from the time of Captain Cook (1770) and more especially the arrival of the First Fleet (1788)?
Q2: Was Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley aware of the fact that Edward Wollstonecraft - her cousin and the Australian business partner of Alexander Berry - played a role in securing material from deceased members of the Shoalhaven native population in the 1820s for dispatch to England?
Q3: Were Aboriginal people murdered, or bodies stolen from families, in order to secure their corpse e.g. Pemulway, Arawarra?
Q4: What is the Australian Aboriginal view of death, and treatment of the body after death, including misappropriation and defilement – issues highlighted in Frankenstein?
Answer: It is obvious that Australian Aboriginal society had immense respect for the dead and engaged in complex burial practices. In such a reality, the robbing of graves by Europeans would be seen as a travesty and not in any way condoned.
Q5: What is the traditional Aboriginal view about reincarnation / life after death / rebirth?
Answer: Mount Coolangatta in the Shoalhaven, for example, was viewed as a veritable "stairway to heaven" where the spirits of the departed would ascend into another plane. Reincarnation was key, and closely related to the totemic system which was core to Aboriginal society cultural beliefs.
Q6: Is there a ‘Gothic’ sensibility or equivalent within Aboriginal culture and tradition?
Answer: Unknown. This requires further research and discussion with First Nations people.
Appendix 1
Australian Dictionary of Biography: EDWARD WOLLSTONECRAFT, Esquire, J.P.
Edward Wollstonecraft (1783-1832), merchant and landowner, was the son of Edward Wollstonecraft, a London solicitor, who was a brother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin [Shelley]. Edward and his sister Elizabeth were therefore cousins of the ill-fated Fanny Imlay and of Mary Godwin who became the second wife of Shelley and was the author of Frankenstein. His parents died when relatively young. Wollstonecraft resented the notoriety of his aunt and sought escape and fortune for himself and his sister in travel and trade.
Wollstonecraft arrived in Sydney in September 1819 in the Canada. Wollstonecraft was permitted to locate some 500 (202 ha) of his 2000 acres (809 ha) on the north side of Sydney Harbour, and his tenure was made official in June 1825. In spite of ill health he became a magistrate and a central figure in the Sydney commerce of the 1820s. As a director of the Bank of New South Wales and of the Bank of Australia, and as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, he appears to have been chiefly concerned with maintaining the general financial liquidity of the colony's economy. He argued that the introduction of the Spanish dollar had depreciated colonial values and embarrassed external trade, and he urged the government to make loans to the colonial banks in the financial crises of 1826 and 1828.
A wide variety of merchandise passed through the warehouse of Berry and Wollstonecraft in George Street. In 1820, while Berry was still in London, Wollstonecraft advised him to concentrate on obtaining the solid necessities of a young colony and to beware of fripperies 'and the other female trash by which we are likely to lose so much already'.
Berry returned to Sydney in 1821, chartering the Royal George and bringing with him Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane and his party as passengers. With Wollstonecraft he successfully applied for a further 10,000 acres (4047 ha) on their undertaking to maintain 100 convicts. The grant was taken on the Shoalhaven River on the initiative of Berry, who explored the area, liked it and assured it of safe access from the sea by cutting a canal between the Crookhaven and Shoalhaven Rivers. On this foundation Wollstonecraft's relentless business energy worked, for he believed that the colony's greatest economic need was a reliable export staple. Finding the Shoalhaven region climatically unsuited for sheep, his long term plan at Coolangatta (Cullingatta and Coolungatta), as the property came to be called, was to clear the hillsides and drain the swamps for agriculture. Meanwhile the forests of cedar and blue gum could be put to use. Teams of sawyers, both assigned convicts and freemen, were organized, and by July 1823 thirty-six men were employed in getting and preparing timber for which Wollstonecraft was assiduous in seeking markets. The bulk of it was exported and thus provided a desirable balance to the imports demanded by the diverse trade still carried on by the partners in Sydney. While timber proved an immediate and sure source of wealth, experiments were made at Shoalhaven with other crops of similar economic potential, the chief being tobacco which was normally retailed at enormous profit to the importer. The partners generally arranged that one was at Shoalhaven and the other at the North Shore. The bond between them was strengthened by Berry's marriage in September 1827 to Elizabeth, Wollstonecraft's sister.
Both Wollstonecraft and Berry had the eighteenth-century Englishman's view of the social importance of land, and they saw at Shoalhaven the beginning of a great estate over which eventually they might rule as patriarchs. In pursuit of their object Wollstonecraft was almost morbidly jealous of encroaching settlers. His aim was to exclude them altogether or, failing that, so to encircle their holdings as to make them unworkable. This the partners were increasingly able to do, both by manipulating the location of their own grants before survey, and by buying the promises of grants from other settlers and locating them as strategy required.
Wollstonecraft died on 7 December 1832. His life in Australia depended largely on Berry's enterprise, yet Berry could rightly claim that he had 'a naturally defective temper', and that his conduct in his last years was 'such as to render my existence hardly tolerable'. His letters leave an impression of sardonic bitterness which may, however, have been the product of ill health. His business acumen and integrity were beyond question, yet it is doubtful that they would have found any important employment without the wider vision and more civilized instincts of Berry.
Crows Nest Cottage, undated [ca. 1880-1890s]. Collection: State Library of NSW.
Wollstonecraft never married. A suburb of Sydney was named after him and another after his cottage, Crow's Nest, on the North Shore. In March 1846 his remains were removed from the Sydney burial ground and placed with those of his sister, who died on 11 April 1845, in a magnificent tomb erected by Berry in the cemetery near St Thomas's Church of England, North Sydney.
M. D. Stephen, 'Wollstonecraft, Edward (1783–1832)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wollstonecraft-edward-2812/text4025, published in hard copy 1967.
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Authors: Dr. Marlene Longbottom, University of Wollongong and Michael Organ, Murrumburrah.
Last updated: 8 February 2023
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