When the naturalist and Australian lawyer Morton Alport died in 1878, one obituary praised the man as the “foremost naturalist in the colony,” as indicated by his position as Vice President of the Royal Society of Tasmania (RST) at the time of his death, alongside many other international honors. However, according to a new research paper published in the journal Archives of Natural History, Alport’s remarkable reputation was based less on his scientific merit and more on his practice of sending valuable specimens of Tasmanian tigers (thylacine) and remains of Indigenous people to European collectors in exchange for scientific accolades. Alport acknowledges this in his private letters, preserved in the Tasmania State Library, as well as guiding grave-robbing efforts to obtain those human remains.
Tasmanian Devil
The thylacine has been extinct since 1936, but at one time they were the largest carnivorous marsupials in modern times. Europeans first settled Tasmania in 1803 and considered the tigers a threat, accusing the animals of killing their sheep. They viewed Indigenous people no more favorably, and there were inevitable conflicts due to settlers displacing the Indigenous population and increasing competition for food. In 1830, an agricultural company offered the first bounties on the thylacine, with the government implementing its own bounty in 1888. (Ashby writes that the dogs bred by settlers to hunt kangaroos are the real killers of the sheep.)
Morton Alport
Alport was born in England and was still a child when his parents moved to Tasmania, where his father established himself as one of the leading lawyers in the colony. Young Morton followed in his father’s footsteps and became a partner in the same law firm, but he had a particular interest in natural history. He was especially interested in fish farming and the practice of introducing non-native species to “improve” local ecosystems (adaptation). Alport introduced English species such as carp, shellfish, and water lily to Tasmania, publishing 15 research papers with RST. However, his publications consisted of three short articles and a brief note on local fossils between 1866 and 1868.
Scientific Exchange
In his letters, Alport confirmed his expectation for a reciprocal exchange of specimens, particularly thylacines and Indigenous remains, which were in increasing demand as their numbers dwindled. Alport wrote about how he helped assemble a complete collection of Tasmanian mammal skeletons for the RST museum, “and I shall do the same with pleasure for any of the English societies if I were elected a fellow in return. Is this possible?” And of course, it was quite possible. Alport was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Medical Zoology Society of London, and the Royal Botanical Society. He was a corresponding member of the great British Anthropological Institute (elected after supplying a skeleton of an Indigenous person) and a lifetime member of various insect and mollusk societies, as well as a foreign member of many continental scientific societies, among other honors.
Grave Trading
In addition to providing more thylacine specimens to museums in the UK and continental Europe than any other known donor, Alport claimed to be the “primary source” of Indigenous remains to Europe. European scientists coveted these human specimens, so grave robbing was common. Alport was involved in such efforts, as indicated by his 1872 letter to skull researcher Joseph Barnard Davis. “I can assure you that I did not tire at all to ensure that the bones were excavated from the very spot where the Indigenous were buried,” he wrote. The German nationalist Amalie Dietrich had no qualms about asking Queensland settlers to shoot an Indigenous man for her own collection.
Exchange
Scientific and Human History
Unlike the thylacine, the indigenous Tasmanian population did not go extinct, but at that time it was believed that an Aboriginal man named William Lanne was the last Tasmanian man. When he died in 1869, his body was considered a valuable specimen. Lanne’s body was taken to the “house of the dead” in the hospital, and both Alport (who wanted the body for RST) and William Crowther, another naturalist who wished to bring the remains to London, claimed rights to the remains. When the Colonial Secretary decided in favor of Alport, Crowther and his son sneaked into the “house of the dead” and removed Lanne’s skull, replacing it with the skull of a white man that they had taken from another body.
Alport responded by asking an acquaintance to remove Lanne’s hands and feet, considering this not to be desecration since the remains were already damaged. Lanne’s body was buried, but the grave was not guarded. Of course, Crowther attempted to steal the body, but found an empty coffin containing only the skull of a white man. The same acquaintance of Alport had taken Lanne’s body and brought it to the hospital and “removed his bones,” according to Ashby.
Alport later attempted to recover Lanne’s skull, writing a letter to a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSE), who was rumored to possess Lanne’s skull and vertebrae. Alport nearly admitted that RST had Lanne’s skeleton in that letter, stating “the best bones are in the RST museum” – and offered to provide those bones to RCSE to complete the skeleton. The college did not have the skull. It may have reached RCSE’s collection or with the University of Edinburgh, but it has not been officially identified by either.
An Aboriginal Tasmanian woman named Truganini was Lanne’s female counterpart. She died in 1876 and requested that her body be cremated to avoid ending up in a museum collection. This request was not fulfilled. She was buried in the women’s factory, and within two years, RST – with Alport now serving as vice president – secretly exhumed the body and turned her skeleton into a traveling exhibit, before being displayed at the Tasmanian Museum between 1904 and 1947.
The Cambridge Museum of Natural History, where Ashby works, contains 40 Australian mammals and 11 birds donated by Alport, including nine thylacine skins sent in 1869 and 1871. “Although Alport did not send any human remains to Cambridge, I can no longer look at these thylacine skins without thinking of the human story connected to them,” Ashby said. “It shows how natural history specimens are not just scientific data – they also reflect significant moments in human history, many of which were tragically violent.”
DOI: Natural History Archives, 2023. 10.3366/anh.2023.0859 (about DOIs).
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