BENEATH the grassy rolling hills of the Northern Midlands lies the body of a man. His head removed and body wrapped in rusting iron, surrounded by soil and the rotting remains of the timber frame from which he once hanged.
Slightly north of Perth a small sign reads ‘Gibbet Hill’; this unassuming sign hides the dark past for which the area is named.
While deaths on our roads are an ongoing challenge, the death of Mr Joseph Edward Wilson on 1st April of 1837 is where the story of Gibbet Hill begins. Mr Wilson was found shortly after sunset on the road to Launceston, just outside of Perth. He lay on his back, surrounded by blood – a bullet having passed through his chest and his head cut and bruised. He was taken by good Samaritans to Perth where the authorities arrived. He was seen to by Dr Salamon, the Perth doctor, but could be given only comfort. Mr Wilson soon succumbed to his injuries.
Constable John Hemmings took off from Perth to the location of the crime and in doing so found parts of a gun. The parts having broken away as the weapon was fiercely struck against Mr Wilson. These parts were matched to a gun sold to Mr John Lamb for 6 bushels of wheat.
Lamb and his associate Mr John McKay were arrested and eventually charged with Wilson’s murder. Taken to Hobart for trial, it was the evidence of Ms Hannah Ward that sealed the fates of the two prisoners. The jury returned a guilty verdict and the judge declared that the prisoners were “to be severally hanged on Monday morning next, and when dead, their bodies to be hanged in chains”.
Lieutenant Governor Franklin, only recently being appointed in 1837, had to grapple with the public disapproval of executing prisoners in Hobart for crimes committed in the north of the island. His response was to approve displaying the bodies of executed criminals near the sites of their crimes. As stated in the Launceston Advertiser on 11 May “the culprit, not having been tried and executed in the north, we presume the present exhibition has been decided on as a compensatory measure, and the second-best method of terrifying evil-doers”.
McKay’s body arrived near the site of Wilson’s murder at 2 o’clock on Friday 5th May 1837 “in the usual iron casing, and ready for exhibition”. The timber gibbet was 20 feet high, and it is from here that McKay’s body would be on display for all to see on the road from Launceston to Perth.
It is not clear why, but Lamb was not executed. In fact, McKay’s last words were that Lamb was the one who pulled the trigger, not him. Who pulled the trigger that fateful April night is now lost to history.
The public response to the gibbeting was mixed, but certainly unsuccessful in deterring crime. As one subscriber wrote to the Launceston Advertiser in May of 1837 “so much for this revival of a disgusting relic we hoped had ceased with the barbarous age in which it originated”.
The practice of gibbetting ended in Britain by 1834 as the Murder Act of 1751 began to be repealed.
After four months, McKay’s rotting corpse was so repulsive and upsetting that it could no longer stand. On 23 September 1837, the Cornwall Chronicle reported that the body had been taken down, “which was interred on the spot, after the head had been taken off by Dr de Dassel and Dr Grant, to prepare it for phrenological examination”.
McKay’s gibbetting is a story of immense social and cultural significance for Tasmania, and Australia. It was the last official gibbeting in Britain or her colonies (even despite the practice having been outlawed years prior), the removal of the head for “phrenological examination”, and the ongoing efforts to balance the North vs South divide that still exists to this day.
Perhaps one day McKay’s headless remains will be found and can be properly laid to rest in an effort to right the barbaric wrong from which he suffered after death. But until that time, it is how we engage with our history, and how we encourage future generations to engage with history, especially dark and wicked history, that we must come to terms with.
Samuel Diprose Adams is the secretary of the Perth (Tasmania) Historical Society. The Society meets monthly at the Queens Head Inn and can be contacted via their Facebook page or email at perthtashs@gmail.com for anyone interested in the history of Perth or surrounds.