docbobdocs

  'WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGE - Captain Thunderbolt (bushranger Frederick Ward), dead, 1870'   State Library New South Wales , Collection Item Call No. PXA362, (Vol. 6/109, 1870)  Photographer Andrew Cunningham, Uralla NSW, Cartes-de-viste  (postcard) June 1870 'Cadaver of Frederick Ward, the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, ca. May-June 1870' State Library New South Wales , Call Numbers P1/1900 (from P1/Ward BM July 2010) Photographer Andrew Cunningham, Uralla NSW, carte de visite (photographic print) Image on left side "Ward's body photographed with shirt open to show the autopsy scar" Image on right side "In this photograph he is wearing a hat" and "thunderbolt bushranger" in pencil on the reverse Both post mortem images show entry wound of fatal shot in the upper chest of the deceased Mr Buchanan, police magistrate, Inquiry "We have great pleasure in being able to state that the pest of the Northern districts for many years, Frederic...

"Yesterday morning the city was startled by the intelligence that the celebrated Captain Melville had committed self-destruction in the Gaol. An inquest was held in the corridor of the Gaol before Dr. Youl, about midday. Dr. Maund deposed that he had made a post mortem  examination of the body...The Coroner then summed up the evidence, and the jury, after a brief deliberation, retuned a verdict of felo de se .  The following remarkable passage, evidently traced by the unfortunate deceased,. was found written on the walls of his cell in black lead pencil :―        'I am to suffer nothing. My name is not T. Smith, but ― Macullum. I intend to defeat their purpose, and to die in my bed, with a smile, by my own hand; and thus by my keenness to defeat their most secret intentions, and these steps are taken to give me an opportunity of doing so, as it is in my power to prove that I am not the man I am taken for.' " [The Melbourne Age, Thursday 13 August 1847, p 5,...

Top right and bottom left Walter McGill, Australia, 1824-1881, Death Mask of Captain Moonlite, plaster, painted Justice and Police Museum, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, JP 1910/211 Top left and bottom right Dave Horton, sculptor lecturer at National Art School, Andrew George Scott AKA Captain Moonlite (Copy Cast) Copy of the original Death Mask (1880) cast by Horton in 2014   "Moonlite's head was so peculiarly formed that it was impossible he could speak the truth, or be honest; that it was devoid of all moral courage, and hence would keep up to the last what he once said; and that he could not brook contradiction; and that he had such a love of life and its pleasures, that he cared not how he gained his ends." Australian phrenologist Walter McGill  (1824-1881)      "The context considered in this article is that of 19th century Australia and the 'reading of heads': heads were read, the bumps of the skull were interpreted, the features of the face...