Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee has handed down the final approval to remove a three-decade-old statue of former Australian politician William Crowther.
Crowther, who served as Tasmania's 14th premier from 1878 to 1879, was a surgeon widely known for decapitating the corpse of Tasmanian Aboriginal man William Lanne, stealing his skull and sending it to the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
The Aboriginal community said they felt impacted by the continued presence of the statue, and wanted a more"truthful" history of how First Nations people were treated in colonial Hobart. Crowther was one of several colonial figures who were involved in the now discredited field of phrenology, which claimed to be able to determine a person's character and intelligence based on the shape and size of their skull.
Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said while she welcomes the decision to remove the statue from Franklin Square, the monument itself will be cared for. “But he’s the only person with hands-on involvement that has a prominent celebratory statue in Hobart’s main civic square. Once the two-week period has passed, the City of Hobart will contract the services of a Material Conservator to establish the removal and storage protocol.
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