Dear Alasdair,
Thankyou for your valuable information. Our projects Chair, Rollo Myers will
be trvelling to Australia next week, and will certainly get in touch with
Geoff Hewitt as well as with you.
Adriana Balen
Citizens for the Old Town
159 King Street East
Tel 416 861 1793
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alasdair Brooks" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 11:49 PM
Subject: Re: Jail Burials
> > Dear Histarchers,
> >
> > During the time there were public executions in Ontario for a wide
variety
> > of
> > crimes, it was a widespread and common practice for hanged prisoners,
> > unclaimed by relatives, to be buried in the jail yard.
>
> <Snip>
>
> > Does anyone have knowledge of jail yard burials at this particular jail
> > (Toronto's 3rd), or at others in the period1830 to 1850 in Ontario, or
> > elsewhere if relevant?
>
> There's just been a highly relevant excavation in Australia at the
Melbourne
> Gaol, complete with executed prisoners buried in the yard.
>
> There's a brief article in the June ASHA newsletter, written by Geoff
> Hewitt, but since I doubt most Histarch subscribers are ASHA members, and
I
> was June's guest editor, and still have the article on my hard drive, here
> it is:
>
> 'La Trobe University and the Former Police Garage Site in Melbourne'
>
> A project conducted by the Archaeology Program of La Trobe University on
> behalf of RMIT University is reaching finality. The City Campus of RMIT
> University has expanded in recent years to encompass the former legal
> precinct of Melbourne which includes the old City Watchhouse (c.1908), a
> former Magistrates¹ Court (c.1910) and the former Russell Street Police
> Garage. The latter, constructed in 1937 and adjacent to the National
Trust¹s
> Old Melbourne Gaol cellblock, occupied what was once the site of the gaol
> hospital and yard; some parts of which date from 1845.
>
> RMIT University is in the process of redeveloping the Police Garage site
> into landscaped open space within the standing stone walls of the old gaol
> yards. The work is proceeding under the watchful eyes of Ray Tonkin, Dr
Leah
> McKenzie and Jeremy Smith of Heritage Victoria.
>
> La Trobe Archaeology¹s consultancy, under the broad supervision of
Professor
> Tim Murray, has involved test excavations conducted by Maddy Atkinson, Dr
> Peter Davies and Chris Williamson who then excavated the footings of the
> 1855 hospital building. More recent work, directed initially by Maddy
> Atkinson and subsequently by Geoff Hewitt, has involved a watching brief
> during removal of the remaining approximately 1000 square metres of
concrete
> slab floor and some 2000 cubic metres of contaminated fill.
>
> Rather than the straightforward process expected, fill removal soon
revealed
> a vast and complex archaeology. Intact paved surfaces, the stone footings
of
> walls and buildings, arrays of timber post features, cesspits, cisterns
and
> a network of drains of various type and period came to light under the
> layers of clay, asphalt and broken stone. Beneath it all, clear traces of
> the pre-European landscape became evident.
>
> Keeping pace with the contractor necessitated a substantial archaeological
> team which included La Trobe postgraduate and undergraduate students
Ghattas
> Sayej, Libby Riches, Ilya Berelov, Peter Waldie, Fiona Anderson, Adrienne
> Ellis, Jenny Porter, Greg Deftereos, Lynne Dore, Caroline Wilby, Chu
Youxin,
> Josara de Lange and Zvonka Stanin. Practical assistance was also given by
> volunteer Celia Parham and by Liz Kilpatrick of Heritage Victoria.
>
> Unusual finds included a mass burial of young and robust dogs, probably
the
> result of (unsuccessful) experiments, conducted at the gaol during the
> 1870s, to evaluate an antidote for snakebite.
>
> A new perspective on the ineffectiveness of quicklime as a means to
dispose
> of unwanted corpses was provided by the discovery of the body of an
executed
> prisoner buried in the hospital yard. The remains, tentatively identified
as
> Albert Edward Budd, a former stevedore and returned soldier wounded at
> Gallipoli who was hanged in the Melbourne Gaol early in 1918, were exhumed
> under the direction of Emeritus Professor R.V.S. Wright and subsequently
> re-interred at Fawkner Cemetery. The remains of two other individuals, who
> had been incompletely exhumed from the hospital yard during 1937 were also
> reburied at Fawkner.
>
> At the time of writing, the task of interpreting the archaeology of the
> former Police garage site - and compilation of the report - is progressing
> in parallel with the last of the watching brief.
>
> (full citation: Hewitt, G. (2002). 'La Trobe University and the Former
> Police Garage Site in Melbourne', _Australasian Society for Historical
> Archaeology Newsletter_ 32(2):5-6.)
>
> You can get in touch with Geoff at: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> Alasdair Brooks
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dr. Alasdair Brooks
> Department of Archaeology
> La Trobe University
> Plenty Road
> Bundoora VIC 3083
> Australia
> Phone - 03 9479 3269
> E-mail - [log in to unmask]
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "The buffalo tastes the same
> on both sides of the border"
> Sitting Bull
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