BACKGROUND: From "Wrongful Convictions Report." 'Malpractice, Incompetence and lies (Part 1): "The long retired Dr Colin Manock looks a little old these days, his eyes half hidden behind his spectacles. If you passed him in the street, you wouldn’t guess he once performed an autopsy in the open air. In public. It was in the main street of Mintabie, 980 kms northwest of Adelaide, the remote opal mining community (now closed). It was 1978 and an Aboriginal man had been found dead, in mysterious circumstances. The Coroner sent a team to investigate. Refusing an offer of a cool room for the procedure, the State’s forensic pathologist set up a make shift morgue in the street and proceeded to perform his gut wrenching task. After Dr Manock had removed the bodily organs from the chest, he is said to have used a ladle to scoop up some of the body fluids and to have made an ‘inappropriate remark’ – said to have been, ‘does anybody fancy a slurp?’ The report is part of a sworn affidavit by a former police officer who witnessed the event. This is the Dr Colin Manock who not only lacked professional ethics; he lacked the qualifications to do his job."
malpractice-incompetence-and-lies-the-manock-curse-part-1
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STORY: "Study Shows How Victorian 'Collector' Traded Human Remains for Scientific Accolades," published by 'Forensic Magazine' on December 04, 2023. (Republished from University of Cambridge);
GIST: "Research into the letters of Morton Allport reveals how he built a scientific reputation by exchanging the remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and Tasmanian tigers for honors from elite societies.
Allport achieved his status by obtaining the bodily remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and Tasmanian tigers, also known as thylacines, and sending them to collectors in Europe – specifically asking for scientific accolades in return.
He built his reputation as “the foremost scientist in the colony” in the mid-1800’s, despite limited contributions to scientific knowledge. This took place in the context of a genocide against the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, and persecution of the thylacine that eventually led to its extinction.
The new research by Jack Ashby, Assistant Director of the University Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, is based on transcriptions of letters sent by Allport to correspondents in Australia and Europe.
The study is published in the Archives of Natural History, the journal of the Society for the History of Natural History.
The research reveals how the human and environmental costs of the colonial project were entwined with practices of natural history.
Ashby spent 15months investigating the colonial histories of the Australian mammal collections in Cambridge and other museums. The University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, holds one of the world’s best-preserved collections of skins of the iconic thylacine.
“Early British settlers considered both thylacines and Tasmanian Aboriginal people to be a hindrance to colonial development – and the response was institutionalised violence with the intended goal of eradicating both,” said Ashby.
In the process of reading Allport’s letters, held mainly at the State Library of Tasmania, Ashby found that Allport identified himself as the principal exporter of the bodily remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal people to Europe. Allport did not send any of these remains to the University of Cambridge.
Allport shipped a total of five Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletons to Europe, proudly identifying himself as the most prolific trader in Tasmanian bodily remains.
He made clear in his letters that he had directed the grave-robbing himself. (The human remains sent by Allport to the United Kingdom are no longer held in British collections – they were either destroyed by bombing during the Second World War or have since been repatriated to Tasmania.)
“Allport’s letters show he invested heavily in developing his scientific reputation - particularly in gaining recognition from scientific societies - by supplying human and animal remains from Tasmania in a quid pro quo arrangement, rather than through his own scientific endeavours,” said Ashby.
Ashby’s research has shown that as populations of both thylacines and Tasmanian Aboriginal people were diminished, demand for their remains in museums and private collections increased. Morton Allport worked to meet this demand.
Allport’s exploits included acquiring the remains of an Aboriginal man, William Lanne, considered a “prize specimen” as he was believed by the colonists to be the last Tasmanian man when he died in 1869.
The research explains how Allport likely instructed that Lanne’s body be mutilated both before and - following his exhumation - after his burial so that Allport could add him to a museum collection in Hobart.
The events surrounding Lanne’s death have been at the centre of much debate in Tasmania in recent years, and this August it was agreed that a statue of state premier William Crowther - also implicated in the mutilation of Lanne’s body - would be removed from Hobart city centre. But until now Allport’s role has been little explored.
“Outrageously, despite state-sponsored violence committed against thylacines and Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, they were both described by the colonists as being at fault for what happened to them – that they couldn’t cope in the ‘modern’ world,” said Ashby.
The University of Cambridge’s collection of thylacines, sent from Morton Allport in 1869 and 1871, represent the UK’s biggest collection of this species known to originate from a single person.
Thylacines were the largest marsupial carnivores of recent times. In 1830, British settlers in Tasmania established the first bounties encouraging violence against both Tasmania’s first peoples and thylacines. The last known thylacine died in 1936.
“Specimens like the thylacines in our collection hold extreme power in allowing museums to connect people to this story,” said Ashby. “Although Allport did not send any human remains to Cambridge, I can no longer look at these thylacine skins without thinking of the human story they relate to. It shows how natural history specimens aren’t just scientific data – they also reflect important moments in human history, much of which was tragically violent.”
“We have a remarkable collection of animals in our museum. We have long appreciated that their natural history can help us understand more about the natural world and how to conserve it. We now realise that the social history behind our collections is just as important," said Rebecca Kilner, Head of the University’s Department of Zoology.
"Understanding why and how animals were collected, including the underlying political and social motivations, is key to understanding and addressing some of the social inequalities that exist today."
A new web-resource sharing the stories behind the collections has been launched today. This work forms part of the University of Cambridge Museum’s inquiries into legacies of empire and enslavement."
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From my review of Journalist Drew Rooke's book 'Witness of Fact," (Link Below):
"Although Rooke acknowledges that much about Manock remains a mystery, he manages to take us deep into Manock's dark soul through a police officer named Peter Whellum. In the late 1970's he was summoned to an outback settlement called 'Mintabie' to investigate the suspected murder of an Aboriginal man. Whellum was shocked to learn that Manock, who had been flown in for the death investigation, had decided to conduct the autopsy in the main street "without any shelter, shade or running water, and in full public view”, instead of flying the body to Adelaide as would have been the standard practice. Whellum made it clear to Manock that he had arranged a private location for him to perform the autopsy - but Manock wasn't interested. He dismissed the proposal, and told Whellum that he would perform the procedure there and then, under the huge outback sky without any shelter, shade, or running water, and in full public view. "He asked me to get a couple of 200-litre drums and a sheet of corrugated iron," Whellum recalls. "The drums were placed five, six-feet-apart, and the corrugated iron placed on top of the two drums. The body was lifted onto that and the post-mortem proceeded". "Once Manock began the post-mortem, a crowd of about thirty locals quickly gathered to watch the gruesome spectacle as the body was stripped of its clothing. This fuelled Whellum's unease at the situation. With the help of his patrol partner, he immediately moved them back, but says it proved 'impossible' to keep them any further away than about 30 to 40 metres. The atmosphere varied from 'curiosity to mirth,' On several occasions, a few in the crowd retched at the sight of Manock - who, Whellum remembers, was wearing a heavy-duty plastic apron, surgical gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat - dissecting the wounded corpse, removing and examining the organs.” Once all of the organs had been removed, they were thrown into a stainless-steel bucket by the side of the body. Then, Whellum says, Manock picked up a metal ladle and dipped it into the blood and bodily fluids that were pooled within the open body, He held the ladle at arm's length and, facing the crowd, joked loudly: "Anyone for soup?" At this, Whellum says, some people in the crowd laughed. He also remembers one of the detectives who had arrived on the airplane with Manock earlier that day and was standing nearby saying casually, “Oh, typical Colin”. But Whellum felt “sickened and disgusted” by what he was witnessing. The whole situation was, he says, “surreal”, an “affront to one's sensitivities; and proof that some-times there's no dignity even in death”. It seemed to Whellum that neither Manock nor anyone in the crowd cared for the man who was lying dead. There was an attitude of, "He's just another blackfella. Who cares? Which I find quite deplorable." Although, as an experienced police officer Whellum had been exposed to many horrible experiences, as Rooke tells us, but nothing he had otherwise experienced compared to the horrors of that day. It left Whellum with the sense that Manock was something of a 'show-pony' with 'fucked up ethics, if they existed at all', and who 'got a kick out of desecrating a corpse' especially of an aboriginal man. Reading Whellum's account of this horrifying incident, I too was disgusted by the utter lack of dignity, humanity and professionalism manifested by Manock at Mintabie. I cannot understand why he wasn't kicked out of medicine and the forensic services then and there. How can he have been permitted to remain in the highest position in South Australia's s forensic service, without any accountability for almost two more decades."
https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2022/02/book-review-south-australia-drew-rookes.html
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The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-123488014
