#williamstownmorgue

My last post on the morgue touched on the mysterious E.W. Jackson. The man speaking out in favour of closing the morgue.

The original machine transcribed copies of the news articles about the closure all refer to 3 Mr. Jacksons, “E. W.”, “E. R.” and “E. TV.”. I thought it was a strange coincidence, so I checked back over the original digital scans and noticed that it was a typo of “E. W.” (which I logged into Trove to correct). I could find no mention of Mr. Jackson, except as E. W. and normally with no more detail than his name. Once he started showing up the next challenge was to find his name. 

His chapel was involved in the funeral for someone who died in a major train catastrophe in Wodonga in 1943 as the decedent was transported to Williamson. I would hope to infer from that he wasn’t absolutely elderly in 1921, but the chapel could of been named in memorial, so I do not know.

There are no census records that mention individuals until 50 years before 1925 and even then the records are patchy, so I gave up on that line of inquiry.

The name “Jackson” is super common and when it comes to investigating births, deaths and marriages each of those records could potentially span 100 years on either side of 1925. That is all assuming that he was even born, married or died in Victoria and if we extend the scope further than that... well I get close to 100 records for people named Jackson who were born in, Victoria in 1890 alone. Then, even assuming that I found someone with the right name, in the right time period, I have no way of knowing if that’s just coincidence.

I found a potential mention of a family member, an R. Jackson who resided on Ferguson Street, Williamstown in 1963. I think it’s plausible he is related as the chapel own or named for our Mr. Jackson was also located in Ferguson Street. That said in this directory there were 29 mentions of “Jackson” as a street or as a person.

There are lots of mentions for E. W. Jackson chapel, a lot of them are funeral records for world war II. Interestingly, some of the records mention the deceased were interred at fawkner cemetery, and it was approximately the right time period, so I wondered, if any of the bodies had be transported by the mortuary train (all good stories and places are connected by trains) but the train service ended in 1939 and most of the records I found were from the 40s.

So if anyone has an ancestor who was a coroner and perhaps funeral home owner in the early 20th century in williamstown. First your granpa was a badass, and second please please please contact me.

So, I took a break from this, visited a cemetery, and when I got back I started looking absentmindedly through my tabs of people whose funerals were at “E. W. Jackson Chapel” and I found his name! Ernest W. Jackson. The source was a funeral notice for George Finch. From here it’s easier to find more and to verify that against what we know and expand our understanding of Mr. Jackson. 

“Always read the plaque” as the great and powerful 99% invisible has popularised, the signage is a great place to start. 

The first one is on the main road before the turn on to Ann Street, (the street that the Morgue is on). It reads:

"In the developing colony of Victoria, Williamstown was an important and busy port.

As the population grew a morgue became necessary. Previous to 1859 autopsies were conducted in pub cellars or right on the main bars.

The bluestones for the morgue were hewn with prison labour. The morgue originally stood near Gem Pier. Bodies were hung from the ceiling to discourage rats and the tides washed the autopsy wastes away.

The buildings behind the morgue are what remains of the former Port of Melbourne Authority Workshop site, where tugboats were repaired."

The second and third plaques, which are attached to the morgue itself read

"This building of local bluestone hewn by convict labour was completed in July 1959 (contractor H.R. Thomas) and stood near Gem Pier until 1873. When it was re-erected on this site. Usage was discontinued in 1925."

"This morgue is under the care and protection of the Williamstown Historical Society Inc. Enquiries Ph. 9397 5423"

The two signs that actually provide detail on the site show the interesting prioritisation of its place in history. With some sources, like the plaque of the building and the Victorian heritage database focusing on its role as a bluestone building. Constructed in the Georgian style with a galvanised iron roof that has replaced the original slate tiles. With a use of high windows to hide it's use as a morgue, “It’s siting also reflects its original use as it is in close proximity to the port.”. The architect is James Balmain. It was shut in 1925 due is health and safety concerns.

With other sources pointing out:

 The role convict labour had 

Stephanie Trigg has featured the morgue on her fascinating blog about the history of victorian bluestone “the stones themselves were "hewn" by convicts, who slept at night on the big prison hulks anchored in Hobsons Bay.”

The bodies hung from hooks

That rather than having constructed shelves for decedents as modern mortuaries do, the corpses were instead hung from the ceiling like some sort of grotesque meat market “To deal with the problem of ”rats mutilating the corpses” it is said bodies were suspended from hooks.”

  “It’s siting also reflects its original use as it is in close proximity to the port.” indicated that by design some amount of human remains were left to be taken by the tides. That is why the morgue was moved in 1873, because as Gem Pier got busier, people started to notice.

“The plan was that the remains of autopsies and mortuary procedures would be washed away at the end of the pier, and the fishes would do the cleaning up... but apparently this became a little unsavoury and in 1873 the building was taken down, bluestone by bluestone, and reconstructed a few blocks away in Ann St.

“Originally erected in convict-quarried bluestone in 1859 next to Gem Pier, it was given the shoreline placement to allow ”product of each post-mortem … to be swept out the doors and onto the beach [...] The ”ghastly contents” that swilled on the tidal wash, however, became so intolerable that in 1873 public agitation resulted in the Williamstown Morgue being removed to nearby Ann Street. ”

It’s closure in 1925 for health and safety reasons infers that the place was so bad even for 1925, when workers compensation was in its infancy (with the first workplace compensation act being enacted in South Australia in 1900) and environmental protection being so far in the future that Victorians would need to wait for another 46 years for the EPA to be formed. It was still decided this mortuary was so unsafe and undignified that someone managed to get it shut down. 

I was going to put this on instagram, and then I was going to write one post here about it, on my freshly created tumblr. Now as the word count on that post is over 1500 words and still growing, I’m going to split it up. This is Part One. Other parts can be found here as they appear.

Yesterday, I went for a short walk at about noon than ended up as a train trip to Williamstown. It took 4 hours with at least 2 hours of walking involved.

During a conversation with some locals, I ended up talking about the Mortuary Train at Fawkner cemetery. They directed my attention to the Old Williamstown Morgue. As I meandered with Xannie to the centre of Williamstown from Williamstown Station, I spotted it on Google maps and went to see what it was about.

While the small, well labelled bluestone rubble building was viewable from the street in a very industrial looking area, it is actually a part of the seaworks precinct. Which on a random Sunday happened to look like an industrial area that had an open gate with hours on it, a sign with a map of attractions and signs for the back entrance to the pirates tavern. To which I was convinced was a children's themed venue, but was actually a small but proper pub that's a part of the Williamstown Maritime Association.

I made a beeline straight for the morgue, which was locked. I cannot find any clear opening times, and honestly I don’t think there are any, but there is a ghost tour that includes the morgue. If I can find a way to get inside, ideally with a historic society member (rather than a titillating ghost tour) then I'll add an update. Perhaps writing my curiosity down here about this site and others like it will lend credibility to my request. Photos, such as this one on the heritage council victoria website, of the interior do show prop cadavers hanging from the ceiling, and on an examiner's bench in a way that toes the line between amusement park attraction and historical reenactment.

I am personally not interested in ghost stories and horror movies, but I am curious about how we treat the dead, how we did in the past, our relationship with that history and what is says about our values as a culture. I think Caitlin Doughty describes the ideal version succinctly as "the good death" and when looking at the history that surrounds the Old Williamstown Morgue, it's pretty clearly a tale of what most would consider "the bad death", although not the modern kind.