William Lanne

William Lanne (also known as King Billy or William Laney; c. 1835 – 3 March 1869) was a Tasmanian Aborigine. He is most well known as the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian man.

Lanne was captured along with his family in 1842 during a period known as the Black War. He was the youngest child in the last family taken to the Aboriginal camp at Wybelenna on Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson. His native name is lost, probably because at 7 he was too young when arriving at Wybalenna and so the English name William he was given there stuck.

In 1847, he temporarily moved to Oyster Cove, and was sent to an orphanage in Hobart until 1851. In 1855 he joined a whaling ship and regularly visited Oyster Cove when he had time.

Lanne died on 3 March 1869 from a combination of cholera and dysentery.

Following his death, Lanne's body was dismembered and used for scientific purposes. An argument broke out between the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Society of Tasmania over who should possess his remains. A member of the English College of Surgeons named William Crowther, applied to the government for permission to send the skeleton to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, but his request was denied.

Nonetheless, Crowther managed to break into the morgue where Lanne's body was kept and decapitated the corpse, removed the skin and inserted a skull from a white body into the black skin. The Tasmanian Royal Society soon discovered Crowther's work, and decided to thwart any further attempts to collect "samples" by amputating the hands and feet. Lanne was then buried in this state.

Because he was accused of the theft of Lanne's head (and the illicit use of another white person's head), Crowther's honorary appointment as surgeon at the Colonial Hospital terminated. Yet in 1869, the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons awarded him a gold medal and the first Fellowship of the College ever awarded to an Australian. Crowther later became Premier of Tasmania. Crowther claimed that, because Lanne had lived much of his life within the European community, his brain had exhibited physical changes, demonstrating "the improvement that takes place in the lower race when subjected to the effects of education and civilisation."

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