Planning approval given for statue removal

Published on 24 August 2023

The City of Hobart’s standing as a welcoming and inclusive city has been further advanced with the Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee approving the removal of the William Crowther statue from Franklin Square.

Once all conditions are met, the council-endorsed removal of the colonial statue would be the first of its kind in Australia.

Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said that several years ago the Tasmania’s Aboriginal community asked that Council consider the removal of this statue as an act of reconciliation and to tell a more truthful history of how Aboriginal people were treated in colonial Hobart.

“During discussions for our Reconciliation Action Plan a few years ago we became aware that the statue of the former doctor and Premier had been troubling for Tasmania’s First Nations people for generations because of the role he played in removing William Lanne’s head,” Cr Reynolds said.

In 1860 Crowther was appointed an honorary medical officer at the Hobart General Hospital but was suspended in March 1869 over charges of mutilating the body of palawa man William Lanne. The incident was controversial at the time in Hobart.

In his letters to Sir William Flower (Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, England) in 1869, William Crowther writes about his role in the incident in some detail.

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.

It was used to try to prove that Aboriginal people were of lower intelligence than Caucasians.

“Crowther was certainly not the only person making transactions in this discredited field of ‘racial science’,” Cr Reynolds said.

“But he’s the only person with hands-on involvement that has a prominent celebratory statue in Hobart’s main civic square.

“Deciding to relocate this statue doesn’t change history. The records, books, articles, dates and stories associated with the statue will all remain unchanged.

“The statue itself will be cared for and I hope reinterpreted in a new location.”

The City of Hobart has followed an extensive, consultative process to reach this outcome.

It informally began in 2018 and since has had widespread community consultation and engagement from all sides of the debate.

After the Hobart City Council initially voted in favour of removing the bronze statue in August 2022, the process required an addendum to the Franklin Square Conservation Management Plan that successfully passed through the council’s planning committee followed by an application approved by the independent Tasmanian Heritage Council earlier this month.

“Those opposed to this decision refer to Council ‘tearing down’ the statue,” Cr Reynolds said. “But this is a deliberately emotive and inaccurate term used to evoke an image of illogical demolition.

“The Council’s careful and deliberative process over several years to consider the removal of this statue has been quite the opposite.

“This has been a thorough, fair process and I would like to thank all stakeholders, community members and council staff for their input and work on achieving this historic outcome.”

There will now be a 14-day holding period where any appeals against the decision may be lodged with the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Once this two-week period has passed, the City of Hobart will contract the services of a Material Conservator to establish the removal and storage protocol. This information will be provided to the Tasmanian Heritage Council as required as a condition of the development application approval.

The fourth and final stage of this process, will involve commissioning new interpretive elements to sit adjacent to the existing plinth and tell the complex story of Crowther, Lanne, the culture of the time of Lanne’s death, and the story of the removal of the bronze.