![]() ![]() ![]() To the north, just metres from Brighton's iconic bathing boxes and buried beneath half a metre of sand, lies the grave marker of the notorious Martha Needle - one of only two women executed at the Old Melbourne Gaol. The bluestone wall is gradually sinking beneath the sand and seawater. His marker is partly obscured by another section of the wall, but identifiable by the date of his execution inscribed on the block. It's a literal rogues' gallery of some of Victoria's worst offenders.Īmong them are the grave markers of William Colston, executed for the double-murder of a couple at Narbethong in 1891, Joseph Pfeffer, hanged in 1912 for the murder of his sister-in-law at Albert Park and Fatta Chand who, on the eve of his execution for murder, asked that his parents be told he died of cholera and not at the end of a rope. "I do think at the work crew level someone is trying to preserve some level of identity and it does suggest to me it was known what they were."Īt least six of the markers are visible - at least they were - embedded in one 25-metre stretch of the wall on the beach foreshore at Brighton. "They weren't defaced and they weren't presented upside down or anything," he said. ![]() The initials 'JVP' are engraved into a stone for Joseph Victor Pfeffer, who was hanged for murdering his sister-in-law. The grave markers were virtually undamaged as they were placed in the seawall by work crews - something principal archaeologist at Heritage Victoria, Jeremy Smith, believes is evidence of at least some kind of attempt at preservation. To this day, that's where many of the grave markers remain - slotted neatly into a wall stretching several kilometres along prime beachfront, either facing a daily battering by waves and weather or buried under encroaching sand. The bluestone walls that had stood for nearly a century came down, and the blocks were carted down to Brighton to be used in the seawall, including those carefully chiselled grave markers. Luckily, there was a healthy supply readily available at the now-unused Old Melbourne Gaol. One thing the project desperately needed was bluestone - and lots of it. It was a massive scheme, designed partly to save the local beach from erosion, and partly to provide employment for the many young men left jobless by the Great Depression. Meanwhile, at Brighton in Melbourne's south-east, a project was getting underway to build a seawall. ![]() Only about 30 prisoners at the Old Melbourne Gaol had their graves marked. His body was buried again - for the third time - two years later. His name was still visible when the coffin was dug up again in 2009 by archaeologists. Tombstones find a new home with a viewĬonder's grave was identified by his marker and his name was written on the top of his coffin in builder's lead pencil by some unknown person before his remains were transferred to Pentridge Prison in 1929. It would be decades until Kelly's remains were once again identified. One of the young "souvenir hunters" was seen leaving the excavation site with a "portion of a skull in his pocket". Newspaper reports from 1929 recount the moment Ned Kelly's grave was unearthed, prompting "a morbid desecration" by a group of boys who'd gathered to watch. It was then that the unofficial grave markers proved their worth, allowing authorities to identify who most likely occupied the coffins they were digging up. Ned Kelly's fame likely prompted the gaol's practice of using cobblestones to mark condemned prisoners' graves. If it wasn't for Ned Kelly, they may not even have had that. The only record of his, and other prisoners' resting places, was a bluestone wall near the prison graveyard which was engraved with their initials and dates of execution. Like dozens of other prisoners executed at the gaol, Conder was buried, unceremoniously, in the prison grounds. Police found some of the missing salesman's goods in Conder's possession and a jury was not persuaded that scorched bones found after a fire at his property were sheep bones.Ĭonder was hanged on Augat Old Melbourne Gaol, offering a simple "Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul" before the black cap was drawn over his head and trapdoor was opened. His eyes are desperate and confused.Ĭonder was convicted of killing Indian hawker Kaiser Singh near Buchan in Gippsland in 1893. In one of the earlier mugshots in his prison file, he is wild-eyed with a thick, bushy beard, but in the final photo taken just weeks before his death, he's old beyond his 54 years. ( Supplied: Public Records Office of Victoria) John Conder was hanged in 1893 for the murder of of an Indian hawker. ![]()
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