Melbourne was growing fast in the 1850s. No longer a colonial outpost it had boomed into one of the leading cities of the Empire.
People flocked here, people were born here, people died here. And it was the dying that created the problem.
Melbourne needed a morgue but wasn’t sure it wanted one. This was the beginning of a 150-year-journey through place, time and purpose as the morgue evolved from an unpleasant necessity to an internationally respected institution.
On the rare occasions we think of a morgue the image is sterile, white, gleaming, a pastiche of Kathy Reichs, CSI and Silent Witness. Fact or fantasy this was not the 19th century idea of a morgue.
Click here to keep reading Julie Bevan’s story in CBD News (scroll down through all the Council election guff to P27)
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