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After visiting Everton Cemetery in early 2014, to see the Commonwealth War Graves in various parts of the cemetery, It spurred me to research on-line to find out more about them. During my research into the war graves, I came across a little known, and fascinating bit of old Liverpool history… that subsequently led me to Perth in Western Australia.
It would seem that the ‘head’ of ‘Yagan’, a war-lord of the Noongar People of Western Australia had been buried in Everton Cemetery, after spending many years in the vaults of Liverpool Museum.
Liverpool Museum
The story of Yagan begins when the early settlers to W.A. in 1833, killed one of Yagan’s tribe members (a relative) as was the custom amongst the Noongar of the day, Yagan was allowed a blood vengance from an opposing tribe (it didn’t have to be the murderer) so he speared one of the settlers, and a price on Yagan’s head was issued by the then Governor of Perth (Frederick Irwin). Subsequently, settler friends of Yagan, shot a killed the tribal leader, decapitated him, and smoked his head in a smouldering tree, this mummified the head.
The head was brought to England later that year and was deposited at Liverpool Museum. By the early 1960’s Yagan’s head had really deteriorated, and the board of the Museum, decided in 1964 to bury the head, along with a Peruvian mummy and a Maori head in Everton Cemetery (General plot 16). In 1968 a local hospital buried 20 still-born babies over the Museum artifacts, and then the history of the grave site ended.
Grave diggers lodge & General plot 16 at Everton Cemetery
Early in the 1980’s, the Noongar people, began a search for Yagan’s head, and by the early 1990’s had discovered its connection with Liverpool Museum. In 1993 an exhumation application was issued, but because of the 20 stillborns lying over the artifacts, parental consent was needed to exhume them first. Of course, this could not be found, and so a legal bettle took place. The conclusion of this was to dig down adjacent to the grave, then dig under the still-born’s to recover the head. in 1997 Yagan’s head was repatriated to a delegation of Noongar tribal elders at Liverpool town hall. This delegation returned to Perth, and buried the head in a secret site in the Swan Valley.
A bronze statue, to Yagan was erected on Herrison Island in the Swan River/Perth on 11th September 1984, however, a few weeks after the repatriation of Yagan’s head, to W.A., vandals had removed the bronze head from the statue.
In July/August 2014, I visited family in Perth W.A. and during my stay, I made a visit to Herrisons Island, were the early pioneer settlers stopped on their way up the Swan River, to their claims in the Swan Valley. I found the Statue of Yagan, with its new head, modeled on Victorian drawings of the smoked head, to show a more ‘lifelike’ look…
Yagan’s statue on Herrison Island / Swan River
More information on Yagan can be found at… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagan
Google Earth Placemark ~GEA912.kmz