You have no doubt already clicked on the ‘Everton‘ tab on the home page, as it explains my own personal role within the cemetery. This page relates to one of my favourite grave stories for the cemetery.

In the early 1960’s a box of human exhibits, from Liverpool Museum were buried in Section GEN16 / 296. The box included a Peruvian Mummy (unnamed) a Maori head (unamed) and an Aboriginal head (unamed). However, Australian researchers, were to discover the name of the Aboriginal head, and in time, repatriate the head back to Australia, leaving the other exhibits in the burial plot.

General Section 16

YAGAN / Warrior to the Noongar People

In the early 1830’s, Yagan a warrior of the Noongar People of Western Australia, killed a European settler over settlement rights. A ‘bounty’ was placed on Yagan, and eventually he was caught, decapitated and the head was smoked in a hollow tree, to preserve it. The ‘bounty’ (placed on his head) was paid, and the head taken back to London to be exhibited.

A post-graduate student from the University of Southampton, Cressida Fforde, visited the museum on her search for the remains of Yagan a Noongar warrior from Western Australia who is considered a hero for his resistance to white settlers and was shot dead by a settler in 1833. Fforde identified a human head of Australian Aboriginal origin in the museum’s ethnology collections as that of Yagan. The head had entered the museum’s collection in 1894 from the Liverpool Royal Institution, which acquired it in 1835 by gift from a Royal Navy Lieutenant Dale. It had been formally removed from the museum’s collection in 1964 because it had deteriorated badly, and it was buried in Everton Cemetery along with some other human remains from the collections. When Yagan’s head was buried, responsibility for it had passed to Liverpool City Council, the managers of the cemetery. As a result of Fforde’s research, the Australian government asked for its return and the City Council asked the Home Office for a licence to exhume the head of Yagan from Everton Cemetery. The Home Office refused the request. In May 1997 Ken Colbung, representing the Noongah elders in Western Australia, visited the UK to try to reopen the case.

He visited Liverpool and museum director Richard Foster was persuaded to intervene. It turned out that another burial had been made on top of Yagan’s. A plan was made to sink a shaft next to the coffins and remove the casket with the remains sideways, without disturbing burials above. Richard Foster put up about £1,300 to bring in geophysical experts from University College London to do a survey on 11 June 1997. He sent their report to the Home Office, a licence was granted, and the exhumation went ahead on 14 August. At a handover ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on Sunday 31 August, the City Council handed Yagan’s head in an inscribed wooden box to a representative of the Australian High Commission. The High Commission passed the head to Aboriginal elders for return to Western Australia.

Research into this story took me to Perth in August/September 2015 (having family there helped as well..lol) You can read and view a short posting and video here… Australia.