IDNO

LS.75618.

Description

Portrait of William Lanney, also known as King Billy, a Tasmanian man, looking away from the camera. [JD 20/05/2017]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Tasmania

Cultural Affliation

Tasmanian

Named Person

William Lanney, also William Laney and King Billy (ca. 1835 to 3 March 1869)

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Date

pre 1869

Collection Name

Source

?Minns

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

LS.75549. to LS.75745. were found inside the wooden tray now numbered C360/.

The slides were accompanied by a list providing the number from each geographic area and at times the book from which the image was taken. See Bay N/Shelf3/Box1/.
There was also a note recording that the slides were removed from their original location to make room for Bateman prints.

Named Person: "William Lanne or Laney (or as he was commonly called King Billy) is described as our last male. This is the political answer and commonly accepted myth. He spent the last few years of his life as a whaler and intermixing within the broader Tasmanian community, so it is doubtful that he died without leaving a child. Almost every seafarer had female friends irrespective of their so called respectability. Historically William Laney is definately not recorded as being our last male. This ignores the men living free in a Traditional lifestyle within their Kinship Groups that were recorded up to and after the 1860s. William Lanne is the last captured male to die.
Even his death in 1869 gave him no respect. Dr Lodewyk Crowther removed his head in the name of science at the Colonial Hospital. His head has never been found. Neither has the tobacco pouch that was made out of his scrotum." [Source: http://www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/ancestors.htm, JD 20/05/2017]