John Williams

Digging up Mrs Williams 2: a skeleton in the closet or just in an unmarked grave?

In a previous blog, ‘Digging up Mrs Williams, or the phantom of the Heemskirk tin boom’, I pondered Con Curtain’s story of a woman who died at the Orient Tin Mine on Tasmania’s West Coast in 1882.1 Who was she? Where was she buried? Did she even exist? No one besides Curtain ever mentioned Mrs … Read moreDigging up Mrs Williams 2: a skeleton in the closet or just in an unmarked grave?

Digging up Mrs Williams, or the phantom of the Heemskirk tin boom

On 28 May 1882 a woman died on Tasmania’s West Coast and was laid to rest nearby. No doctor attended her, no police constable, magistrate or registrar was notified.1 No priest officiated at her funeral. None of these positions existed on the Heemskirk Tin Field. There was nothing but a scattered population of mostly Cornish … Read moreDigging up Mrs Williams, or the phantom of the Heemskirk tin boom