Death and Thomas Bock

One of the many unusual things about Thomas Bock is his penchant for drawing the dead. A remarkable series of post-mortem studies by him is contained in the pages of a sketch book in possession of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston.^¹ The book probably dates from c.1835. Three of the subjects are infants. The death of a child was a common occurrence in the nineteenth century; twelve percent of all children born in Van Diemen's Land in the 1850s failed to reach their first birthday.^² It is perhaps ironic, therefore, that the offence for which Bock was lagged to this remote British penal colony involved a child that lived - rather than one that had died.