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. 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. 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.