Brutal Savages in an Unknown Island: Conspiracy, Mimetic Desire, Sacrificial Violence, and the Scapegoating of Irishness in Late Colonial New South Wales, 1860 – 1880

Abstract

Information regarding the incident that took place in the picturesque beachside Illawarra suburb of Bellambi during the early hours of the morning on Saturday, the 26th of May, 1877, remains scarce, although it can be safely assumed that the witnesses who flocked to the scene would be able to recall its grotesque details with vivid accuracy for years to come. After waking to the ominous sound of crackling in the near distance, trudging masses of townsfolk found themselves nudged from their beds and sucked unwittingly towards the unfamiliar source of pulsing orange heat and light at which a crowd had begun to slowly form in a trance-like stupor. A house had been set ablaze, its glowing embers curling into the night air and spirals of toxic smoke spewing into the crowd. As those present watched the fiery collapse of the building into smoldering mounds of rubble, they realized, to their horror, that more nightmarish images than they could have imagined lay flickering before them in the hazy gloom. Within a few yards of the burning ruins a dog’s decapitated head, cut cleanly to the neck, sat unblinking on the grass next to the mangled headless corpse of its former body, legs sprawled wildly in a sticky pool of blood. Near the dog rested the grisly charred skull and what remained of the skeletal shoulders and upper ribcage of a man, no longer resembling anything describable as human. Most tragic of all, a few yards further on the yard lay a pathetic splatter of ashen bones, fleshy organs, and dismembered extremities, loosely clustered around what could vaguely be discerned as the lifeless bodies of two small children who had been burned alive.