In 1853, a certain Mrs Melville put the dead body of her husband on display on the window of her oyster shop on Little Bourke Street. The Myer Christmas Windows sure have changed a bit... a #thread this is the death mask of her husband George Melville.

George Melville, a bush ranger, held up a private escort of gold that was headed to Melbourne, near the Victorian town of Kyneton on 20 July 1853. The government provided an armed escort of gold but it was bureaucratic and slow.

The Victorian gold rush only lasted some 20 or so years but completely transformed the colony of Victoria, leading to the building of both personal fortunes and exquisite buildings all over Melbourne like this one, where the gold was stored in vaults in Melbourne.

The central goldfields were so rich in gold that the world’s biggest alluvial gold nugget the “Welcome Stranger” (a replica of which is in the Parliament of Victoria) was found only 3cm below the surface under a tree by a prospector. That happened right here.

There was so much gold in Victoria that a gold nugget weighing 109 kg and 60cm long by 31cm wide and worth over $4.5m in today’s dollars was just lying there barely below the surface.

Melville and crew made off with about £10,000 worth of cash and gold, they shot four of the six guards, all injured and two of them badly, and they fled into the bush. Melville wanted to make his way off to Madagascar but was arrested in August in Melbourne.

Melville and most of his crew (one escaped and was never seen or heard from ever again) were tried in Melbourne and sentenced to death by hanging for the robbery. Melville was hanged at the old Melbourne Jail on 3 October 1853.

His wife was the proprietor of an oyster shop on Little Bourke Street and she was understandably devastated at the death of her husband. This wasn’t the type of fancy oyster shop that is on Little Bourke Street now, this was a dive place selling cheap protein.

Oysters were not the expensive delicacy they’re considered to be now, they were common food for the poor because they were so abundant.

The Yarra river and Port Phillip Bay have been an important source of food, shelter, transport, ceremony, and recreation for Millenia. The Kulin Nations used the river and the bay that Melbourne is now on sustainably for a very long time for a reason.

Mrs Melville, in her grief, convinced the prison to have his body released to her so she could give George a proper burial and George’s body was released to her after he was killed. Mrs Melville believed a huge injustice had been carried out and she wanted to let everyone know.

She took his body and decorated it with flowers and with ribbons then put George’s dead body, that had been decorated with flowers and ribbons, on the window of her oyster shop on Little Bourke Street, Melbourne. People loved it. The Myer Christmas Windows used to be so metal.

It was on all of the newspapers and there are claims she actually did it just to drive more patrons to her oyster shop in the city. This became known as the Melville Incident and the old Melbourne Jail never released bodies of executed people again.

Instead they were buried in the prison grounds in unmarked graves so that bush rangers would not be made famous in their infamy ever again. Like happened with the body of a certain Ned Kelly some 27 years later.

Bodies are likely still under the old Melbourne jail’s old grounds. The RMIT Law School, my law school, is now in the old yard of the Old Melbourne Gaol, the bodies of many a criminal were literally under my feet as I learned about criminal law.