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| Birth: | 17 July 1843 |
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| Death: | 8 May 1905 |
| Authority control: | Wikidata: Q6737148 WikiTree: Brown-108620 WABI: B/B5764 |
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Maitland Brown (1843-1905) was a colonialist murderer, and later parliamentarian. When three explorers, Panter, Harding and Goldwyer, were killed in the La Grange area in 1865, Brown was put in charge of a punitive expedition. They found the men's remains and then proceeded to kill as many of the [[../organisations/aboriginal.html|traditional owners]] they could find, a number estimated at between 6 and 20. In memory of this evil act, a large monument was erected on the Esplanade Park, Fremantle, in 1912, with a heroic bust of Brown on the top, sculpted by Pietro Porcelli. In about 1990 the bust was removed and (I hope) destroyed. A replacement was (unfortunately) commissioned from Greg James.
The remains of all four men are in East Perth Cemetery, and in my opinion it would be appropriate, if the monument is to be kept at all, for it to be removed to the Cemetery, where it would be seen by few people and no Aboriginal people, for I dare say there are none buried in the old wadjela cemetery.
Photograph of the original bust of Brown by Pietro Porcelli. >
Maitland Brown's brother Kenneth was the father of Edith Cowan. He was hanged for murdering his wife.
References and Links
Both photos from the Peter Cowan book, the first (1860s) courtesy of RWAHS.
Cowan, Peter 1988, Maitland Brown: A View of Nineteenth Century Western Australia, Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Wikipedia page for Brown.
Wikipedia page for the 'Explorers Monument'.
[[../arts/publicart.html|Page on this site which includes the monument]] .
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 14 April, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/brownmaitland.html (it was last updated on 20 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.