Biraban dies

Death of Biraban. His death notice reports: “Died. At Newcastle, on the 14th April, McGill, the aboriginal native well known a few years back at the Supreme Court as assistant interpreter in several cases in which the aborigines were tried for capital offences. He was a living witness against the assertions of the French Phrenologists, “that the blacks of this colony were physically incapable of instruction from organic malformation” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1846, in Blair, 2003, 54).