Berry, professor of anatomy at Melbourne between 1906 and 1929, was responsible for the construction of a new anatomy building, which now houses the university’s maths and statistics department, and still bears his name.
Berry also collected Aboriginal ancestral remains, which became known as the Berry collection. In 2003, Melbourne University apologised for the “hurt and understandable indignation felt by indigenous Australians” after the collection - which included the bones and skulls of about 400 people, mostly Aborigines - was found locked in an anatomy department storeroom.
Dr Jones says there were other influential eugenicists who made Melbourne a focus for the movement.
“I’d be happy to put my head on the block and argue with any historians that Melbourne was the centre of eugenics in Australia,” he says.
According to Dr Jones, the eugenics society’s surviving subscription lists read like a who’s who of the academic, judicial, scientific and educational elite of Melbourne society. Names include Sir Keith Murdoch, Sir David Rivett, a former chief executive of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, later renamed the CSIRO, and Reverend G. K. Tucker, founder of the Brotherhood of St Laurence.
But Dr Jones says that details about prominent people supporting eugenics have often been ignored or suppressed, due to sensitivities about the Holocaust. He says biographies about Kenneth Cunningham, a long-term president of the eugenics society, do not mention his membership, or if they do it’s “just in passing”.
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