Australian authorities ask museum in Philadelphia to remove images of skull from website as Anzac’s identity believed to be confirmed

Australian authorities have intervened swiftly to have removed from public view the skull of an Australian Anzac soldier killed in action on the western front in 1917, whose head was removed after death and made into an American museum “specimen”.

After the Guardian reported the skull was on display, the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia confirmed it was in negotiations with the Australian army about what should now be done with the remains.

The Australian ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, and his military attache have directly intervened to have the images of the skull removed from the Mütter website where they were displayed with graphic descriptions of the soldier’s injuries.

The Anzac skull that tells a shocking and tragic story of battlefield violence | Paul Daley Read more

Military historians and researchers from around the world – including in Australia ex-Victoria policeman and war historian Tim Lycett and Western Australian military writer Ian Loftus, and members of a British Great War forum – raced to identify, through military records, who the skull belonged to.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia says it is ‘ in communication with the appropriate officials within the Australian Army’. Photograph: Alamy

They have established the skull is almost certainly that of 27-year-old private Thomas Hurdis of Sydney who died after suffering horrendous facial wounds on the opening day of the Battle of Polygon Wood on 26 September 1917. He survived two gunshots to the face and lost part of his jaw to a shrapnel wound before being moved to a casualty clearing station and then to an American military hospital in France where he was treated by the US ophthalmologist WT Shoemaker.

The soldier bled to death on 3 October 1917, after removing his own bandages. Shoemaker surgically removed his head and, according to an explanation about the skull’s provenance, which had until earlier this week been on the Mütter website, “donated” it to the museum.

The Mütter website had explained: “This Australian soldier’s skull has extensive damage caused by bullet wounds sustained in the Battle of Passchendaele (or Third Ypres, Battle of Polygon Wood) in the first world war. He was shot on 28 September 1917. Most of the damage was caused by a lead bullet that entered the mouth and passed through the palate and right eye. Shrapnel destroyed the ascending ramus of the right jaw, and another bullet, visible here, struck the left frontal sinus.

“Philadelphia opthalmologist and surgeon WT Shoemaker treated this soldier at a battlefield hospital in France. This soldier survived his initial injuries and treatments. But five days after his injuries, blind and disoriented, he pulled out the bandage materials in his mouth that packed the wounds. He bled to death.”

Australian military records show that Private Hurdis, of the 1st Australian Imperial Force 59th Battalion, died on 3 October at the American hospital where Shoemaker operated during 1917. He was buried on 12 October 1917, at Mont Huon military cemetery at Le Treport, France.

Hurdis, according to Australian records, was the only 1st AIF soldier to endure such wounds who died on 3 October 1917.

Private Hurdis’s younger brother John went missing, presumed dead, along with hundreds of other AIF soldiers, in what is regarded as the blackest day in Australian military history – the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916, which claimed 5,553 Australian casualties including 1,917 dead and 470 prisoners.

It is possible that if the skull is, in fact, that of Private Hurdis it could be used to identify through DNA John Hurdis, if his body is among those that authorities have found in mass graves at Fromelles but failed to positively ID.

According to a history of the Pennsylvania Base Hospital No 10 where Private Hurdis died under Shoemaker’s care: “By the courtesy of the British Medical Services, the privilege was extended to us shortly after our arrival of collecting material for a museum collection of Military Pathology. Over two hundred wet and dry specimens were gathered from autopsies and operative material, and later presented to the Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians, where they are on exhibition. After preparations in the laboratory, the specimens were shipped from time to time by ambulance trains to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where they were well cared for and later forwarded to us . . . In times of stress, the material was always more abundant than could properly be handled ...”

The controversy about the skull and the collection practices of Mütter – which has amassed a vast array of human remains from all parts of the world – is now attracting attention in the US.

It underscores the fraught nature of collecting and displaying human remains in public institutions.

This week the museum, which had repeatedly declined to answer the Guardian’s queries about the skull, said in a statement: “Regarding the article that appeared online in the Guardian on Monday, September 25, 2017:

The Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is, as the article suggested, already in communication with the appropriate officials within the Australian Army regarding the cited specimen. This is being treated with the highest regard to protocol and precedent for such specimens. The museum will release a further statement when appropriate.”

While Australian authorities are going to significant lengths to remove – and possibly have buried in France – the remains of the Anzac held by Mütter, it has failed to properly resource efforts to repatriate and return to country thousands of sets of Indigenous Australian remains.

Tim Lycett, who worked with Australian first world war researcher Lambis Englezos to archaeologically excavate a mass Australian grave at Pheasant Wood, outside Fromelles, says the skull could now potentially help identify the missing John Hurdis. He says:

When the Germans buried the men in the Pheasant Wood pits, they removed all their identity discs and property, bagged it individually and eventually sent it to the Red Cross from where it made its way home to the families. Generally, in the man’s service file there would be some mention of the property being sent from Germany and although this doesn’t appear in John’s, the fact that the identity disc was returned is intriguing. I’m hoping that perhaps John Hurdis is one of the men for whom there is no recorded indication they were buried at Pheasant Wood, some of whom have already been identified and others who are still waiting. If that’s the case, then any viable DNA contained in Thomas Hurdis’ skull at the Mutter Museum may in fact assist in identifying John Hurdis ... and that would be a fascinating and unique opportunity.

If the skull is that of Thomas Hurdis, a few things are now known.

He stood five feet seven (1.7m), had auburn hair, was born in Newtown, Sydney and attended Leichhardt public school. Both he and his younger brother John had run-ins with the law as children – both for committing minor thefts.

Thomas and John were both, at various times, sentenced to time aboard the Sobraon, a reformatory school based on a ship where wayward boys were taught seafaring and trade skills. This might account for the tattoo of an anchor on his left arm.

The boys’ father seems to have been largely absent, records indicate, while his mother, Harriet, moved from address to address throughout the western suburbs of Sydney.

In 1919, she wrote to the military authorities from her address in Sydney’s Annandale: “It was awfully sad . . . the two sons went to the front with the a.i.f. and were both dead in less than two years. Now I am all alone in the world.”

Australian politicians and dignitaries have been in Belgium this week commemorating the centenary of the Polygon Wood operations, part of the Third Battle of Ypres.