The Marble Man of Orange
It was the discovery of the first payable goldfield in Australia that really put Orange on the map. The township, now in its 177th year, prospered in a way nobody could predict. First named by Major Mitchell in honour of Prince William of Orange, (later the King of Holland), town lots had first been sold back in 1835. A church, flour mill, court house and an inn known as the Brickmakers Arms had already been built at that stage, but in 1851 with the discovery of gold at Ophir, 30km north of Orange, then at Lucknow, only 9km to the east of the town, things changed. Gold can still be found in the district, and many fossickers still work around the old gold diggings at Ophir today. Out along the road to Ophir, just 3km out of the town, is the birthplace of one of Australia’s most famous sons – Banjo Patterson, at Narambla Homestead. Only the foundations remain of the house, and a park has been created with an obelisk, at its western end, near the Ophir Road, to honour the poet. It was unveiled by his widow in 1947.
LEADING SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS
Banjo Patterson would have been 25 years old when, in 1889, a man called Fred Sala produced his extraordinary “Marble Man” which the authorities later claimed to be a hoax, while leading scientific experts insisted it to be a real petrified human corpse. Whether it was a fraud or not has never been proved satisfactorily, but exhibiting it certainly helped Sala become a rich man. The saga of the “marble man” began in 1889 when rumours spread that an Orange quarryman had discovered something incredible at Caleula quarry (about 50km out of Blayney). Top quality marble was found at this quarry which had something of an international reputation, and was exported to other countries abroad. Here Sala worked as a labourer, although he was believed to have financial interests in the quarry. One day in May 1889, Sala arrived in his cart outside the surgery of Dr Souter in Anson Street, Orange, with a coffin-like box. It took several men to lift and carry it into the doctor’s rooms and when the lid was removed, inside lay a reclining figure which had seven toes, one eye and no arms, although in other ways it looked exactly like a well-proportioned man in a petrified condition. Sala claimed to have found it at the Caleula marble quarry and said he was bringing it to the doctor for an opinion as to whether it was a statue or a fossilised human being.
The mysterious marble man of Orange
EXAMINED THE FIGURE
The doctor examined the figure before him and a week later announced that it was a statue, no doubt about it. He did, however, wish to see the place where it had been unearthed. Sala told the doctor he was unable to show him the exact place, thus reinforcing Dr Souter’s belief that the “marble man” was nothing more than a statue. Dr Souter went on to produce a paper in which he confidently claimed that the marble man was a sculpture done by an amateur sculptor, one of his reasons being that moisture from the eyes and the cartilage of the nose dried up after death, while the nose and eye of the marble man looked well formed. He claimed also that there was an unequal number of ribs each side. Although the marble man was of white marble, while the Caleula quarry produced a mottled-looking marble, he was quite adamant that the whole thing was a fraud. Undeterred by such observations, Sala went about the country with his “marble man” displaying it to willing crowds who were only too happy to pay a shilling to look at it. He even went as far as Sydney where the marble man was exhibited on a felt-covered platform, while thousands filed by (after paying for the privilege) most respectfully to look, while controversy raged as to its authenticity of being a fossilised human being.
STAKES HIS REPUTATION
An eminent Sydney scientist, Dr C. W. McCarthy, was willing, he said, to stake his reputation on its being a petrified human corpse. The outward groupings of muscles and the bone structure, Dr McCarthy was sure, were exactly like a human being who had died. Also, the pittings on the body which Dr Souter had put down to the work done by Sala with a chisel, he claimed were pittings caused by falling pebbles. This, he said, was proved by the fact there was an absence of such marks on the back. He also claimed the body did not have irregular ribs, but that the irregularity was caused by the pressure of earth and rock, creating a fold. Notice was taken of Dr McCarthy’s views mainly because he was highly qualified in such matters and also a collector of statues. He was a man who ought to know. Marble dealers, however, had a variety of views, one believing it to be an old statue belonging to an early settler. Fred Sala was uneasy about the opinions of Dr McCarthy and other medical experts. He suddenly realised that his moneymaking enterprise would come to an end if they somehow convinced authorities that the marble man was a petrified human, because the body would then belong to the State and be held for identification purposes. With doctors pushing to dissect it, and leading citizens in Orange calling for a police enquiry, Sala intimated that the marble man might actually be a fraud.
SET OUT TO INVESTIGATE
Sub-Inspector Ford of the Orange police now set out to investigate the marble man, starting with Caleula quarry and the local people who knew Sala. One man, Joe Bell, who worked at Cow Flat where Fred Sala lived, was able to tell the policeman that Sala had ordered a block of marble from him which he had delivered to Sala’s house three months before. He had actually seen the marble man, quite by accident. Sala had been working on it, moulding it into the figure of a reclining man, but in order that no one should see it, he stationed his son, Edward, at the back of the house, ordering him to whistle a warning if anyone was approaching, and the statue was quickly put away out of sight. Discarded chips of marble at the now-vacated Sala house confirmed Ford’s opinion too that the marble man was a hoax, and he filed his report to this effect.
MARBLE FIGURE WAS MADE
Ford’s report stated: “I am thoroughly convinced that the marble figure was made at Croaker’s old public-house, at Cow Flat, by G. F. Sala and that the marble was obtained from Bell’s quarry, about two miles from Cow Flat. I have obtained the following information, that Joseph Bell conveyed from his marble quarry about five months since, a large piece of marble, about one ton weight, to G. F. Sala’s residence (Croaker’s old public-house) at Cow Flat, and put it halfway into the back kitchen through the door, and Bell states that some ten or twelve weeks afterwards he saw that a man had been modelled out of it by Sala, and that he used acids, and whilst Sala was making the figure that his son Fred was always on the watch and would at once whistle if any person came in sight, and that Sala would then come out of the kitchen and shut the door.” Meanwhile, letters to the editor appeared in the newspaper, advancing theories about who the marble man was – one person suggesting that as one leg was thinner than the other, perhaps this man was an escaped convict who had worn leg irons. Another suggested he had hidden under a rock ledge which had fallen and trapped him while a third suggested the convict had been speared in the eye by blacks, who had removed his toes, and the rest of the body, buried in a limestone cave, had petrified over the years.
FROM A REAL CORPSE
While this was going on, behind the scenes the idea was growing that Sala had made a cast from a real corpse to create his statue, in order to get the right symmetry. A Government geologist added to the confusion by stating that the marble had not come from Orange at all. Experts also said that if it was a sculpture, it was much too professional-looking for a man such as Fred Sala, a humble quarry labourer. And so, the controversy continued. Sala eventually sold the marble man to a Sydney entrepreneur named Stockdale, who after seeing the fossilised body on display in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, immediately realised the money-making potential of the exhibit. Sala received £1,000 for his marble man but Stockdale ended up making 10 times that much, bringing in as much as £30 per day for months on end. Stockdale originally intended taking the marble man to London to allow scientists there to determine whether it was in fact a fossilised human being or simply a marble carving, but once the money started drying up on the exhibition front, Stockdale abandoned such plans.
MARBLE MAN DISAPPEARED
The “Marble Man” eventually ended up on the porch of a cottage in the Sydney suburb of Rozelle, before being moved to a vacant property further up the street. Eventually, when this site was developed, the marble man disappeared leaving people with the tantalising question of whether the marble man really was a fossilised human being or just a conman’s clever sculpture.