The Body in the Window

At the height of the Victorian Gold Rush, a bold plan was made by a group of bushrangers to hold up the Private Gold Escort carrying its bounty to the Melbourne Treasury from the McIvor goldfields in 1853.

The robbery and subsequent trial ended in the sentence of death for three men and caused another man to suicide. One man ended up in the window of his wife's shop!

The body of bushranger George Melville in the front window of a Little Bourke Street Oyster Shop in October 1853 caused a tremendous stir in colonial Melbourne! This act also led to a change in the Victorian law on how the bodies of the executed men were treated in the future!