Plans for a morgue were first drawn up in early 1853, but apparently came to nothing. The bureaucratic indecision soon frustrated the city corporation, which again resolved in Council to urge the Lieutenant-Governor to speed up the process, citing 'the extreme hardship requiring licensed victuallers, in the present crowded condition of their houses, to receive dead bodies awaiting Coroner's Inquests'.²⁸ A further site was selected near Prince's Bridge by August 1853, and appeared to have been approved by La Trobe. The morgue was to 'be situated in the bank of the bridge approach, and thus form a kind of catacomb, which will be masked with shrubs, &c.'²⁹ However, La Trobe soon noticed that the morgue was being built on the east side rather than in the embankment on the west side; plans which were supposed to have been submitted to him in October the previous year had never in fact been formally approved. La Trobe regarded the final position on the eastern side as 'horrible' and 'needlessly offensive to the feelings of the citizens'.³⁰ Work was suspended.

The problem now was that construction was already well in hand. The partially built morgue made the spectre of death in the city much more real, even before any bodies had been placed there. What had once been pure imagination, guided perhaps by the example of the Paris morgue, now had a physical reality. The Argus addressed the 'very sorrowful and disagreeable subject' of the new dead-house, and like La Trobe viewed with disfavour the 'indelicate' location at Prince's Bridge, impinging as it did onto the 'busy street-life of a bustling city':

As our rich cits drive across the bridge then, exhausted by the labors of the day; and, with empty stomachs, begin to turn their thoughts to the fragrant hashes and savory cutlets which will greet them on their arrival at St. Kilda or South Yarra, they must not feel surprised if they find themselves suddenly assailed with a whiff of something not particularly appetising. They must console themselves with the reflection, that it is nothing worse than the smell from the decaying bodies of a few of their fellow creatures.³¹

All of Wilmot's assurances about the decency of the site came to little. The problem of locating the dead proved too difficult, and the ad hoc use of public houses continued.

The Prince's Bridge complex, though at least partially completed, was being used as the City Coroner and Registrar's office, but not as a morgue. In August 1854, Acting Coroner Youl re-ignited the demand for a centrally located morgue, now to deal with the high mortality of recently arrived Chinese gold-rush immigrants encamped on the south bank of the river. At the end of 1854, dead bodies were still being conveyed to public houses, a practice which served to keep the issue of the morgue alive. The body of Alexander McQueen, a boy who had drowned, was 'deposited in a fowl-house, exposed to the heat of the atmosphere' while awaiting inquest, to the distress of his friends and the Argus .³² The hot summer season in January 1855 saw the Acting City Coroner making arrangements with an undertaker, Mr Crofts, to store corpses.³³ At the end of that month Youl reported to a special committee on government office accommodation on 'the absolute necessity which exists for the erection of a morgue, in connection with the office of the coroner, whether the present site be retained or not'.³⁴

III
Despite the failure to complete the proposed Melbourne morgue in 1853-4, small-scale use of a dedicated morgue began in the late 1850s, in a temporary structure at the western end of town nearer the wharves. In 1858 Constable Mooney noted at an inquest that he had found a body in the Yarra on 17 September and 'conveyed it to the morgue', and the inquest was said to have taken place in Flinders Street. In the following year a number of inquests were held at 'the Morgue' on bodies taken from the Yarra near the wharves, and the jurors said to be good and lawful men of Flinders Street. Certainly the morgue was far removed from the central position of the proposed Prince's Bridge site.

Nevertheless, having a central morgue did raise the problem of bodies being conveyed thence. In 1858 Youl suggested that a truck used for removing corpses to the morgue might be stationed at his Prince's Bridge office, for use 'when the distance is long', and that a painted canvas stretcher could be kept at the morgue for shorter distances, which would keep the bodies completely hidden to avoid offence to the public.³⁵ However, many inquests were still being held in the city and the body was not being taken to the morgue. Wilmot's vision of the dead being brought from the suburbs to the central morgue was certainly a long way from realisation and was bringing with it its own set of problems.

If, as we surmise, the Australian Wharf past the western end of Flinders Street was the location of a temporary morgue, there were moves to develop it (or a site nearby) into a permanent building in 1864. On 13 September of that year, the Inspector General of Public Works ordered that timber lumber be removed from 'the piece of ground allotted for the intended Morgue & that the ground may be reserved & gazetted'.³⁶ The disgraceful state of the establishment in 1867 again highlighted the need for a new morgue. Coroner Youl put a suggestion to the Minister of Justice:

The present Morgue is a disgrace to the City - it being no Department's Business to look after - it is dirty and offensive the building is so insecure - that the dead in it have been robbed of their clothes in wet weather it is almost impossible to approach it - the Verandah is the resort of Cattle and Goats ... I think therefore a new Morgue built of stone in a proper site most desirable ... I think the City Corporation should have the charge of it ...³⁷

but his plea fell on deaf ears. In May 1868 the morgue was again reported to be in a ruinous condition.

In 1875 Youl still did 'not know in which Department the Morgues are placed'. As he had suggested, throughout this period the failure of the authorities to erect and maintain a proper morgue was the failure of any department to take responsibility for it. Despite its role in the surveillance of citizens, the nineteenth-century morgue occupied an ambiguous place within the bureaucracy of the day. The question of who bore responsibility for the morgue was one that continued from decade to decade without resolution. The Police, the Public Works Department, the Crown Law Office and the Corporation of the City all denied responsibility for building and maintaining a morgue at various points. The dispute is indicative not only of the tight-fisted attitude of government departments, but also of uncertainty about the role the morgue was meant to play. Was it part of municipal responsibilities, like garbage collection? In England, coroners were still a responsibility of local governments, but in the colonies a more centralised state had taken over the appointment and payment of coroners.³⁸ Or did the morgue fall under police auspices, as it was invariably the police who took bodies to the morgue? Police took part at most inquests, and, if a verdict of murder was returned, it was the first step in the prosecution. The introduction of the 'new police', with their multifarious public welfare duties, added a new dimension to the ancient office of coroner.³⁹ Then again, was the morgue part of the responsibilities of coroners (and, hence, the Law Department), who presided at inquests? This, in turn, raised questions about the role coroners were expected to play as they became professionals in their own right - salaried government officials rather than local gentlemen holding the occasional inquest for a fee. Eventually the Chief Secretary decided that morgues should be under the control of the police.