When Australian naturalist and solicitor Morton Allport died in 1878, one obituary lauded the man as "the most foremost scientist in the colony," as evidenced by his position as vice president of the Royal Society of Tasmania (RST) at the time of his death, among many other international honors. But according to a new paper published in the journal Archives of Natural History, Allport's stellar reputation was based less on his scholarly merit than on his practice of sending valuable specimens of Tasmanian tigers (thylacines) and Aboriginal remains to European collectors in exchange for scientific accolades. Allport admits as much in his own letters, preserved in the State Library of Tasmania, as well as to directing grave-robbing efforts to obtain those human remains.

“Early British settlers considered both thylacines and Tasmanian Aboriginal people to be a hindrance to colonial development, and the response was institutionalised violence with the intended goal of eradicating both,” said the paper's author, Jack Ashby, assistant director of the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge in England. “Allport’s letters show he invested heavily in developing his scientific reputation—particularly in gaining recognition from scientific societies—by supplying human and animal remains from Tasmania in a quid pro quo arrangement, rather than through his own scientific endeavors.”

Thylacines have been extinct since 1936, but they were once the largest marsupial carnivores of the modern era. Europeans first settled in Tasmania in 1803 and viewed the tigers as a threat, blaming the animals for killing their sheep. The settlers didn't view the Aboriginal population much more favorably, and there were inevitable conflicts from the settlers displacing the indigenous people and from the increased competition for food. In 1830, a farming corporation placed the first bounties on thylacines, with the government instituting its own bounty in 1888. (Ashby writes that the true sheep killers were the dogs the settlers bred to hunt kangaroos.)

Meanwhile, the so-called "Black War" between settlers and natives led to a state of martial law that "enabled settlers to kill Aboriginal people without punishment," per Ashby. "After 1830, they were rewarded for doing so." A Christian missionary named George Augustus Robinson embarked on what was supposed to be a less violent effort (the so-called "Friendly Mission") to relocate the Aboriginal population to Gun Carriage Island in the Bass Strait. But the island had insufficient resources to support the traditional lifestyle, and most of those who relocated suffered disease and death. Robinson was nonetheless handsomely rewarded for his efforts with government land grants and cash.

Born in England, Allport was still a baby when his parents relocated to Tasmania, where his father established himself as among the colony's most distinguished solicitors. Young Morton followed in his father's footsteps and became a partner in the same law firm, but he also had a fascination with natural history. He was especially interested in fish breeding and the practice of introducing nonnative species to "improve" local ecosystems (acclimatization). Allport himself introduced English species such as tench, perch, and water lilies to Tasmania, and published 15 papers with the RST. Otherwise, however, his publications amounted to three short articles and a brief note on local fossils between 1866 and 1968.

"It is curious, then, that he received so many accolades from elite scientific institutions," Ashby wrote in his paper. He turned to the man's correspondence for insight into how he built his scientific reputation out of a relatively sparse publication record. According to Ashby, in at least one letter to a former teacher, Allport explicitly declared his expectation of a quid pro quo for supplying specimens, particular thylacines and Aboriginal human remains, which were increasingly in demand as their respective numbers diminished.