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The Mystery of Mary Shelley's Hair at the State Library of New South Wales! | Time Travels
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Apr 4, 2025
Lately, the State Library of New South Wales has been getting a lot of attention for something strange... a lock of hair that's been attributed to the Victorian author, Mary Shelley. But nobody knows quite how or when it landed there!
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0:00
One of the downsides with being a fabulously successful TV presenter is that you can't go anywhere without someone taking a picture
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Funnily enough, it's not a problem I've ever had, and it wasn't a problem for celebrities in the early part of the 19th century
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of the 19th century either, partly because there were no photographs, but partly because they were after something
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shall we say, more tangible. Back in those days, fans literally wanted a piece of their idols
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Nothing as gruesome as a pound of flesh, they'd settle for a simple lock of hair
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Have a look at this. This is a 160-year-old lock of hair
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It looks as though it's been snipped off someone's head yesterday. Now, what's special about this lock of hair
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is it came from none other than Mary Shelley, who created one of the world's most famous monsters
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with her novel Frankenstein In 1816 when Mary was just 19 she and her lover the poet Percy Shelley was staying
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with another romantic poet, Lord Byron. One stormy night, Byron dared them all to write ghost stories, and it was Mary that came
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up with the creepiest one of all, Frankenstein. It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils
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With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me
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that I might infuse a spark of being into that lifeless thing that lay at my feet
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When people hear the name Frankenstein, they think of this. An eight-foot-tall bloke with a flat head and bolts in his neck who wanders around going
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But this isn't Frankenstein. This is Frankenstein's monster, his creation. In Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein is Dr. Victor Frankenstein
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a scientist who decides to play God by creating life. He does this by stealing parts from dead bodies
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sewing them all together and then putting the jump leads on them and pumping it full of electricity
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Bringing the whole thing to life The problem is Victor Frankenstein is so appalled by what he created he abandons the monster who really only wants to be loved by his dad
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From then on, the monster, spurned by everyone, decides to destroy his creator's life
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So how on earth has a lock of Mary Shelley's hair
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ended up in the State Library of New South Wales? To find that out, I need to take a trip
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to the leafy Sydney suburb of Wollstonecraft. It was named after a businessman called Edward Wollstonecraft
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He was an ambitious sort of bloke who loved making money, but he hated controversy
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so much so that one of the reasons he came to New South Wales was to get away from his controversial aunt, Mary Wollstonecraft
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She was an outspoken intellectual who became known as the mother of feminism
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but she was also the mother of one Mary Shelley. And that put in train a convoluted series of events
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that brought a little piece of Mary Shelley to Australia. Edward Wollstonecraft and his sister Elizabeth had come to the colony in the early 19th century and Edward was a merchant and a businessman
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And Edward had teamed up with Alexander Berry, another merchant, and together they ran a very successful business
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Eventually, Alexander Berry married Elizabeth Wollstonecraft. Well, that's very neat, isn't it
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He became part of the Wollstonecraft family. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft died in 1845 and in 1851 Mary Shelley died
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And her daughter-in-law, Jane, decided to send Alexander Bury a lock of Mary Shelley's hair as a memento
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We acquired these papers in the 1940s. So that makes the Mitchell Library the perfect hair apparent
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It would be very fair to say that. In the 19th century, a lock of hair was a way to remember a loved one's life
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but today it stands for immortality in a completely different way. We now know that our DNA is contained within our hair, which started me thinking
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if the story of Frankenstein is about a rogue scientist who can create life from the dead
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what if one day a rogue scientist could clone Mary Shelley from this lock of hair
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That'd make your hair stand on air
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