Dr Louis Lawrence Smith built an STD museum in the heart of Melbourne to drum up patients

An “adults-only” wax model museum was used by a medic to drum up patients and educate them on a highly taboo topic.

Melbourne doctor, businessman and politician LL Smith. Picture: State Library of Victoria

Dr Louis Lawrence Smith found an ingenious way to drum up business for his lucrative STD medical practice in Melbourne during the post-Gold Rush boom.

He founded a museum with wax models of body parts damaged by venereal diseases, thus scaring citizens into seeking out the services of Melbourne’s best-qualified expert.

LL Smith, as he was known, is the subject of the latest episode of the free weekly In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, with Ben Oliver, founder of Drinking History Tours:

In 1862, Smith created the Royal Polytechnic Institute and Museum of Natural History and Science in Bourke St.

Oliver says it was partly aimed at educating the masses on sexual health – a highly taboo topic at the time.

The museum included a planetarium, working steam engine, large-scale papier mache models of insects – and an “adults-only” wing with wax exhibits of diseased body parts.

“It was called the Museum of Anatomy and essentially it was a wax museum,’’ Oliver says.

“It cost a shilling to get in and some of these exhibits were quite shocking.

“It would basically show people what untreated venereal diseases would look like, with sexual organs that were partly destroyed by disease.”

LL Smith lived from 1830-1910.

Royal Polytechnic Institute in Bourke St, Melbourne, 1863. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Oliver says the exhibits would be shocking these days, let alone in conservative 19th-century Melbourne.

“He would later easily admit he set this up purely as a way to shock people into getting treatment for their conditions, and of course he was the most qualified doctor in Melbourne to treat them,” he says.

“Quite an amazing concept to create a museum solely as a vehicle to promote his wares.’’

The bizarre museum only survived about seven years.

“It closed because it ‘offended taste’,’’ Oliver says.

Oliver calls Smith a “Renaissance man” who was a businessman, a politician on and off for 40 years, and the first person to make sparkling wine in Victoria.

In 1867, Smith also infamously staged a free public banquet in Melbourne called “the Feast for the Poor” in honour of Prince Alfred – which turned into a food riot.

Trouble erupted when a mooted appearance by Queen Victoria’s second son at the huge banquet on the banks of the Yarra did not eventuate.

A riot broke out among the tens of thousands of attendees when word spread that the party-boy prince – a firm favourite among Melburnians at the time – was a no-show.

Food was flung around and giant vats of wine were overturned.

“People basically went ballistic,” Oliver says.

“It was later described by The Argus newspaper … as a ‘bacchanalian picture of unbelievable horror’.

“It’s said that the police who were on site were unable to do much, so they went to the pie tent and ate pies while they watched everyone riot.”

Listen to the interview about LL Smith with Ben Oliver in the In Black and White podcast on iTunes, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.