Perched on the very edge of Norfolk Island's shore, periodically threatened with erosion by the storms coming off the South Pacific Ocean, the island's historic cemetery is now one of its most popular tourist destinations. Amongst the picturesque and carefully maintained graves of executed convict rebels and Bounty mutineers, no marker now exists bearing either of his names. The absence of any surviving memorial seems only too appropriate. As the Monitor reminded its Sydney readers in 1828, ‘the mystery of Edwards, alias Lookaye, must remain for ever.’

The mystery might endure, but death did not end the ‘tragedy of Alexander Edwards’. There was one final act yet to be played. Six months after his demise, the pages of the Monitor included a startling revelation:

The paper's outrage was swiftly attacked by counter-arguments. Alluding to a popular eighteenth-century satire, the pro-Darling Sydney Gazette dismissed its rival's account as ‘big with horrors’, one that ‘far out-tragedises even Chrononhonthologos, the most tragical tragedy that ever was tragedised’. Instead of frightening ‘all the old women and young children in Sydney’ with gruesome details, wrote the Gazette, the Monitor should give the proper facts. An inquest, they argued, must certainly have been held, for it had returned a verdict of insanity (necessary for Edwards to be buried in consecrated ground). And if a dissection was indeed carried out, ‘it was only what the deceased had himself ordered’. In this version of events, the intention of the perpetrators was not disciplinary. Rather, it was to apply the principles of scientific observation to questions that remained unanswered. Could the marks known to be carried upon the living body of Alexander Kaye be found within the corpse of William Edwards?