‘The horrid traffic in human flesh...’

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‘The horrid traffic in human flesh...’ as The Lancet, 1829 described a notorious trade in dead bodies. Rosalind Ormiston delves into the world of Burke & Hare.

A discovery by the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) team in 2006, unearthing a forgotten cemetery in use between c.1825 and 1841 at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, has led to a spectacular exhibition of their discoveries in ‘Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men’ (until 14 April 2013). Its content explores the gory body trade between 19th-century ‘resurrection men’ and medical practitioners.  

The skeletons excavated from the hospital cemetery were bodies of the dead used for anatomical practice by doctors at the (Royal) London Hospital, and buried after use. Before the Anatomy Act was passed by Parliament in 1832 the supply of cadavers for medical practitioners for study and for teaching anatomy was limited to the corpses of executed murderers. This lack of ‘hands-on’ practice with human flesh led to a macabre trade in body parts, carried out by ‘resurrection men’, gangs of body snatchers paid by surgeons to steal newly-dead bodies.

The MOLA archaeologists findings: dissected skulls, bones of amputated legs, arms and torsos of unknown men and women, form one part of an extraordinary display, which focuses too on the ‘bodysnatchers’, particularly Burke and Hare of Edinburgh, scavenging for corpses and murdering 16 people to order, 1827–8; and Thomas Williams and John Bishop in London, all trading in body parts, all found guilty of the procurement of bodies.  

What is fascinating is how artists of the period capitalized on the bodysnatchers’ notoriety; on show are many related artworks, including a print of the House of Bishop and Williams (no date), in Bethnal Green, and a coloured lithograph by William Day, after Guillaume Franquinet, The Italian Boy, 1831, a reference to a young Italian boy murdered by Bishop and Williams, which led to their capture in 1830. (A multimedia show, aided by contemporary accounts and newspaper coverage, tells the story in gripping detail.) In addition, the works of artists (and doctors), in the dissecting rooms, such as the fine pencil sketch drawn by William Holme Clift of a murderess shortly after her execution, The body of Elisabeth Ross awaits dissection,1832.

Many sections of the exhibition stand out; satirical prints of surgeons and doctors by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827); the wax models created by Joseph Towne, a 19th-century waxwork modeller who worked exclusively for Guy’s Hospital for 53 years; and the James Legg plaster cast by sculptor Thomas Bank and artists Benjamin West and Richard Crossway, 1801. The three men wanted to prove that most depictions of a crucifixion were inaccurate; they acquired the body of James Legg – a criminal hanged for murder – immediately after death and crucified it, to reveal how a body actually hung from a cross. Legg’s body was then taken to an anatomy school and flayed to remove all skin before being cast in plaster.

The Royal London Hospital cemetery excavation unearthed 262 burials, many containing a mix of bones with extensive evidence of dissection and amputation, as well as wired bones used for teaching, which tallied with the date of the burials between c.1825 and 1841. The Anatomy Act, which is at the heart of this exhibition, was intended to stop the illegal trade by allowing the body of any person ‘unclaimed’ or ‘friendless’ to be given up for dissection. It was an unpopular Act but it finished the ‘resurrection’ trade.

It is estimated that of the 57,000 corpses supplied during the first 100 years of the Act, 99.5% were taken from workhouses, poor houses, hospitals and asylums; in effect, the bodies of  people who had little say in their manner of dying, or with the ability to leave a written will. Dissection was considered a shameful end, not in keeping with Christian beliefs and the spiritual role of the body. A patented iron coffin with locking lid, 1819, found in the church crypt in St Bride’s Fleet Street (on exhibit), was a preventative measure against body theft before and after burial.

Whilst the earlier sections of the exhibition focus on the trade in bodies, the last emphasizes how important to medical practice that early dissection period was; and how it has led to the ability to achieve what would have seemed impossible in the 19th century: to separate conjoined twins, to carry out heart, liver, kidney, and face transplants, and cures for diseases; all owing a debt to the early pioneers of medical dissection, (and the ‘resurrection men’).

A superb monograph, Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men: Excavations in the 19^th-century Burial Ground of the London Hospital, 2006 (Museum of London Archaeology, 2012, £26), written by Louise Fowler and Natasha Powers, members of the MOLA team, accompanies the exhibition.