By Jen Wright, Hidden Histories Researcher.
The exploration of human anatomy has a history spanning thousands of years, and for much of this time the texts of 2nd Century Greek physician Galen, based upon the dissection of animals, were the foundation of teaching. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that the use of human dissection was revived, with the study of anatomy representing “a complex interweaving of art, science, medicine, and humanism”, culminating in the publication of Andreas Vesalius’ masterpiece De humani corporis fabrica (Of the Structure of the Human Body) in 1543. By directly observing the inner structure of the body, Vesalius disproved much of the accepted teaching of the past and paved the way for anatomical study to come.
By the 19th Century in Europe, accurate understanding of human anatomy had become a vital part of medical training, which could only be achieved through extensive experience in the dissection of bodies. These skills, and the levels of education needed to attain them, were a symbol of professional status and respectability, elevating surgeons with anatomical knowledge above everyday healers and quacks. Schools of Anatomy were soon opening across the country, mostly in rapidly expanding and well populated manufacturing centres, where a growing middle class had the means and inclination to pay for expert medical care.
In Leeds, the first attempts at anatomical instruction were given at the General Infirmary, almost certainly by renowned local surgeon William Hey. At this time, the only legal source of cadavers for anatomists were the few criminals executed for murder. Following the 1752 Murder Act, death sentences could include the additional punishment and humiliation of dissection, as an added deterrent.
In 1773 the minute books of the Infirmary’s Weekly Board list “the expenses incurred by the Procurement of the Body [of the executed murderer John Early] from York lately dissected at this Infirmary.”
In May 1785, Hey proposed a new Bill to Yorkshire MP (and close friend) William Wilberforce that would increase the number of cadavers legally available to himself and other anatomists – by handing over the corpses of all executed criminals for dissection, regardless of their crimes. “Why should not those be made to serve a valuable purpose when dead,” Hey wrote, “who were a universal nuisance when living?”.
This attitude also seems to have been apparent in his duties as Alderman and Mayor of Leeds, making him unpopular with certain sections of the community; he formed an association to suppress “immoral behaviour”, including “the crime of drunkenness… sabbath-breaking and lewdness”. On one occasion, a crowd burned an effigy of Hey and attacked his carriage and horses with “ferocious turbulence”.
In 1786, Wilberforce presented the Dissection of Convicts Bill to Parliament, but it was defeated, mainly due to the concern that applying the threat of dissection to ‘lesser’ crimes would equate their seriousness and make it less of a deterrent to murder.
By Spring of 1800 there was still a dearth of available subjects for dissection, with requests being made across West Yorkshire. Hey gave a series of 12 public demonstrations at the Infirmary, all on the same body (of convicted murderer Michael Simpson, executed at York).
In 1826, apothecary-surgeon Charles Turner Thackrah opened a private School of Anatomy in Leeds and was one of the founders of the Leeds School of Medicine in 1831. At its second, more respectable location of 1 East Parade, students had to enter through the back so as not to offend the neighbours, and bodies were drawn up into the dissecting area in the attic through a trap door.
Throughout the country, with the demand for bodies far outstripping legal supply, the practice of grave robbing became commonplace – growing from a handful of medical students into a lucrative nationwide trade.
Leeds was no exception: in November 1831 the body of a young man was discovered being loaded onto a coach bound for Edinburgh, at the Rose and Crown Inn on Briggate. He was later identified as seventeen-year-old Robert Hudson, exhumed from his grave in East Ardsley just one day after his burial.
The culmination of these factors is presented in the notorious case of Burke and Hare, who murdered at least sixteen people and sold the bodies to the popular and well-respected Dr Robert Knox at his Edinburgh School of Anatomy. Although Knox had been unaware of the origins of his subjects, and was not convicted of any wrongdoing, his connection to such a case meant that he was universally vilified, his effigy burned, and his medical career effectively ruined.
Fearing a similar fate, other leading Anatomists began to push Parliament for a more reliable, legal source of bodies for their practice. This would be a driving factor behind a new piece of legislation that would affect the lives of many of the poorest in society, and change the nature of dissection for the next 150 years.