Museum of London, Ends: 14th April
First things first, I do have one or two morbid curiosities; the grim trade of bodies for dissection being one of them. Naturally, the ‘Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men’ exhibition was catnip for my brain!
The context behind the exhibition is the 2006 archaeological dig around the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where Museum of London archaeologists found the remains of around 262 bodies. The skeletal remains showed evidence of dissection, autopsy and amputation together with bones that had been wired together for teaching purposes. The majority of the remains dated back to a key period in surgical history – that of the Anatomy Act of 1832 – where the trade in dead bodies reached a sinister peak.
The exhibition is broken down into two core sections. The first half of the exhibit takes a look at the gruesome trade of the dead by the dreaded ‘resurrection men’; gravediggers who snatched the bodies from the grave and sold them on to surgeons for dissection. You are taken on a journey, first passing the famous Greenwoods Map of London, which has been adapted to show major ‘resurrection men’ hangouts, including popular graveyards and meeting places. If you fancy a sit down after looking upon a blood-stained autopsy table, Ray Winstone’s gravelly narration of lamenting poetry takes you through the convictions of notorious grave-robbers Burke and Hare, and the sad tale of the ‘Italian Boy’ murder case. Towards the end of this section, you are able to play around with an interactive adaptation of Jacob Napier’s ledger, which reveals his daily work as part of a famous ‘Resurrection Men’ gang.
The ‘Resurrection Men’ at work
The second half of the exhibition focuses on the role of the surgeons; arguably, they did what they had to do for the improvement of medicine and the implementation of dutiful care of the sick. It was a most curious feeling to look upon the skeletons and bone fragments, and wonder where that body had come from and how they came to be under the surgeon’s knife. As you could probably imagine, there were the stereotypical jars filled with specimens, along with a truly wonderful, yet grisly piece: a section of stomach preserved by Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the Smallpox vaccine.
Exhibition Highlights:
The striking mould taken of James Legg, a convicted murderer, greets you early on in the exhibition. His body was flayed to show the inner workings of the muscular structure, and then nailed to a wooden cross to show comparisons in early artistic depictions of a crucified Jesus Christ.
Conservator Jill Barnard installs the 19th-century anatomical plaster cast of convicted murderer James Legg. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Personally, a particular highlight for me were the preserved remains of tattooed skin taken from arms of two murderers. Thomas Williams and John Bishop were convicted and executed for the murder of a young Italian boy whose body they sought to sell for dissection. In turn, their bodies were dissected.
Fragment of tattooed skin from John Bishop or Thomas Williams. Photograph: Science Museum
All in all, this was a truly great, although somewhat macabre exhibition which I would thoroughly recommend!
©2013