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The Criminal Corpse, Anatomists, and the Criminal Law: Parliamentary Attempts to Extend the Dissection of Offenders in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2015

Richard Ward
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Abstract

In the later eighteenth century, two schemes were introduced in Parliament for extending the practice of handing over the bodies of executed offenders to anatomists for dissection. Both measures were motivated by the needs of the field of anatomy, including the improvement of surgical skill, the development of medical teaching in the provinces, and public anatomical demonstrations. Yet both failed to pass into law due to concerns about the possibly damaging effects in terms of criminal justice. Through a detailed analysis of the origins and progress of these two parliamentary measures—a moment when the competing claims of anatomy and criminal justice vied for supremacy over the criminal corpse—the article sheds light on judicial attitudes to dissection as a method of punishment and adds to our understanding of the reasons why, in the nineteenth century, the dread of dissection would come to fall upon the dead poor rather than executed offenders.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 63 - 87
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2015 

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References

1 London Chronicle, 13 May 1786.

2 Public Advertiser, 13 May 1786. Other subjects discussed that day included the Saint Eustatia prize money, the national debt, and the registry of seamen.

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22 Ibid.

23 Times, 7 February 1785.

24 The framing of the Bill does not address this point, an issue that (as discussed below) was later leveled against Wilberforce as one of the major faults in the Bill.

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32 HOC Papers, PR, 16 May 1786, 227.

33 25 Geo. II, c. 37.

34 Letter from William Hey to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, 21 May 1785, Spencer-Stanhope MSS, SpSt/11/5/1/2, West Yorkshire Archive Service (hereafter WYAS), Bradford, England. In a biography of their father, Wilberforce's sons likewise noted that Wilberforce “undertook the measure” at the “suggestion” of William Hey—see Wilberforce, Robert Isaac and Wilberforce, Samuel, eds., The Life of William Wilberforce (London, 1838)Google Scholar, 1:114.

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39 Richardson, Death, Dissection. See also the works cited in n.7, above.

40 Times, 7 May and 11 May 1785. A similar case emerged three years later; see Times, 12 December 1788.

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56 See Digby, Anne, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720–1911 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar.

57 Letter from Hey to Stanhope, 21 May 1785, Spencer-Stanhope MSS, SpSt/11/5/1/2, WYAS.

58 Lloyd, “The Casebooks of William Hey,” 112.

59 Ibid., 110–14.

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61 Wilson, Adrian, “Conflict, Consensus and Charity: Politics and the Provincial Voluntary Hospitals in the Eighteenth Century,” English Historical Review 111, no. 442 (1996): 602Google Scholar. On the “thriving industry” in medical education, see Loudon, Medical Care and the General Practitioner, 49.

62 For Birmingham, see Reinarz, Jonathan, Health Care in Birmingham: The Birmingham Teaching Hospitals, 1779–1939 (Woodbridge, 2009)Google Scholar; Reinarz, Jonathan, The Birth of a Provincial Hospital: The Early Years of the General Hospital, Birmingham, 1765–1790 (Stratford upon Avon, 2003)Google Scholar. For Manchester, see Brockbank, W., Portrait of a Hospital, 1752–1948: To Commemorate the Bicentenary of the Royal Infirmary, Manchester (Manchester, 1952)Google Scholar; Pickstone, John, Medicine and Industrial Society: A History of Hospital Development in Manchester and its Region, 1752–1946 (Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar. For Bristol, see Fissell, Mary E., Patients, Power and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; Smith, G. M., A History of the Bristol Royal Infirmary (Bristol, 1918)Google Scholar.

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68 Lloyd, “The Casebooks of William Hey,” 120.

69 Pearson, The Life of William Hey, 56.

70 Ibid., 57.

71 Ibid.

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73 Ibid., 58. The case of Mary Bateman is renowned in the historiography of the period. See in particular Davies, Owen, Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

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75 Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge, 83–90.

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88 HOPO, Members, “MACDONALD, Archibald (1747–1826).”

89 Without such support, it has been suggested, Arden would “never have reached such heights of the law”; HOPO, Members, “ARDEN, Richard Pepper (1744–1804).”

90 HOC Papers, PR, 5 July 1786, 160–65.

91 Wilberforce and Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, 1:113–15.

92 HOPO, Members, “WEDDERBURN, Alexander (1733–1805).”

93 “Wedderburn, Alexander, first earl of Rosslyn (1733–1805),” Alexander Murdoch in ODNB.

94 Wilberforce and Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, 1:113–15. The printed Parliamentary Papers indicate that the Commons committee had indeed made several amendments to the Bill—see HOC Papers, JHC, 27–28 June 1786, 942, 945.

95 An Act for Regulating the Disposal after Execution of the Bodies of Criminals, 1786, HL/PO/JO/10/2/61, Parliamentary Archives, London, England.

96 On the legal ambiguities arising from the 1752 Murder Act, see Radzinowicz, A History of the English Criminal Law, 1:207–08.

97 HOC Papers, PR, 5 July 1786, 160.

98 Ibid., 163.

99 Morning Chronicle, 6 July 1786.

100 HOC Papers, PR, 5 July 1786, 164.

101 Reprinted in Montagu, Basil, The Opinions of Different Authors upon the Punishment of Death (London, 1813)Google Scholar, 3:179–80.

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104 HOPO, Members, “DUNDAS, Henry (1742–1811).”

105 General Evening Post, 18 May 1786.

106 HOC Papers, PR, 5 July 1786, 164.

107 Morning Chronicle, 6 July 1786.

108 Radzinowicz, A History of the English Criminal Law, 1:343.

109 HOC Papers, PR, 23 June 1785, 888. Born in 1745, the first son of Paul Jodrell, Solicitor General to the Prince of Wales, Richard was bred to the bar in the family tradition, but did not persevere with the law, instead making a name for himself as a classical scholar and playwright. Elected as MP for Seaford in 1790, Jodrell did not stand for re-election in the autumn of 1796, and was never again in the House.

110 HOC Papers, PR, 11 March 1796, 287.

111 St James's Chronicle, 12 March 1796; Evening Mail, 14 March 1796.

112 HOC Papers, PR, 16 March 1795, 54, and 3 June 1795, 512.

113 HOC Papers, House of Commons Sessional Papers (SP), 1795.

114 HOC Papers, PR, 11 March 1796, 288.

115 Ibid.

116 HOC Papers, PR, 3 June 1795, 512; Oracle and Public Advertiser, 12 March 1796.

117 Oracle and Public Advertiser, 12 March 1796.

118 HOC Papers, PR, 11 March 1796, 289.

119 Oracle and Public Advertiser, 12 March 1796.

120 HOC Papers, PR, 11 March 1796, 288.

121 Ibid., 289.

122 Sun, 12 March 1796.

123 Oracle and Public Advertiser, 12 March 1796.

124 HOPO, Members, “JODRELL, Richard Paul (1745–1831)”; “Jodrell, Richard Paul (1745–1831),” Gordon Goodwin and S. J. Skedd, in ODNB.

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129 Elizabeth Hurren, for instance, has recently demonstrated how medical science made the most of welfare cutbacks in the late Victorian period, which significantly increased the number of bodies available; see her Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor, c.1834–1929 (Basingstoke, 2012)Google Scholar.