While the stories and hidden histories of the dead stand at the heart of this book, it is important to frame these narratives against the restrictions and permissions of the ‘laws’ that governed matters of consent, harvesting and research in modern British medical research. This seemingly simple endeavour is considerably complicated by the fact that as well as direct legislation on these matters, medical practice and the ‘rights’ of the dead and dying are shaped by legislation in other areas of criminal, civil and administrative law. Official and unofficial ‘guidance’ and long-established customs also have purchase on these matters. In turn, the fact that much ‘law’ merely clarified or amended previous legislation rather than repealing it, means that ‘the law’ becomes ‘the laws’. Thus, there is often considerable scope for differential interpretations of legal permissions at any chronological point. In this sense, law matters very much for the interpretation of the stories that we will go on to encounter in the rest of this volume. This second chapter therefore explores complex issues of legality, legislation and informed consent

This fifth chapter is about explicit disputes concerning the power and control over the dead body, body ethics and the boundaries and limits of professional practice, involving the official figure of the coroner. The chapter is thus split into two halves. In the first half we will encounter a brief history of the Coronial Office in England, before then engaging with a series of stories about explicit body disputes involving specific coroners. We will be focussing on the symbolic story of a dead girl called Carol Morris because the circumstances of her harvested human material proved to be very controversial. Her case exemplifies why tracking the material journeys of post-mortem bodies and their body parts matters in hidden histories of the dead. Thus, in the second half of the chapter, we explore why one human story is a historical prism for lots of others, and how micro-history can inform macro-trends of considerable longevity. In fact, as we shall see, the Carol Morris case made a significant contribution to establishing the legal precedent of anonymity for all donors in national and international law.

The administrative documents preserved in archives tell stories which are shaped by their institutional and governmental context, and are as deceptive and full of invention as more self-consciously literary works. Medieval archives contain a vast repository of historical narratives which, despite their fictional components and bureaucratic manipulation, nevertheless provide vivid insights into everyday life. The rhetorical conventions of such bureaucratic documents as pardons, petitions and appeals represent forms of historical literature which are cultural productions of equal significance to the chronicle or the epic poem. But, unlike court poetry or chronicles, the archives tell us a great deal about the life of ordinary people. In the wake of the discussion of the archive by Foucault and Derrida, the archive has been seen as a symbol of power and a means of control, but often the archive is the chief means by which non-elite groups find their voice.