Alexander Monteith: Beginnings of Anatomy in Edinburgh, 1694

Those confined in the House of Correction were those of whom the authorities disapproved: ‘vagabonds, sturdy beggars, idle and masterless persons, strong in body and able to work, above the aige of auchtyeiris and under the aige of threscoir yeiris, servands dissobedient to maisters and children dissobedient to parents, lewd livers, common scoldis and incorrigibill harlottes not amending to the ordinar discipline of the churche’. It was housed in Paul’s Work* at the foot of Leith Wynd, just opposite Trinity College Kirk (the sites of both now under Waverley Station). Dissection was not the only possible dire consequence of incarceration there: in November 1694 the Council paid a Glasgow merchant forcibly to transport a number of ‘dissoluit’ young women to America. Given the concept of dissection as punishment it is interesting that only those who had been convicted of ‘grosse immorality’ were to suffer dissection along with foundlings who in turn were likely the outcome of gross immorality by their parents.

In return for the concession of access to subjects for dissection, Monteith would have to provide care for the Town’s poor gratis and was not allowed to make any profit on drugs provided. We do not know the precise terms of this arrangement. It is unlikely that Monteith’s remit would run to all the poor in Edinburgh. It is more likely that the ‘Town’s poor’ were those paupers receiving outdoor relief from the Council. It is to be hoped that those in the Correction House were not included as if otherwise Monteith would have had a distinct conflict of interest.

What happened next? It looks very much as if this petition was a stalking horse designed to provoke the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers into action: nine days later they presented a petition to be allowed the bodies of foundlings dying between weaning and being put to schools or trades, and the unclaimed bodies of suicides. This the Council granted as long as the Incorporation built an ‘anatomicall Theatre’ by Michaelmas 1697 and held an annual public dissection, providing there was ‘a subject offering’. To meet the first of these stipulations the Incorporation built the first Surgeons’ Hall in Surgeons’ Square which included an anatomy theatre. The hall is dated 1697 but the first public dissection was not held until 1702. Was the delay between completion of the Anatomical Theatre and the first public dissection caused by a shortage of ‘subjects offering’? It is notable that the subject was David Myles, executed for incest and thus a ‘condampnit man efter he be deid’ rather than one of the categories of cadaver granted in 1694. Despite any bad blood that may have been engendered by Montieth’s move he became Deacon of the Incorporation in 1695 and there is no evidence he exercised his right to the bodies from the Correction House or demonstrated anatomy there.

The supply of bodies became an even more pressing problem when the Edinburgh Medical School was founded in 1726. This created a demand for hundreds of cadavers a year. The supply of condemned criminals and the unclaimed dead from the Town’s institutions was not sufficient to meet the need. There thus grew up the gruesome trade of body snatching whereby ‘resurrection men’ disinterred the recently dead and sold the bodies to medical schools. It was the graves of the poor that were violated: their relatives could not afford the requisite preventative measures; erection of caged lairs, hire of mortsafes, or grave watching. The authorities turned a relatively blind eye to the practice, essential as it was to the education of doctors. It was only after the exposure of the murderous practices of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in 1827-28 (see our article on the Arthur’s Seat coffins) and then of Bishop and Williams in London in 1831, that it was thought necessary to provide a legitimate source of subjects for the teaching of anatomy and destroy the business model of the resurrection men. The Anatomy Act of 1832 provided that any unclaimed body of a person dying in a workhouse, hospital or prison could be transferred to an anatomy school for dissection. As an aside, Burke and Hare are often called ‘body snatchers’. These they never were. They were mass murderers, pure and simple. There is no record of them ever exhuming a corpse. They had probably had enough of digging during their previous employment excavating the Union Canal.

It is usually thought that the supply of cadavers for the Medical School in Edinburgh became much easier after 1832 but there were unforeseen problems. Although the masters of the poorhouses in Edinburgh had the authority to dispose of the bodies of paupers for dissection many were unwilling to do so. Their poorhouses had such a bad reputation that they did not want to make it worse by being known to be sending bodies to be anatomised. This objection was circumvented in Scotland by the setting up of ‘funeratories’ attached to the poorhouses. These were places to which paupers’ corpses were conveyed after death either in the poorhouse or in the community. Contrary to the popular belief at the time, the next day the bodies were not taken to the local graveyard but to the local anatomy school. The school paid a consideration for each corpse as well as the burial costs. This system was obviously open to abuse. In the Canongate Poorhouse, inmates were confined to the premises after a death to prevent relatives hearing of it; objecting to the deceased being sent for dissection; and thus rendering the Poorhouse liable for the costs of the funeral.

Up until the 1950s the main source of anatomical subjects remained the poor dying in workhouses, hospitals, asylums and prisons. The bodies were essentially requisitioned unless a relative or a friend objected. It was only the after the Second World War that appreciable numbers of bodies began to be bequeathed for use in anatomy teaching. Now bequests are the only source.