The Anatomy Act 1832

[John G]

I think at some point common sense has to prevail. Despite what Dr Biggs has claimed, dismemberment crimes are not common today-less than three a year between 1985 and 2015 in Uk, and they weren't common in the late nineteenth century.

And disposing of body parts in areas where they were certain to be found, by a perpetrator seemingly intent on drawing attention to his handiwork, making life ridiculously complicated for himself, i.e. by disposing of remains in labyrinthal catacombs, and pitch black darkness, of the police's new headquarters would be a bizarre thing for a defensive dismemberer to do. And those that assert this would be perfectly normal way to dispose of remains, and to hide a crime, need to state precedent and explain why such argument is not, quite frankly, verging on the ridiculous.

[Trevor Marriott]

I would be interested to find out just what this injection process entailed, and how it was administered, and whether or not the whole body was injected, or simply specific body parts or organs, and when that injection process took place

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[DJA]

Trevor , look up embalming chemicals on Wikipedia.

[Fisherman]

If a medical facility was to receive a body for dissection then the remains would have shown signs of being dissected and not just one or two organs removed? If bodies for dissection were difficult to obtain would a medical facility obtain a body and not utilise it completely for dissection purposes? Dissection was to study muscles, bones, tendons etc. Why leave an arm or leg intact? A medical student could just as well study their own attached arm if they weren't going to dissect a limb?

The three rare Thames related cases 87-89 all involved female bodies. From research I did at one workhouse which released bodies to hospitals etc. the majority of bodies acquired from the workhouse were males. Why then did the medical facility choose to only dump female bodies in the Thames and not the male ones acquired? Why were there no elderly bodies?

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread....hlight=anatomy

Since the article referred to concerns itself with the 1873 torso victim, it could also be asked to what degree it was common practice in the dissection rooms to cut away the face from an object by making two cuts in the skull, grabbing hold of the flesh and pulling it off from the skull while helping the process along with the odd slicing by means of the knife? I am unaware of any such practice. In fact, I am unaware of any other case, dissection, murder or otherwise, where this was performed.
If anybody differs and can elaborate on any context in which such a thing has transpired, I´d be interested to hear about it.

[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor , look up embalming chemicals on Wikipedia.

Yes but the suggestion made was that these bodies used for anatomy teaching were injected with fluids there is a difference.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

Since the article referred to concerns itself with the 1873 torso victim, it could also be asked to what degree it was common practice in the dissection rooms to cut away the face from an object by making two cuts in the skull, grabbing hold of the flesh and pulling it off from the skull while helping the process along with the odd slicing by means of the knife? I am unaware of any such practice. In fact, I am unaware of any other case, dissection, murder or otherwise, where this was performed.
If anybody differs and can elaborate on any context in which such a thing has transpired, I´d be interested to hear about it.

Perhaps students were shown what lay beneath the facial skin is that not a plausible explanation? After all if they were exploring the human anatomy why not include the head and face? Its another factor that cant be dismissed.

But why would a killer do that? and why if it is the same killer do we see other torsos with no heads, so many dissimilar facts with these torso for them to all be connected to a killer. If it were a random killer why would he go to those lengths?

You have been told before that when you cant prove a specific cause of death all options should be kept open, thats what happens nowadays in modern day coroners courts they record an open verdict just like with some of the torsos where the verdicts were recorded as "found dead"

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[DJA]

Yes but the suggestion made was that these bodies used for anatomy teaching were injected with fluids there is a difference.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Not really.

Same chemicals,depending on the era ,were injected to keep the organs from going off.

Rather like Eddowes' kidney being preserved in ethanol.

Formaldehyde was popular when I was studying anatomy in the 1960s.

[Joshua Rogan]

Debra A - It's been many years since I've studied the Anatomy Act, but, Liz Jackson was 'dumped' (for lack of a better word) in late May 1889. Didn't British medical schools, in these years before refrigeration, traditionally conduct anatomy lessons in the fall and winter months when the weather was cooler and the donated cadavers didn't deteriorate so quickly? I'm pretty sure that I read that the demand for anatomical specimens was fairly non-existent in the summer months. All the best, RP

Here's a quote which seems to confirm the seasonality of dissections, at least in Europe. It's from an essay entitled;

"Cultures of Death and Politics of Corpse Supply - Anatomy in Vienna, 1848-1914 "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633446/

"First, the supply of cadavers was uneven through the year. In Vienna, the relative lack of cadavers was particularly critical in the winter semester (October-December), not only because of the increased demand during the main dissection season, but also because of the lower mortality in the period when summer epidemics abated and temperatures were still mild. Unfortunately for anatomists, Brünn shared the same seasonal mortality pattern. Of 111 persons who died in Brünn General Hospital during the dissection season of 1885/86 (1 October 1885-31 March 1886), only 38 died from the beginning of October to the end of December."

[Joshua Rogan]

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/book...ge/92/mode/2up

Not much to study on an arm and leg?? Start on page 64 of the London Dissector (link above). It talks about dissection of the thigh. It delves into anterior AND posterior dissection. It's several pages long on just the thigh. What about the foot, knee calf, etc. That is also discussed in other chapters.

Each part of the body in the dissection room appears to be thoroughly cut apart and examined. As Debs said, muscles, tendons etc,etc. The parts of the torsos were in no way that thoroughly taken apart.

There was the second part of a two-hour documentary on tv last night, just about dissecting the human foot. Available on BBC iPlayer for a month

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01mv2rj

[jerryd]

I would be interested to find out just what this injection process entailed, and how it was administered, and whether or not the whole body was injected, or simply specific body parts or organs, and when that injection process took place

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Hi Trevor,

First off, I am not prescribing to the "London Dissector" as the "go to" manual for dissecting a body. It just happens to be one I found online and it seems to have been in use in London hospitals during part of the 19th Century.

With that, in the appendix near the end of the book, it explains the method for injecting quicksilver into the veins in preparation for the dissection. It also goes into soaking the viscera in water to remove the blood. Whether that was the case in 1888, I'll have to look further into it.

[jerryd]

Didn't British medical schools, in these years before refrigeration, traditionally conduct anatomy lessons in the fall and winter months when the weather was cooler and the donated cadavers didn't deteriorate so quickly? I'm pretty sure that I read that the demand for anatomical specimens was fairly non-existent in the summer months. All the best, RP

Hi RJ,

Not sure if this is what you are referring to? 1st proximo would be the 1st of October since this article is dated in September of 1873.

[Meerkat]

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/482718...grave-robbers/

Papers will do anything to sell rags lol...

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi RJ,

Not sure if this is what you are referring to? 1st proximo would be the 1st of October since this article is dated in September of 1873.

Hi
I think a common sense approach had to be applied here first of all in this 1873 case it would appear that death occurred as a result of an injury to the head, whether that was deliberately or accidental is not known, and we are looking at a gap of 15 years, so is it right to include this torso find as part of that series, and of course the head was found which was not the case with the other torsos. personally I dont think it is, all this is 1873 torso find is doing is clouding the issue creating a false trail which some are following.
other issue with the injecting fluid is we do not know :

Other issues with the injecting process is that :

At what point it was done, if in fact it was done to every specimen bearing in mind it was not always the full bodies that were obtained very often of not it would only be organs that were acquired from mortuaries such as Eddowes uterus and kidney, and Chapmans uterus
If it was done to the whole body on arrival something I doubt

If it was done to body parts after dissection to keep as specimens, if that be the case then they would not have kept ever single body part from a body

i would suspect they would not have injected them until after use unless of course they simply wanted specific organs or limbs the unwanted parts would be disposed of.

The Lusk kidney was found to have been kept in some preservative and was believe to have been the work of a medical student, so if that be the case it does go to show that medical students could get access to body parts.

Everything about the workings of anatomy room back then is a very grey area

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Trevor,

First off, I am not prescribing to the "London Dissector" as the "go to" manual for dissecting a body. It just happens to be one I found online and it seems to have been in use in London hospitals during part of the 19th Century.

With that, in the appendix near the end of the book, it explains the method for injecting quicksilver into the veins in preparation for the dissection. It also goes into soaking the viscera in water to remove the blood. Whether that was the case in 1888, I'll have to look further into it.

A Victorian dissecting room date unknown

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/book...ge/92/mode/2up

Not much to study on an arm and leg?? Start on page 64 of the London Dissector (link above). It talks about dissection of the thigh. It delves into anterior AND posterior dissection. It's several pages long on just the thigh. What about the foot, knee calf, etc. That is also discussed in other chapters.

Each part of the body in the dissection room appears to be thoroughly cut apart and examined. As Debs said, muscles, tendons etc,etc. The parts of the torsos were in no way that thoroughly taken apart.

Jerry
As I stated in a previous post we do not know the full extent of what went on inside a dissecting room.

However Elizabeth T Hurren a Historical expert from The University of Leicester and the author of a book titled "Dying for Victorian Medicine" I have no read this book but from those who have the following have been found

"The ambiguous wording may also reveal the extent to which the cutting up of the body into parts remained hidden from public view. For, indeed, as Hurren makes clear, emphasis has often been laid on the dissection of whole bodies—very rarely focussing on the significance of dismembered body parts in the anatomy trade. In fact, body parts were most often what medical students trained on, especially when bodies were in short supply: if trainee doctors had to dissect a whole body for their medical education to fit the licensing qualifications of the medical profession after the 1858 Medical Act, practising on individual body parts proved easier and cheaper, spreading the cost of their medical education. It was also much more profitable for sellers."

"Part 2 focuses on those who effectively died for Victorian medicine, and Hurren examines four medical centres involved in medical education and thus in the anatomy trade. She looks at cases of several young women, for instance, who became part of the economy of supply at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and explains how asylums made profits by selling the bodies of the insane poor, explaining how more female bodies entered the anatomy supply chain at St Bartholomew’s. Hurren analyses the rises and falls of the supply figures to understand body-buying activities and how body-buying schemes were also closely related to ethnicity patterns of settlements (such as the proximity of Irish and Italians)"

St Barts a stones throw away from Whitechapel, and right close to the River Thames !!!!!!!!!!

"Prof. Arthur Thomson, who arrived in 1885, just as the Medical Act was extended, also shaped an economy of supply (his body-buying schemes suggesting that the body-part business superseded the trade deals for whole cadavers)"


I really think those who still believe the killer took the organs from Chapman and Eddowes should have a major rethink !!!!!!!

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk