In 1636 William Gordon of King’s College, Aberdeen, successfully petitioned the Privy Council for the bodies of two executed men or those dying in hospitals with “few friends or acquaintances that can take exception.” 5 However, it was with the passing of the Murder Act that post-mortem dissection took a more central place in the criminal justice system. Similar provisions were made in London in 1540 to allow the newly united Companies of Barbers and Surgeons the bodies of four executed felons. 4ĭue to the medical demand for the supply of dead bodies, legislation was passed in 1505 that granted the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers in Edinburgh the body of one executed criminal per year. 3 However, the sentencing of a murderer to the post-mortem punishment of dissection between the 1752 Murder Act and the Anatomy Act has received relatively little in-depth investigation until recently. 2 More recently, Hurren has provided a rereading of the act in order to investigate more thoroughly the trade in the dead poor in its wake. 1 Richardson’s Death, Dissection and the Destitute placed the anatomical corpse and popular beliefs about the dead body within an extensive study of the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act. Attention has also been given to the difficulties faced by the medical profession in obtaining cadavers and the problem of body-snatching, which reached its pinnacle in the early nineteenth century. Historians have placed their investigations of dissection within wider beliefs about the body and the disposal of it in death to shed light upon fears over its use for anatomical study. The practice was defended in terms of the pursuit of knowledge for the long-term benefit of the living but faced difficulties in the form of superstition and fear regarding the fate of the corpse. An area that had long been the subject of debate prior to the mid-eighteenth century, and would continue to be, was the dissection of the human body. The anatomy of the human body has a long history in the annals of science and medicine.
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