Last updated 16:38, Sunday, 20 April 2008

In 1818 the Carlisle Patriot advertised Mr Brookes’s ‘Theatre of Anatomy, Blenheim Street, London’ , but this was no Gunther von Hagens experience open to the public.

Mr Brookes clearly stated that to his weekly “anatomical conversationes none but pupils are admitted”.

Here Mr Brookes offered “spacious apartments ventilated and replete with every convenience open at 5am for the purpose of dissecting and injecting, where he attends students and demonstrates the various parts as they appear on dissection”.

For a course of lectures Mr Brookes charged five guineas, and for perpetual students 10 guineas. He gave assurances that “inconveniences usually attending anatomical investigations are counteracted by an antiseptic process”.

This was all far away in London but the Patriot in May 1826 showed that anatomy was also taught in Carlisle.

“On Thursday,” said the newspaper, “workmen employed in clearing the drain in the old branch of the river below Eden Bridge found in the mud detached portions of the breast and foot of a female.”

There was no doubt about the origin. The Patriot said this was “evidently parts of some body which had lately been subjected to the dissection knife.”

In this report there was a degree of understanding and acceptance. The newspaper said: “We all know that such processes are necessary to the development of medical and surgical science, but all persons are equally well aware that more decency and feeling might have been manifested in the disposal of these mutilated remains.”

Usually it was the unclaimed bodies of those executed which were offered for dissection.

So when there was a double execution for murder of Fox and Tinnaney at the county gaol in March 1827, the Carlisle Journal reported: “Fox was dissected in the gaol in the afternoon attended by most of the resident surgeons and their pupils.”

Similarly, the Cumberland Pacquet reported that Philip Tinnaney’s body “was dissected at the military hospital at the foot of Fisher Street.”

The Government were aware that bodies had come from dubious sources and in 1829 the Pacquet reported on the Anatomy Regulation Bill which would “prevent the disenterment [sic] of bodies”.

In future the bill gave provision for workhouses and other institutions to give up bodies for dissection.

This was followed by an Act for Regulating Schools of Anatomy in 1832.

The Pacquet said that in future all such schools “must have a certificate from the Secretary of State” and also have a post mortem proving the cause of death of any corpse which was dissected.

When, in May 1884, the dismembered body of a infant child was found in rubbish on a canal bank, something sinister was suspected and an inquest called.

Evidence was given by the house surgeon at the infirmary who “expressed his opinion that the body had been dismembered scientifically, but he also said that ever since he had been at the infirmary he had not seen an infant there.”

No one then went to hospital to give birth and for the last 20 years said the Journal “there has been no new-born babe in the infirmary.”

But with the lungs removed, the coroner wondered “by whom and for what purpose the baby was cut up?”

He considered that this could have been “for the purpose of concealment”.

The weight of evidence was that it was not cut up scientifically and that the infirmary ashpit, where the baby was found, was so situated “that an outsider might have deposited the remains there”.

An open verdict was recorded. “The infant remains enshrouded in mystery,” said the Journal, but it was more likely to have been a botched cover-up than bad disposal of pathological waste.