Joshua Brookes’ advertisement, in 1814, ran as follows:
“THEATRE OF ANATOMY, BLENHEIM STREET,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
“The Summer Course of Lectures on Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery, will be commenced on Monday, the 6th of June, at seven o’clock in the morning. By Mr. Brookes.—Anatomical Converzationes will be held weekly, when the different Subjects treated of will be discussed familiarly, and the Students’ views forwarded. To these none but Pupils can be admitted. Spacious Apartments, thoroughly ventilated, and replete with every convenience, will be open at five o’clock in the morning, for the purposes of Dissecting and Injecting, when Mr. Brookes attends to direct the Students and demonstrate the various parts as they appear on Dissection.
“The inconveniences usually attending Anatomical Investigations, are counteracted by an antiseptic process. Pupils may be accommodated in the House. Gentlemen established in Practice, desirous of renewing their Anatomical Knowledge, may be accommodated with an apartment to dissect in privately.”
A very interesting account of the old Anatomical Schools, by Mr. D’Arcy Power, will be found in the British Medical Journal, 1895, vol. 2, p. 141. The paper is entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Private Medical Schools in London.” It has been reprinted, with other articles, in a pamphlet, entitled The Medical Institutions of London.
In Great Britain, as no licence was required for opening an Anatomical School, there was no limit to their number; there was also no regular legal supply of subjects, except the bodies of murderers, executed in London and the county of Middlesex, which came to the schools through the College of Surgeons. In Paris a licence had to be obtained before opening an Anatomical School, and bodies were regularly supplied to the licensed places.
With the rise and competition of the Medical Schools in London, the difficulty of getting an adequate number of bodies increased. The absolute necessity of having a good supply for the use of students, so as to prevent them from going off to rival schools, caused the teachers to offer large prices, and thus made it worth while for men to devote themselves entirely to obtaining bodies for this purpose. At first the trade was carried on by a very few men, and without any public scandal, but the inducements mentioned above enticed others into the business; these were of the lowest class, often professed thieves, and the fights and disputes of these men, one with the other, in churchyards, often made really more scandal than the actual stealing of the bodies. It was stated by the police in 1828 that the number of persons who, in London, lived regularly on the profits of exhumation, did not exceed ten; but there were, in addition to these, about two hundred who were occasionally employed. These latter individuals were thieves of the lowest grade, and the most desperate and abandoned class of the community. The men worked generally in gangs, and would do anything to spoil the success of their opponents in the business. If a body were bought by one of the teachers from an outside source, the regular men would sometimes break into the dissecting-room and cut the body in such a manner as to make it useless for anatomical purposes. If this could not be done, they would give information to the police that a stolen body was lying in a certain dissecting-room. Joshua Brookes, the proprietor of the Blenheim Street, or Great Marlborough Street, School, was a victim in this way; a body, for which he had paid 16 guineas, was taken away from his school through information of this kind, and the police officer who carried out the business was, as a reward for his efforts, presented with a silver staff, purchased by public subscription. Brookes seems to have got on very badly with the resurrection-men; at one time, because he refused five guineas as a douceur at the beginning of the session, two dead bodies, in a high state of decomposition, were dropped at night close to his school by the men whom he had thus offended; one of these bodies was placed at the Poland Street end of Great Marlborough Street, and the other at the end of Blenheim Street. Two young ladies stumbled over one of these bodies, and at once raised such a commotion that, had it not been for the prompt assistance of Sir Robert Baker and the police, Brookes would have fared very badly at the hands of the mob which soon collected. The fact of his house being near to the Marlborough Police Court, on more than one occasion saved Brookes from the popular fury.
A subject was brought to him one day in a sack, and paid for at once; soon after it was discovered that the occupant of the sack was alive. This was not a case of attempted murder; the “subject” was a confederate of those from whom he had been purchased, and had, in all probability, been thus introduced to the premises for purposes of burglary.
The competition of the schools had risen to such a height in the demand for bodies, that Brookes stated that for a subject, which would have cost two guineas in his student days, he had paid as much as sixteen guineas. Nor was the cost of the body the only expense to the teacher. At the beginning of each session he was waited upon by the resurrection-men, who offered to supply him regularly with bodies at a fixed price, on the condition that a douceur was paid down at once. The teachers were powerless in the matter, and had either to accede to the offered terms, or to lose their students through not having a sufficient supply of subjects. The scarcity of bodies was most keenly felt at the beginning of the session; the resurrection-men knew that they could command their own terms, and would not supply any subjects until the teachers had conceded all their demands. This was felt to be bad for the students, and Dr. James Somerville, who was assistant to Brodie at the Great Windmill Street School, in giving evidence before the Committee on Anatomy, said that “the pupils not being able to proceed for a certain time lose their ardour, and get into habits of idleness.”
At the end of the session the resurrection-men again waited on the proprietors of the schools, and demanded “finishing money.” In some papers relating to Sir Astley Cooper, which were referred to in a letter published in the Medical Times, 1883, vol. 1, p. 343, we read: “May 10th, 1827, Paid Hollis, Vaughan, and Llewellyn, finishing money, £6 6s. 0d. 1829, June 18th, Paid Murphy, Wildes, & Naples, finishing money £6 6s. 0d.”