18th July, 1583. The Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen having recommended that persons using Barbery should not practise Surgery, the Master and Governors went to Guildhall, and there promised the Court of Aldermen that they would compel all their free Barbers to enter into bonds not to “medle or deale wth any sick of the plauge or infected cum morbo gallico,” and accordingly the Barbers entered into bonds to that effect.
In Stow’s Annales, ed. 1592, p. 1261, is the following remarkable account of a “subject” coming to life again at our hall.
1587. The 20 of Februarie, a strange thing happened a man hanged for felonie at Saint Thomas Wateringes, being begged by the Chirurgions of London, to have made of him an Anatomie, after hee was dead to all mens thinking, cut downe, stripped of his apparell, laide naked in a chest, throwne into a carre, and so brought from the place of execution through the Borough of Southwarke over the bridge, and through the Citie of London to the Chirurgions Hall nere unto Cripelgate: The chest being there opened, and the weather extreeme cold hee was found to be alive, and lived till the three and twentie of Februarie, and then died.
It was doubtless the above circumstance, to which reference is made in the next minute; it would seem that the body had been begged by some surgeons and taken to the hall to be dissected there, it being unlawful to dissect elsewhere, and that on the resuscitation of the unhappy man, the Company had been put to some expenses whereupon they made an order to provide for any similar case in the future. This body would be what is often referred to in the Books as a “private anatomy,” in opposition to the four “public” bodies of felons to which the Company were annually entitled.
13th July, 1587. Iˀtm yt ys agreed That yf any bodie wch shall at anie tyme hereafter happen to be brought to or Hall for the intent to be wrought uppon by Thanatomistes of or Companie shall revyve or come to lyfe agayne as of late hathe ben seene The charges aboute the same bodie so revivinge shalbe borne levied and susteyned by such pˀson or pˀsons who shall so happen to bringe home the Bodie. And further shall abide suche order or ffyne as this Howse shall Awarde.
7th December, 1598. This daye commaundmt cam from the lordes of her mats most ho: privie councell for to presse a sufficient Surgeon for her mats sˀvice in Ireland under the conduct of Captayne Winsor.
12th December, 1598. John Cumberland was pressed for the above service and delivered into his Captain’s charge, and four or five other Surgeons were also pressed and handed over nolens volens. One of these, Dominick Lomeline (or Lumley, Master in 1629), is recorded on the 16th January following as having “confessed voluntarelye before the Masters that to be dischardged of his presse for Ireland it stud him in Twenty Nobles of which the Captayne had in monye three poundes.”
6th February, 1599. This daie one Richard Hallydaie marriner made his complainte of Raphe Rowley for settinge forthe an insufficient man not approved to serve as a surgeon at sea in the Sheepe called the Costely of London by whose unskylfullnes hee was dismembred of his arme and is in greate dainger of liefe.
Ralph Rowley had been pressed for a Sea Surgeon, and this complaint would be against him for the incompetency of some substitute, whom he had no doubt paid to take his place.