by Emily Organ
“That would have been wonderful.”
“But sadly that option is not available to us, so—”
We were interrupted by a loud shriek from somewhere within the confines of the house.
“Goodness! Whatever has happened?” I cried as we separated and leapt to our feet.
Another shriek followed. It sounded like Eliza’s voice.
Just as James and I were about to step through the door, Eliza came blustering in. Her face was red and her eyes were wet with tears.
“Good grief, Ellie! Whatever’s the matter?” I cried.
She skipped into the centre of the room waving a small piece of paper.
“We’ve had a telegram!” she shouted. “A telegram from Mr Edwards!”
“Really? And?”
“He’s alive?” said James.
“Yes, he’s alive all right. And I’ll tell you who else is!”
“Not Father?”
“Yes, Penny! He’s alive!”
Within seconds Eliza and I were locked in a deep embrace. We half-danced and half-stumbled about the room until we were giddy. I could neither laugh nor cry, but instead I felt an involuntary wail emanating from the very depths of me. The room blurred as tears filled my eyes for a second time.
“Are you sure?” I said eventually. “Are you really sure?”
“Here!”
Eliza pulled away and showed me the telegram. I wiped my face with my sleeve and adjusted my spectacles. The words seemed to swim in front of my eyes:
Happy to report Mr. Frederick Brinsley Green found safe and well. More to follow.
Francis Edwards
The End
Historical Note
I began my work on this eighth book in the Penny Green series with the idea that I would set the story in the workhouse. I was unprepared for what my research would reveal! The trade between workhouses and medical schools in the latter half of the nineteenth century was something I’d been completely ignorant of. I had assumed the bodysnatchers, such as the notorious Burke and Hare, were confined to the early 1800s. The 1832 Anatomy Act regulated dissection in medical schools and supposedly removed the opportunity for making profits from the dead.
My initial research in the British Newspaper Archive brought up some curious reports from Norfolk in 1901. The Norfolk News reported that a body of a workhouse ‘pauper’ had gone missing. Frank Hyde, 50, had died at Great Yarmouth Workhouse in April 1901 and the workhouse burial register stated that he had been “buried by friends”. On investigation it was found that his body was missing from the local cemetery. Allegations followed that his body had been sold to the University of Cambridge for dissection and a visiting committee was appointed to hold an enquiry. The allegation was found to be true and two men at the workhouse were found responsible: the Master’s clerk, Mr Adams, and the porter, Mr Hurrell.
Great Yarmouth Workhouse had an arrangement in place with the University of Cambridge to sell the bodies of unclaimed paupers to the school of anatomy. Professor Macalister, chair of anatomy at Cambridge, paid the workhouse six pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence for each body (approximately £750 / $930 in today’s money). Some transactions were properly recorded but others, as in the case of Frank Hyde, were not. It appears that there was deliberate deception about his body being ‘unclaimed.’
The porter, Hurrell, was usually paid between six and twelve shillings to find the family of a deceased inmate in the workhouse but in the case of Frank Hyde he purposefully did nothing so that Hyde would remain ‘unclaimed’. It transpired that Frank Hyde had been a well-known wire worker in the town and had a wife and three children.
Much of the payment from Macalister for Frank Hyde was used for the transportation of his body by train from Yarmouth to Cambridge. However, it was estimated that Mr Adams had pocketed a profit of between thirteen and seventeen shillings (roughly £78-£100 / $97-£124 today) for “doing very little indeed.” (Norfolk News, 15th June 1901). The report I read suggested more indignation that Adams had received money for ‘doing very little’ rather than personally profiting from selling the body of a workhouse inmate and depriving his family of his burial. There are reports that, in some instances, Adams carried out ‘mock funerals’ with coffins filled with sand, or other materials, but I can’t find a full verification for these reports.
According to the Norfolk News, the phrase “buried by friends” was found to have been entered into Great Yarmouth Workhouse’s burial registers an astonishing fifty six times. It was a euphemism for sending the body to Cambridge for dissection. In the case of Frank Hyde it couldn’t be established whether Adams or Hurrell had falsified the workhouse records. There was no reported evidence that the Master of Yarmouth Workhouse, or any of the board of guardians, knew about the activities of Adams and Hurrell. This doesn’t certify for sure that they were ignorant of the practice. The punishment for making a profit from the sale of a body was three months’ imprisonment.
I can’t find a record of what the men’s punishment was and I’m tempted to doubt they received one. Quite shockingly, just a month after the enquiry on 6th July 1901 there was a report in the Yarmouth Independent that, “Mr and Mrs Hurrell, porter and portress of Great Yarmouth Workhouse have been appointed Master and Matron of Kenninghall Workhouse.”
The profiteering from the bodies of the poor at Great Yarmouth was not an isolated incident. The more I researched, the more cases I found. This one was in Glasgow and reported on 19th September 1891 in Aberdeen Free Press:-
“Disposal of the bodies of paupers dying in the City Parish Hospital… One ugly fact after another cropped up, and two or three members of the House Committee quietly continued their investigations, and after six weeks’ inquiry made the ghastly discovery that a regular traffic had sprung up in the disposal of the bodies of paupers who were known to have relatives and friends, and therefore supposed to be buried at Sandymount Cemetery, but which were really delivered for dissection at the Anatomical Rooms in College Street. One person only is involved, a man named Daniels, who acted as a coachman at the Hospital, and he is no longer in the employment of the Board, and, it is believed, has left the city.”
John Daniel (not Daniels as described above) was later charged with selling thirty-nine bodies for dissection under the pretence that he was authorised to do so.
It appears that scandals and mishaps were commonplace over a period of many years. On 23rd February 1882, the St James’s Gazette reported that a coffin which was opened at Sheffield Workhouse, “was found to contain the remains of an old man instead of that of a young man whose body had been sent to the medical school for dissection.” Presumably the young man was not supposed to have been dissected?
Professor Alexander Macalister, purchaser of Frank Hyde’s corpse, receives a chapter of coverage in Dying for Victorian Medicine, English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor by Elizabeth T. Hurren. This sombre and thought-provoking book describes the ‘dead train’ which carried corpses from London to Macalister at Cambridge:-
“Three times a week an express train left Liverpool Street station in London. It travelled via Cambridge to Doncaster. On its return journey extra funeral wagons were attached discreetly by railways engineers to the rear carriages… This was the ‘dead train’ that carried corpses to Cambridge. A local undertaker brought the human cargo to the back of the station in a covered carriage.”
In her book, Hurren also discusses how ‘paupers’ arranged to sell their bodies direct to the schools of anatomy. An investigation into workhouse conditions by the Essex Standard, West Suffolk Gazette and Eastern Counties’ Advertiser in 1885 revealed workhouse inmates had made such arrangements. One report read:-
“‘The majority of the old ladies in the House seemed apprehensive lest their mortal remains should be sent to “Cambridge for dissection”,… There was one exception however in an elderly inmate who joking remarked that she had already disposed of her body for the modestly low sum of six pence, and when aske
d where the purchase money had gone she pointed to her nose indicating it had been spent in the much relished delicacy of snuff.’”
Professor Macalister took up his position at Cambridge in 1883 and held it for thirty six years. He was an influential figure in the study of human anatomy and I can find no suggestion anywhere that he acted outside the law when purchasing the bodies of the poor. He was bound by the system which existed at his time:-
“Medical education was a competitive field financed by rising and falling student fees. It was also a business driven by profit margins made from paupers. Macalister for a time lost out to Oxford and Leicester because the former was prepared to pay more for bodies.” (Dying for Victorian Medicine, English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor by Elizabeth T. Hurren).
Hurren examined in detail the dissection registers at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Founded in the twelfth century, the hospital soon gained a reputation for medical learning. Hurren has established that between 1832 and 1929, Bart’s acquired 6,059 corpses for dissection. Behind the numbers are countless tragic tales of poverty:-
“Body ‘number 84’, a ‘22 year old female’ called ‘Charlotte Burton’… tried to give birth to a concealed pregnancy without medical assistance. Soon after birth her child died and she suffered ‘puerperal convulsions’… Charlotte died on the night of ‘18th February 1834’ in abject poverty. Her fellow lodgers sold her body for dissection on ‘19th February at 8pm’. ‘Mr Teale the undertaker’ made the body deal and took the cadaver to the Dead House at St. Bartholomew’s.”
Charles Dickens made outspoken comments about the dissection of the poor in his periodical Household Words in 1850. He rejected the common argument at the time that the poor (who were often considered to be responsible for their fate) could atone for their moral failings in life by contributing to the advancement of medical knowledge. Almost forty years later, the debate over dissection still raged as this article from the Liverpool Echo, on 22nd November 1889 demonstrates:-
“Yesterday, at the meeting of the Paddington Board of Guardians, held at the workhouse, Harrow-road, the chairman, Mr S. D. Fuller, called attention to the fact that the guardians had now, under the provisions of the Anatomical Act, power to dispose of the bodies of unknown or friendless paupers by allowing them to be used for dissecting purposes at the anatomical schools. Mrs. Charles said she would strongly oppose the guardians so disposing of the bodies of persons dying in the establishment. If the poor cared about anything at all it was to be decently buried… Mr. J. C. Sherrard, J. P., said that when the due interests of science were concerned the opinions of poor people must not be allowed to stand in the way.”
The details of dissection were purposefully kept secret by the medical profession because the topic roused strong sentiment. In the 1830s there had been anti-dissection demonstrations in Sheffield and Manchester. By the late nineteenth century, however, it was difficult to stop the emergence of investigative reporting. One such article in the Pall Mall Gazette on 19th January 1888 is titled Horrors of the Dissecting Room and describes how a body is divided among the students, “One wants a forearm, another a foot, hand…” then “During the cutting up of the body and subsequent dissection of its parts a good many pieces are thrown upon the floor. A porter is employed who goes round at intervals with a brush and pan collecting these morsels, which are removed to a cellar.” The article goes on to describe how the parts are then collected into coffins and given a Church of England burial, “The coffins are flimsy affairs, and one wonders what would happen if one broke at the graveside and the clergyman saw, say, two mutilated heads, half-a-dozen feet and three legs with a gory mass of scraps roll out?”
This article clearly revelled in the grisly details which Victorian readers so apparently enjoyed and characterises the graphic reporting of Jack the Ripper’s crimes later the same year. Of course, it has long been speculated that the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper had received anatomical training.
Welfare reform put an end to the anatomy trade. The early twentieth century saw the introduction of National Insurance which provided health insurance for industrial workers. The Old Age Pension was introduced and an act in 1929 closed workhouses and turned them into hospitals. A number of hospitals today in the UK are still housed in former workhouse buildings.
My descriptions of the conditions in the workhouse were informed by contemporary accounts. Included in these is Tales from the Workhouse – True Tales from the Depths of Poverty, a compendium of workhouse reports from journalists and former inmates. Notable contributors include James Greenwood and Mary Higgs. Greenwood was one of the first Victorian journalists to disguise himself as a ‘tramp’ to stay on the casual wards of London’s workhouses. His article A Night in the Workhouse was serialised in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1866. Higgs was a social reformer who investigated poverty by visiting workhouse wards and lodging houses also disguised as a tramp. She published her findings in a series of articles and a book Glimpses into the Abyss in 1906.
Sickness and Cruelty in the Workhouse - The True Story of a Victorian Workhouse Doctor by Joseph Rogers was another useful source. Rogers was a physician and a workhouse medical officer who campaigned for poor law reform throughout his forty-year career. His work brought him into contact with Louisa Twining, a member of the famous Twining tea family, who devoted her life's work to improving conditions in workhouses. She visited a friend in the Strand Workhouse in the 1850s and was so appalled by what she experienced that she lobbied the Poor Law Board for over a year to allow her to visit the workhouse and offer comforts to the inmates. Eventually the board relented.
Shoreditch is in London’s East End and has an extremely long and vibrant history. The area’s traditional working class character has changed over the past thirty years with the gentrification of many streets. These days, Shoreditch is a trendy and expensive place to live but retains some of its traditional, edgier character too. Shoreditch Workhouse was established in the eighteenth century for the poor of the parish and was extensively rebuilt in the 1860s. The interestingly named Land of Promise on Hoxton Street still remains, flanked by The Unicorn pub (now a fast food outlet) and the former poor relief offices. The former administrative building is an impressive facade on Kingsland Road. All the buildings are now part of St Leonard's Hospital.
The Roman Catholic Church of St Monica’s Priory in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, was consecrated in 1875 and is one of over a hundred Catholic churches designed by E.W. Pugin (son of Augustus Pugin, architect of the Houses of Parliament). That E.W. Pugin completed so many churches before his untimely death, at the age of forty one, is impressive to say the least.
Aconitine, a deadly poison, is derived from aconite root which has anaesthetic properties and was once used in the treatment of colds, sore throats, respiratory inflammation, neuralgia, arthritis and a number of other aches and pains. Aconite is more commonly known as monkshood or wolfsbane among other names. Several varieties are attractive garden plants. A famous case of aconitine poisoning was carried out by a doctor, George Henry Lamson, in 1881. He acquired a morphine habit, fell into financial difficulties and decided to poison his young brother-in-law, Percy John, to secure more of his wife’s inheritance. His position as a doctor enabled him to acquire aconitine from a pharmacist and he persuaded Percy to take capsules of the poison during a visit to his boarding school in Wimbledon. Lamson had chosen aconitine because he believed it would be untraceable in the body after death. While this had once been true, Lamson hadn’t reckoned on the expertise of Dr Thomas Stevenson, a renowned toxicologist and forensic chemist, who was able to find traces of the poison in Percy’s body. Lamson was hanged for his crime in 1882.
Madame Tussaud’s, in Baker Street, was a popular attraction in the nineteenth century and remains so today. In Victorian times, Tussaud’s knew how to draw the crowds by being quick to model the famous and notorious people of the day. Infamous criminals were displayed in the Chamber of Horrors. Marie Tussaud was a Fr
ench artist who became famous for her wax models of celebrities in the late 18th century. During the French Revolution she was employed to make the death masks of famous guillotine victims Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette among many others. In the early 19th century Tussaud travelled to Britain to exhibit her wax models, she remained in Britain for the rest of her life. She toured the country for a number of years before establishing her permanent exhibition in Baker Street in 1835. After her death aged 88 in 1850, Tussaud's work was continued by her sons then grandson.
The quirky shop Marshall & Hawes is based on Millikin & Lawley which was one of the largest suppliers of human skulls and skeletons in the world. The shop was located on The Strand, close to the medical school at nearby King’s College. Rather oddly, the shop also stocked watches, conjuring tricks, model boats and magic lanterns. It must have been an interesting place to visit. Millikin & Lawley’s osteology sets still come up for purchase now at various auction houses. But the question Penny asked still endures - who did those bones once belong to?
If Death at the Workhouse is the first Penny Green book you’ve read, then you may find the following historical background interesting. It’s compiled from the historical notes published in the previous books in the series:
Women journalists in the nineteenth century were not as scarce as people may think. In fact they were numerous enough by 1898 for Arnold Bennett to write Journalism for Women: A Practical Guide in which he was keen to raise the standard of women’s journalism:-
“The women-journalists as a body have faults… They seem to me to be traceable either to an imperfect development of the sense of order, or to a certain lack of self-control.”
Eliza Linton became the first salaried female journalist in Britain when she began writing for the Morning Chronicle in 1851. She was a prolific writer and contributor to periodicals for many years including Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words. George Eliot – her real name was Mary Anne Evans - is most famous for novels such as Middlemarch, however she also became assistant editor of The Westminster Review in 1852.