The Anatomist and the Irish Giant

Visitors to London's Leicester Square today find it a place of entertainment and perhaps a bit of naughtiness. Eating, drinking, theater, and gambling are on offer. Few of the visitors are aware that once the square was home to a major center for teaching surgery and anatomy. Untold numbers of dissections took place there, of both human and animal bodies. 

During the late 18th century, Leicester Square was the location of the anatomy school of the renowned (and sometimes reviled) surgeon John Hunter. His bust once graced the central area of the square but was removed as part of a renovation in 2012. It is unlikely that many visitors ever gave it more than a passing glance anyway. They are usually there for other reasons than absorbing a bit of history.

The younger brother of anatomist William Hunter, John learned his trade working for William. The business included the art of body snatching, the main source of human corpses for dissection until the 1830's. Eventually, the brothers fell out and John went his own way.

After serving as an army surgeon for several years, John set up his own anatomy school, which eventually settled at the Square. The building, which also contained his house and an extensive anatomical museum, now houses a pub. (below)

Directly across the square lay the house of his friend Joshua Reynolds, a portrait painter of the wealthy who had a strong interest in anatomy. Reynolds' house is now a bar. But don't knock Progress.

Hunter dissected every type of human or animal he could lay his hands on. His subjects included the famous Irish Giant, Charles Byrne or O'Brien, pictured at the top of the post in a print by Thomas Rowlandson from 1785. 

Hunter acquired the giant's body against the deceased's wishes by bribing the man who had it, allegedly for the then enormous sum of 500 pounds. Hilary Mantel wrote a novel about Hunter's pursuit of the Irishman's corpse, The Giant, O'Brien (1998).

In the painting of Hunter below, one can see part of the giant's skeleton, at top right. The painting today is on display at St. George's Hospital in Tooting. Hunter was chief surgeon at St. George's when it was located near Hyde Park. Today the hospital boasts one of the top cardiology units in the UK. I had the good fortune to benefit from it a couple of years ago. 

Ironically, Hunter himself died of a heart attack in 1793. It happened during a heated argument with the governors of St. George's Hospital. It may have been a burst aneurysm. 

Animals of all kinds, lower as well as higher, went under John Hunter's dissecting knives. He maintained a large menagerie at his suburban house at Earl's Court, including kangaroos, giraffes, and leopards. [Images: Hunter's house at Earl's Court.]

Hunter's huge anatomical collection, or what survives of it, now resides in the Hunterian Museum, at the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Among the exhibits is the skeleton of the Irish Giant. It's fascinating stuff, but definitely not for the squeamish. [Image 1: Part of the Hunterian Collection Image 2: The skeleton of the giant]

In 1771, Hunter married Anne Home, a poet who wrote the lyrics to 14 of Franz Joseph Haydn's English songs. She and Haydn met after her husband's death. They became close friends. How close is a matter of speculation. 

Hunter left Anne in straitened financial circumstances. In 1799, she sold her husband's anatomical collection to the government for the then huge sum of £15,000. The government gave the collection to the Royal College of Surgeons. 

In 1776, Hunter became surgeon to King George III. In 1790, Prime Minister William Pitt appointed Hunter Surgeon General of the British Army. In the latter post he instituted reforms to insure that surgeons were recruited on the basis of ability rather than family connections.

Further Reading:

Wendy Moore, The Knife Man (London: Penguin, 2006)

Druin Burch, Digging up the Dead  (London: Vintage, 2008)

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London's Georgian Hospitals

During the Georgian period (1714-1830) London witnessed a great expansion of hospital facilities. This article examines a few of the more famous, some of which continue to operate today, though sometimes in different locations and with greatly expanded functions. 

In 1721 Thomas Guy, who had made a fortune in the South Sea Bubble, founded Guy's Hospital in Southwark, near London Bridge. He established it to care for "incurables" discharged from nearby much older St. Thomas' Hospital , of which he was a governor. 

The St. Thomas governors supported Guy's project by granting him the south side of St. Thomas' Street at a tiny rent for 999 years. St. Thomas' moved from the area to Lambeth, south of Westminster Bridge, in 1871 but Guy's remains in its original location. It has long since expanded greatly in size and remit, and is a major teaching hospital. (Below: Guy's, @1830)

One of the early specialist hospitals, besides the much older Bethlem Hospital for Lunatics, was founded in 1747 by surgeon William Blomfield: the London Lock Hospital for the treatment of syphilis and other venereal diseases. It was originally located near Hyde Park Corner, in Grosvenor Place. It later moved to other premises and developed maternity and gynecological services and other facilities before closing in 1952. The name "lock" derives from earlier leper hospitals. "Locks" were rags used to cover the lepers' skin lesions. (Below: Lock Hospital, mid-18th century)

St. George's Hospital, now in Tooting, was originally located at Lanesborough House, Hyde Park Corner, on its founding in 1733. In 1800, the original structure was demolished and replaced by a larger building designed by William Wilkins (below). 

Today, St. George's is one of the major teaching hospitals in the UK. The renowned and controversial surgeon-anatomist John Hunter served as head surgeon at the hospital in the late 18th century. Read about Hunter here: http://mycandles.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/lopping-them-off-in-leicester-square.html


In 1739, sea Captain Thomas Coram founded Britain's first hospital for abandoned children, the Foundling Hospital. It is believed to be the first incorporated charity. It was located at Lamb's Conduit Fields (now Coram's Fields) in Bloomsbury, and counted William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Frideric Handel among its benefactors. Among other contributions, Hogarth painted Coram's portrait for the hospital. 

The Foundling Hospital was actually an orphanage, with "hospital" used in its ancient sense of hospitality, but medical care of the children was a major function. It moved to the countryside in the early 20th century, and with the shift to adoption and foster care in the 1950's ceased most of its institutional operations. its heritage survives today in Coram, a Children's Charity. 

Another major Georgian foundation that continues to function today is the London Hospital, Whitechapel, founded in 1740, now the Royal London. It was established to fill a void: none of the existing hospitals were located in the less fashionable east side of London. Today it is a large teaching hospital. (Below: two images of the hospital building opened in the 1750's.)

London's Dirty Dissector: Joshua Brookes

Joshua Brookes (1761-1833) was an unusual British anatomist. Another anatomist called him "the dirtiest professional person I have ever met. ... I really know no dirty thing with which he could compare -- all and every part of him was dirt."

Brookes doesn't look too filthy in this portrait. Perhaps we should take the quotation with a grain of salt. But even if true, I suppose the bodies he dissected didn't mind a bit of dirt. He couldn't kill them, though perhaps some of the resurrection men who supplied his "subjects" might have. Burke and Hare were not unique.

Brookes studied under several eminent teachers, among them William Hunter and his more famous brother, John Hunter. He was also an innovator in preserving cadavers. He injected them with a nitrogen compound, potassium nitrate. The injections preserved them for a long time even in hot weather, allowing him to keep his school open in the summer, unlike rival schools. It was said his school stank of rotten meat, but then none of the anatomy schools can have been especially fragrant.

Brookes often got into scrapes with his suppliers, the body snatchers or resurrection men, presumably over prices. One gang left two decomposing corpses on his front steps, leading to a local mob action against Brookes. On another occasion, they delivered an unconscious man. Brookes only discovered the ruse when he rolled the body down the cellar stairs. Or kicked it down the stairs. He once let slip that he had done that in one case, so it my have been common practice. In this case, the man awoke, jumped up, and fled in terror. Brookes called the resurrection men "the most iniquitous set of villains who ever lived." But he did business with them, as did all the successful anatomists. (Image: "Death in the Dissection Room" by Thomas Rowlandson)

Brookes' other claim to fame was the museum of comparative anatomy he established in his house and school on Great Marlborough Street. Like his preceptor John Hunter, he also kept a menagerie of live animals on the grounds of his house. As his health and income declined in the late 1820s, Brookes sold off the anatomical collection piecemeal. (Image: Brookes' Museum, House, and School)

Further Reading: 
Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute
Sarah Wise, The Italian Boy