Victorian death trade uncovered

Dr Elizabeth Hurren, Reader in Medical Humanities at the University of Leicester appears in the December issue of the BBC History Magazine.

In The Victorian Trade in Dead Bodies, she reveals for the first time the body trade that supplied medical students in the 19th century. The business of anatomical supply was very profitable and involved a network of body dealers. The article takes readers to dark street corners, back doors of workhouses, and inside dissection rooms hidden from public view, where bodies were bought and sold for anatomical teaching. On the internet today this body trade is still lucrative, producing thought-provoking historical parallels.

Dr Hurren also looks at some of the stories of people who became involved in this illicit trade:

The profits made from trading over 150, 000 cadavers and another 150, 000 body parts (it was more profitable to sell a body in pieces) are retraced for the first time in Dr Elizabeth Hurren’s latest book, Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor.

It is this new research that features in the BBC History Magazine podcast of the month for December too. Elizabeth talks about the body-dealers and their grisly night-time trade. Everyone – doctors and patients – has benefitted from this secret history of medicine, we just never think about the thousands of dissected bodies buried beneath our feet in towns and cities across Britain.  

The podcast goes live 6th December 2012: http://www.historyextra.com/podcasts

During December Blackwell’s bookshop at the Wellcome Trust is featuring a special book discount for all BBC History Magazine readers – a reduction from £65.00 to £20.99. Orders should quote: Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor, 1834-1929 ISBN 978-0-230- 21966-3 (Palgrave, 2012) £20.99 and be emailed direct to: wellcome@blackwell.co.uk