to the old forms of body-snatching, have
made murder for dissection quite impossible,
and have so far tended to supply the anatomist
with better means of study, that the
price of a subject to the student in this
country is now four pounds, instead of ten.
The Act, however, does not put an end to the
villainous jobbing in corpses which is still
within the power of an undertaker who can
get the master of a workhouse to assist his
views.

The undertakers combine to extort money
from the hospitals under the name of burial
fees, which they raise from time to time;
and the raising of which, hospitals resist as
well as they can. Though the Anatomy Act
specially forbids undertakers charged with
the burial of a body to exercise any
influence that shall concern the anatomist, he,
nevertheless contrives, whenever the master
of a workhouse will assist in procuring for
each body surreptitiously obtained the
necessary documents, to play the part of body-
snatcher.

Most of our readers will remember the
details made public at the late trial of the
master of the Newington workhouse, for
supplying bodies of the poor to Guy's
Hospital in an illegal manner; the undertaker,
who was chief offender, being released from
prosecution on condition that he would bear
witness against his accomplice. The
undertaker said, that he could go to the dead-house
when he pleased. He was in the habit of
taking the bodies of paupers who had died
out of the workhouse into this dead-house.
The relieving-officer authorised him to do
this. He also used to bring the remains of
the dissected paupers from the hospital to
be buried. In these cases the hospital paid
the expense of the funeral. Three pounds
ten shillings was paid by the hospital for
each case. The parish only paid him five
shillings and sixpence. For all the cases
where the substitution took place, he was
paid both by the parish and the hospital.
He received two payments by this means for
the burial of the same body. He was not
aware that he had no right to do this. The
amount allowed by the parish for the burial
of the paupers would be utterly insufficient,
if it were not for the additional sum received
from the hospital for the unclaimed bodies.

That last statement is true, and no sane
man can doubt that the low payment was made
with the tacit understanding that there were
valuable perquisites of fraud and extortion
connected with the undertaker's office. The
treasurer of Guy's Hospital testified that he
had paid the master of the workhouse nearly
twenty pounds in one year, twenty-seven in
another, "as a gratuity for the trouble he had
in obtaining the necessary certificates
relating to the bodies that were sent to the
hospital for dissection." It was proved that
at that particular workhouse twelve or fourteen
times in a year, friends of a deceased
pauper were allowed to see the body in its
coffin, and then sent as mourners to the
churchyard in the train of a dissected body,
carried to the grave in place of that which
they had seen. The most sacred feelings
were thus made the subject of a secret
mockery, sordid and infamous.

That is the present blot upon the working
of the Anatomy Act. Room is left for the
atrocious jugglery of undertakers, and for the
dishonesty of workhouse masters, by the
clause which makes it simply permissive in
those who have the custody of an unclaimed
body, to give it for dissection. Beadledom
does as it pleases. One board incites to
imaginary claims, and throws every obstacle
in the way of the anatomist, another favours
this hospital or that; and to procure anything
like an equitable distribution of the subjects
for dissection needs all the tact—for it is
beyond the legal powers—of the inspector of
anatomy.

The remedy for this is not the adoption of
the French system, under which every person
dying in a hospital by so doing bequeaths
his body to the furtherance of knowledge.
In this country let no man alive or dead be
denied bodily freedom. Let there, however,
be not simply an option left to the discretion of
the beadles and the undertakers, but a plain
and fixed rule, that if any man die without
having expressed a wish to be dissected after
death rather by worms than by his student
brethren; rather to rot than be spiritualised
into knowledge that shall dry hereafter
many a tear, ease many a pain; if any man
die without having testified a desire that
his body should be useless rather than useful
to society when he is gone, then let society
have the benefit of the doubt. But, if there
be living one dear friend, no matter of what
condition, to whom the touch of the
anatomist upon his dead body would be a cause
of grief, then let the grief be sacred, and let
the natural feeling or the prejudice be
reverenced.

Let it then be an ordinance, not a permission,
that the unclaimed dead shall supply
the needs of science and humanity, whenever
the body is not that of one who, in life,
prohibited its use for such a purpose. By this
form of enactment, no feeling is outraged,
and all mockery is swept away. The whole
swarm of undertakers, who now traffic in the
bodies of the poor, could be swept aside. All
bodies free to the dissector should be carried
with becoming reverence and delicate respect,
into one building, whence they could be
distributed impartially by the inspector of
anatomy to the several medical schools
according to their needs. To the same
place they could be returned for burial;
and thence they could be carried to the
grave under the superintendence of an
undertaker, paid only by a defined salary, and
compelled to confine himself to the business
of his office. Irregularity, and irreverence,