The reopening of the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons

The Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons reopened this week after a 6-year closure for refurbishment. There was a fair old media fanfare to accompany opening day last Tuesday; ‘from syphilitic skulls to human foetuses, London’s creepiest museum reopens after six years’ was the subtle headline in the Evening Standard. The Guardian wasn’t much better; ‘From foetuses to penises: anatomical museum reopens in London’. Apollo Magazine called it ‘London’s most gruesome museum’ and Time Out breathlessly listed ‘Six gross things we can’t wait to see at the reopened Hunterian’. One of the first visitors was 38-year-old Jennifer Sutton who had come specifically to see her own heart. Jennifer had a heart transplant at Papworth Hospital in 2007. Her old heart is preserved in formaldehyde and is on display in the museum.   “I'm glad it's in that jar and I have a new one,” Jennifer told the Daily Mail, “'I am grateful though as it kept me alive for 22 hears, it's like an old friend.”

I went for a flying visit on Thursday lunchtime and the place was packed. It remains to be seen whether this popularity will continue or if the museum will revert to being the rather out of the way place it used to be, when you often had the place virtually to yourself even at weekends. They have done a rather good job of the refurbishment. I liked the old set up but the new museum (now on the ground floor of the Royal College) tells a more coherent story, not just about John Hunter but also about his pupils, the surgeon anatomists who followed in his footsteps like the brilliant artist Charles Bell or the fastest scalpel in the west end, Robert Liston. Some of the display cases are works of art in themselves; my favourite contains a single white bust of John Hunter surrounded by dozens of horned animal skulls and other assorted skeletal remains. Hundreds of Hunter’s specimens are shown in a new crystal gallery, very similar to the old one.  

 I was given a map by a security guard at the entrance but I didn’t look at it, I just shoved it in my pocket. There were signs up saying no flash photography which meant that non-flash photography must be allowed – a change from the old days when all photography was prohibited. There were too many people in to get many general photos so I mainly confined myself to taking pictures of the specimens. Only when I later took out the map did I see the notice printed at the bottom in red letters “Please be aware that the Museum contains human anatomical specimens, including fetuses. Photography of human specimens is not permitted”. I have some good, though rather disquieting, images of the fetuses, many of which are so well developed that they are really almost full-term dead babies, preserved in jars. It is perhaps just as well that I feel I can’t share them. Not everything that was on display in the old museum has made into the new.  It is interesting that the fetuses remain on display alongside the identifiable remains of people who almost certainly did not consent to becoming museum pieces (Jonathan Wild would not want his skeleton exposed to public view) whilst other specimens have been removed. The skeleton of Charles Byrne, the Irish giant, is no longer on public display following a campaign to force the museum to give up his remains for burial.

Byrne, who was 8 feet 4 inches tall, made a living from displaying himself in public but had a horror of the surgeons getting hold of him for dissection after his death. Famously he left instructions in his will to be buried at sea to avoid what he felt would be his inevitable fate at the hands of the resurrectionists if he allowed himself to be buried on land. At an overnight stop on the way to the Kent coast at Margate Byrne was removed from his coffin and dispatched back to John Hunter in London whilst the empty casket was filled with rocks to imitate the weight of the dead man. Whilst the rock filled coffin was being dropped into the sea from a fishing boat Byrne was back on his way to London where Hunter carefully sectioned his corpse before boiling it in a large copper vat to remove the flesh. For over 15 years campaigners have tried to pressurise the Royal College of Surgeons into surrendered Byrne’s bones up for burial. In 2020 they were joined by Dame Hilary Mantel, author of the excellent novel The Giant O’Brien, loosely based on Byrne’s life.  She wrote to the Guardian;

It’s time Charles went home.  I know that in real life he was a suffering soul, nothing like the fabulous storybook giant I created, and that his gratifications were fewer and his end very grim. I think that science has learned all it can from the bones, and the honourable thing now is lay him to rest. It would suit the spirit of the times, and I don’t see a reason for delay. He’s waited long enough. “I assumed the burial at sea was just an attempt to evade Hunter, and that if the bones were recovered from the RCS he would be buried in Ireland. I hope there would be a welcome party for him, and I hope I can come and join it.

Alas Dame Hilary died in September 2022 and didn’t live to hear the news in January this year that the Hunterian Trustees, after considering the ‘sensitivities’ of keeping and displaying Byrnes skeleton, had decided that it would no longer be on public view when the museum reopened. It is only a partial success for the campaigners as the museum will retain the skeleton but only make it available for "bona fide medical research" into gigantism. The Irish Giant isn’t the only person to be taken off display. I did not see any sign of the Sicilianfairy, Caroline Crachami, a primordial dwarf whose remains also came into the possession of the Hunterian in a dubious manner. I also couldn’t find the brain of Charles Babbage which used to be on prominent display. My understanding is that Babbage did give permission for his remains to be displayed. Perhaps I should email the Royal College and ask why…