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So for something completely different and fun to read while I was working on my essays I picked up a copy of Ruth Richardson's Death, Dissection and the Destitute. It was thoroughly enjoyable. I was expecting it to be less scholarly than it was. It had excellent endnotes, loads of source examples and well reasoned arguments. There were also amazing reproductions of broadsheets, which meant you could read for yourself some of the gruesome stories she was talking about.
It was divided into three parts, the Body, the Act and the Aftermath. The first part, the Body was definitely the most interesting. Richardson covered a lot of Victorian mourning rituals and ideas towards funerary customs in this chapter and addressed their origins. It was also a very strong introduction to her thesis. The anatomy act of 1832 was part of the criminalisation of poverty that was current at the time, and responsible for a lot of the later obsession about having a good funeral. It looked, in quite graphic detail, about corpse collecting, dissection of criminals, and the debates around the nature of scientific enquiry. All terribly interesting stuff.
The second part on the Act was not quite so gripping. Here the book tended to get lost a little in just telling the story. This happened, and then they did this, and it was responded to in this way. There were some interesting stories about burking though as well as some very interesting looks into propaganda and political manipulation. So it was far from a dull read.
The third chapter I was expecting to have looked further to the future, I really wanted Richardson to go further into some of her theories about the link between the act and Victorian views on death and poverty. Unfortunately she focused rather more closely on the direct aftermath of the act. There were still some interesting stories told in this chapter, notably about rumours of cannibalism in the workhouses.
The afterward, looked at the relationship between bodies used for dissection, and organ transplants today. It was interesting to see how people are still quite squeamish about what happens to their bodies after death, and how the poor still often end up the victims of "medicine". Though I have to say I didn't quite finish the afterword as I'm so not a modern historian.
Richardson claims to have been one of the first historian's to look at the anatomy act in any great detail. I'm not sure if this is true. It seems rather an important event to have been neglected for so long. The whole historical area of history of the body, is quite new though and so her take on it might be entirely original. It's definitely an interesting history book, one I'd recommend to people who are interested in Victorians, poverty, social issues, politics, science, and all things morbid.
It was divided into three parts, the Body, the Act and the Aftermath. The first part, the Body was definitely the most interesting. Richardson covered a lot of Victorian mourning rituals and ideas towards funerary customs in this chapter and addressed their origins. It was also a very strong introduction to her thesis. The anatomy act of 1832 was part of the criminalisation of poverty that was current at the time, and responsible for a lot of the later obsession about having a good funeral. It looked, in quite graphic detail, about corpse collecting, dissection of criminals, and the debates around the nature of scientific enquiry. All terribly interesting stuff.
The second part on the Act was not quite so gripping. Here the book tended to get lost a little in just telling the story. This happened, and then they did this, and it was responded to in this way. There were some interesting stories about burking though as well as some very interesting looks into propaganda and political manipulation. So it was far from a dull read.
The third chapter I was expecting to have looked further to the future, I really wanted Richardson to go further into some of her theories about the link between the act and Victorian views on death and poverty. Unfortunately she focused rather more closely on the direct aftermath of the act. There were still some interesting stories told in this chapter, notably about rumours of cannibalism in the workhouses.
The afterward, looked at the relationship between bodies used for dissection, and organ transplants today. It was interesting to see how people are still quite squeamish about what happens to their bodies after death, and how the poor still often end up the victims of "medicine". Though I have to say I didn't quite finish the afterword as I'm so not a modern historian.
Richardson claims to have been one of the first historian's to look at the anatomy act in any great detail. I'm not sure if this is true. It seems rather an important event to have been neglected for so long. The whole historical area of history of the body, is quite new though and so her take on it might be entirely original. It's definitely an interesting history book, one I'd recommend to people who are interested in Victorians, poverty, social issues, politics, science, and all things morbid.