Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ymhj20

Download by: [Alan Bates] Date: 02 July 2016, At: 09:43

Museum History Journal

ISSN: 1936-9816 (Print) 1936-9824 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ymhj20

Anatomy on trial: Itinerant anatomy museums inmid nineteenth-century England

A. W. H. Bates

To cite this article: A. W. H. Bates (2016) Anatomy on trial: Itinerant anatomy museumsin mid nineteenth-century England, Museum History Journal, 9:2, 188-204, DOI:10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105

Published online: 06 Jun 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 9

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Anatomy on trial: Itinerant anatomy museums in midnineteenth-century EnglandA. W. H. Bates

University College London

ABSTRACTIn the mid nineteenth century there were several travellingcollections of anatomical waxworks in England. Their stated aimwas to educate the public, especially women, about health,particularly reproductive health, to which end their proprietorsgave demonstrations, sold pamphlets, and in some casespractised medicine. Most large population centres on the railwaynetwork played host to a museum and the total number ofvisitors is estimated at over a million. Despite a lack of complaintsfrom the public, there was opposition from the magistrates whichresulted in a series of prosecutions on charges of obscenity.Owing to their impermanence and their reputation as indecentexhibitions, these itinerant anatomy museums all but disappearedfrom cultural histories of nineteenth-century England. They were,however, sufficiently successful in engaging with audiences thatthey briefly challenged the monopoly that the medical profession— newly unified under the Medical Act — exercised over thestudy of anatomy.

KEYWORDSmuseum; anatomy; England;medicine; obscenity;waxworks; law

The beginnings of the travelling anatomy trade: Sarti’s wax museum

For most of the twentieth century, public anatomical museums were forgotten. Altick’sclassic The Shows of London rediscovered them and characterized the London museumsas ‘vulgarized’ and ‘utterly hypocritical,’ an assessment that, according to Craske, influ-enced subsequent scholars to make ‘derisive’ judgments of anatomy shows.1 Metropolitananatomy museums have been re-evaluated in the twenty-first century as multifacetedinstitutions at the boundary of science, entertainment and commerce,2 but itinerant col-lections, which do not fit the conventional model of museums as stable, fixed spaces, havereceived less attention, with the notable exception of the work of Podgorny on LatinAmerica and Zarzosa and Pardon-Tomás on the Roca Museum.3 As Podgorny observes,travelling anatomy shows were a global phenomenon, and much remains to be donebefore their extent and influence in the nineteenth century is understood. Englishpopular anatomy museums have been described in the unpublished thesis of Rene Burme-ister and in my own study of London’s museums, but digitization of provincial newspapershas since made available much new material. The present study draws upon this to tracefour museums that toured the English provinces in the mid nineteenth century. England

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT A. W. H. Bates alan.bates@ucl.ac.uk

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL, 2016VOL. 9, NO. 2, 188–204http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

seems to have been atypical in that there was both a significant public appetite for anatomyshows — which attracted them from continental Europe — and marked professional andgovernmental opposition. Most travelling museums went out of business in 1857–58, theyears of passage of the Obscene Publications Act and Medical Act, respectively, but themost durable, owned by Joseph Woodhead, remained active and briefly served as a train-ing centre for unregistered medical practitioners.

Anatomical models had been on display to the English public since the eighteenthcentury, but dedicated anatomy collections with a variety of exhibits became a viable pro-spect only after the murder-for-dissection scandals in Edinburgh and London in 1829–31,after which anatomy ‘turned to gold,’ medical anatomy classes reached record sizes, andforgotten anatomical models were dusted off for exhibition.4 The 1832 Anatomy Act, alegislative response to the scandals, mandated licenses for dissecting rooms and so disad-vantaged the traditional private teachers who admitted anyone for a fee: most licenseeswere medical schools who accepted only students undergoing professional training.5

Curious about anatomy but banned from the dissecting room, the public turned tomodels in order to experience something of this controversial subject for themselves. Con-tinental waxworks, rejected by most English medical teachers, were a ready-made oppor-tunity for showmen to create public anatomical exhibitions without the need for realhuman tissues.6

The anatomical collection imported by the Italian Antonio Sarti in 1839 was the first ofEngland’s itinerant museums.7 Sarti, a modeller in wax who professed no medical exper-tise, proposed a permanent anatomical waxwork display in London along the lines of LaSpecola in his native Florence, but failed to gain support from the British government andso decided to divide his collection between rented venues in London and the North ofEngland. Advertised as being for ‘those who have not nerve enough, or opportunitiesenough, to witness dissections, or examine portions of the actual frame of man,’ the cen-trepieces were a life-sized anatomical Venus and Adonis that could be taken apart to revealtheir internal organs.8 The stated aim was to provide practical instruction that wouldenable visitors to communicate with their medical advisors and take responsibility fortheir own health, and there were warnings about fashionable hazards such as alcohol con-sumption and tight-laced corsets. The show included ‘a vast number of detached portionsof the human body, illustrative of the sexes, gestation, &c.,’ but the advertising noted that‘[t]here is nothing indelicate in the exhibition or unfit for the inspection of any persons,’and no one questioned its suitability for public display.9 Sarti opened in London in a primeWest End location but soon moved on to fresh audiences in North America, leaving hiswife running the museum in Leeds. When he died in 1850 he was eulogized in Englandas a sympathetic and gentle showman who had promoted health among men andwomen of all classes.10

Within a few years, there was a change of attitude to anatomy shows. When theGerman wax modeller Joseph Kahn, who unlike Sarti purported to be a medical man,brought his museum, complete with its own Venus, to London in 1851 medical reviewersinitially welcomed it,11 but they soon began to take a close interest in its contents and theinitially supportive Lancet demanded that certain models be removed or hidden.Mr Barker, who gave lectures at Sarti’s as it toured the provinces, complained in 1853that the Norfolk Mercury had performed a volte face since the exhibition’s previous visitto Norwich in 1846. Then they had warmly recommended it, but seven years later the

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 189

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

editor was urging magistrates to suppress it as a ‘nuisance and immoral pest’ that was‘destructive of feminine sensitiveness and delicacy’ and ‘got up to excite visual lust.’12

These criticisms reflected a more censorious view of nudity and reproductive healththat was encouraged by evangelical groups such as the Society for the Prevention ofVice, which deemed realistic anatomical models unacceptable for public display.13

Barker countered, in an argument that would become commonplace in defence ofanatomy shows, that nudity was widely prevalent in painting and sculpture, and thatwax models were liable to arouse lust only in the ‘depraved imagination.’ Nevertheless,Sarti’s was careful to protect female modesty by providing separate viewing times forwomen, with female demonstrators on hand to explain the models to ‘Mothers andNurses.’14 These ‘ladies’ days’ were advertised as ‘an UNPARALLELED OPPORTUNITYtoWomen of acquiring knowledge of the greatest personal interest [of which] every mothermore especially, ought to avail herself… ,’15 and according to one local newspaper, Sarti’s‘fair patronesses… appreciated his endeavours to communicate information on a subjecthitherto almost entirely hidden from them… .’16 Since pregnancy and childbirth werehardly ‘almost entirely hidden’ from women, it appears there was information on moreprivate matters than these, which may have been responsible for medical and magisterialfears that museums were promoting immorality.

Woodhead and Reimer

By the early 1850s there were about as many anatomy shows in England as were commer-cially viable: Kahn and Caplin in London, and Woodhead, Reimer, Sarti and Reentztouring (Table 1). Only London was large enough to sustain static museums and evenKahn’s, the best known of them — was sometimes forced to tour, supplementing itsincome by selling venereal disease remedies.17 Travelling museums had an even more pre-carious existence: their arrival was heralded by a flurry of advertising in newspapers,streets, omnibuses and even urinals, they rapidly dropped their admission price to sixpence after such ‘persons of quality’ as could be induced to pay a shilling had taken inthe show, and then departed once interest was on the wane. One museum succeededanother, or the same one might return again after a few years, in each case with collectionsadvertised as bigger and better, though they were probably much the same. Their peregri-nations were limited only by the (quite extensive) railway network and the difficulty ofpacking and unpacking the heavy, fragile waxworks (Figure 1). On one occasion a collec-tion was impounded and damaged while its owner disputed the 24-shilling carriage charge(to recoup which he would have had to attract 576 visitors).18

From the start, Joseph Woodhead’s venture into the anatomy business ran into pro-blems with the censors. His museum, which opened in Sheffield Music Hall in 1852,included models previously shown in the Great Exhibition, a hugely influential projectwith Royal support that had awakened the public’s taste for displays of objects and thushelped make anatomy museums viable (a London museum of plaster models curatedby that most outspoken of British anatomists, Robert Knox, had closed in 1846 for lackof interest).19 Woodhead’s new museum was crowded with visitors, but within a monththere had been complaints to the Chief Constable and it was threatened with closure.20

Woodhead responded in an open letter to Sheffield’s mayor:

190 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

My Models are such as pertinently and faithfully illustrate the mechanism of the humanstructure, the functions of its various organs, and the diseases by which it is assailed. Theiranatomical correctness and artistic beauty are universally admitted, whilst the eloquentaddresses of the demonstrator, couched in language the most chaste, elegant, and appropri-ate, produce upon all audiences the most thrilling and favourable impression… . Instancesalmost without end occur of husbands who have seen the Exhibition sending their wives;and in several cases fathers have brought their sons and mothers their daughters ofmature age. Surely if there were any demoralizing tendency in the Exhibition such instanceswould not have transpired… . If there are good grounds for objecting to my Museum, thereare equally good grounds of objection to the museums of anatomy in London, Edinburgh,and Dublin… .21

The key word, ‘demoralizing,’ had been coined at the time of the French Revolution todescribe a tendency to moral corruption that occurred when the passions of the proletariatwere aroused. Demoralization was reckoned, in early nineteenth-century popular fiction,to be a problem for anatomists who dissected cadavers, the results of which ranged fromhabituation and hardness of heart to passionate arousal, but wax museums were notnecessarily subject to the same difficulties; indeed, their proprietors boasted that theirpatrons would avoid the horrors of the dissecting-room.22 Woodhead’s remark thatmedical men and clergy were among his visitors indicated that the collection was of inter-est to the professions, but, unlike the anatomy schools, his doors were open to all whocould pay, and working folk made up much of the audience. To encourage women toattend, there were days when men were not admitted, so that, Woodhead mischievouslyclaimed, women would be able to study anatomy ‘without being… exposed to the society

Table 1. Public anatomy museums in nineteenth century englandProprietor Dates Itinerary (year of arrival)

Sarti 1839–57 London (1839), Leeds (1841), Bradford, Hull, Newcastle (1842), Bristol (1843),Torquay, Portsea (1844), Belfast (1845), Dublin, Norwich (1846), Manchester,Portsea (1847), Aberdeen, Perth, Newcastle (1848), Leeds (1849), Manchester,Blackburn, Liverpool (1850), Huddersfield (1851), Derby, Birmingham (1852),Norwich, Ipswich (1853), Boston (1854), Durham, York (1856), Worcester,Reading (1857)

Thibert 1846 LondonKahn 1851–72 London (1851), Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Newcastle upon Tyne (1852),

London (1853)Caplin 1851–63 LondonReimer 1852–58 Hull, Leeds (1852), Bradford, London (1853), Hull, Manchester (1854), Huddersfield

(1855), Newcastle (1856), Aberdeen, Edinburgh (1857), Preston, Blackburn,Bradford (1858)

Woodhead 1854–83 Sheffield (1852),Birmingham, Dudley, Walsall, Wolverhampton (1853), Sheffield(1854), Burnley (1856), Liverpool (1857), Birmingham (1858), Whitwick (1862),Manchester (1865), Derby (1866), Liverpool (1868), Manchester (1874), Liverpool(1874-)

Reentz and Kreitmeyer 1855–57 Bristol, Bath (1855), Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham (1856), Leicester,Coventry (1857)

Marston 1859–62 LondonLloyd 1859 Leeds (1859)‘London AnatomicalMuseum’

1862–66 London

Hamilton 1865–6 LondonHarvey and Co. 1867 LondonAdair 1867–75 Aberdeen

Sources: Adapted from the incomplete table in Bates, ‘Indecent and demoralising representations’ and supplemented withinformation from reports and advertisements in provincial newspapers.

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 191

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

of medical students.’23Anatomy museums were one of the few public shows open to unac-companied women, and the possibility of demoralization probably referred to the sup-posed effects of the knowledge they might acquire there.24 Woodhead’s assurance that,at least in some cases, their husbands knew of and approved their visits sounds defensive.He was warned that he might be prosecuted for obscenity, and prudently left town.

The German wax modeller J.W. Reimer (or sometimes, including in his own advertis-ing, Reimers), brought his anatomy museum to England in the same year as Woodheadand encountered similar objections, despite having received a token of official approvalwhen the import duty on his waxworks was waived on the grounds they were edu-cational.25 His museum opened in Hull without incident, but a few weeks after its transferto Leeds Music Hall one of the borough magistrates visited and thought it ‘grossly inde-cent, obscene, and immoral,’ an opinion supported by a ‘medical gentleman,’ though thelatter admitted when questioned that the museum ‘contained some fair anatomical speci-mens.’ In vain did Reimer’s lawyer protest that Kahn in Newcastle andWoodhead in Shef-field were exhibiting similar models. Sir George Goodman, the chief magistrate,acknowledged the museum’s educational potential, and ‘admitted that good might insome instances arise from such exhibitions,’ but nonetheless fined Reimer a nominal 2s6d (two-and-a-half times the admission price) and placed the museum under policesupervision.26

Figure 1. Travelling anatomy museums in England, 1839–83. Data from Bates, ‘Indecent and demor-alising representations’ and various reports and advertisements in provincial newspapers.

192 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

Sir George divided the specimens into three groups: those that must be removed, thosethat could remain for the use of medical practitioners and students, and those that couldbe shown to the public. ‘In all museums of this kind… there must necessarily be particularspecimens, from which persons strongly predisposed to vicious propensities might drawfood for their licentious imaginations; but, on the other hand, men differently constitutedwould look with admiration at the wisdom displayed in the human form by the greatCreator, and to them, and especially to medical students, the examination of such speci-mens was interesting and beneficial… .’ Reimer complied with these conditions and hismuseum reopened after a week.27 In 1853 he moved to London’s Leicester Square, in com-petition with Kahn.

Woodhead temporarily escaped his legal problems by embarking on a tour of Northerntowns but on his return to Sheffield he was charged with exhibiting ‘an indecent waxfigure,’ an offence reported by J.F. Wright, a local surgeon. The town council sentanother medical man, Joseph Law, to investigate. Law found the model complained ofconcealed behind a curtain: Woodhead told his audience that they were about to see‘the results of vice depicted in models;’ he then quoted several passages of scripture,such as ‘the wise man seeing the evil, fleeth from it’ — which Law thought an ‘obscene’use of the Bible — before dramatically pulling the curtain aside. When Woodhead’s soli-citor put it to Law that the models were scientific, he declared the suggestion absurd: theywere, he said, ‘calculated to excite the erotic desires of the people.’ On the basis of thisopinion, the magistrates agreed to convict: Woodhead was fined ten shillings and threa-tened with further proceedings, but he defiantly remained open, and presumably busy,as people came to see what all the fuss was about.28

Woodhead’s cavalier attitude to prosecution probably stemmed from a combination ofself-righteousness and a taste for free publicity. When, in January 1854, he was indicted forcommitting a public nuisance by exhibiting ‘filthy, obscene, and indecent figures, calcu-lated to offend public decency and demoralize society,’ he took the opportunity toremind the court that (some of) his models had previously been shown at the ultra-respectable Crystal Palace. Woodhead claimed he was in fact being victimized for allowingmembers of a ‘society for the study of botany and anatomy’ to use his museum for train-ing; this was a ‘great sore’ to ‘selfish’ local medics, two of whom had sworn before a grandjury that his models were obscene, though more than four hundred visitors signed a peti-tion stating that the museum was ‘highly adapted for the purpose of conveying a knowl-edge of anatomy and physiology to the general public.’29 Woodhead exercised his right tohave the case heard in the Court of Queen’s Bench, and a date was set for a hearing in Yorkin July, but there is no record of it having taken place, probably because the mayor andcouncil lost interest once Woodhead moved on again.30 He exhibited in Burnley beforerelocating to Liverpool, where in 1857 a sightseer found only a few people in themuseum, all from the working classes, very interested in the models, and perfectly wellbehaved.31

The Obscene Publications Act and after

Both Sarti and Reimer left the English museum circuit in 1857: Madame Sarti sold the ana-tomical Adonis (advertising it as comprising an improbable one thousand pieces) which,again paired with a Venus, made sporadic appearances up and down Britain for several

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 193

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

years.32 Reimer returned to Austria and Germany, where he was more favourably received.Reentz and Kreitmeyer’s museum also closed in 1857, only two years after it had firstopened in Bristol with some 400 models, having briefly toured the North with Dr andMrs Leach as lecturers.33 The closure of these three museums probably reflected decliningpublic interest along with their proprietors’ growing fears of having their models confis-cated under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. The Act’s powers made magistrates moreconfrontational: in 1859 they inspected William and Louis Lloyd’s museum as soon as itopened in Leeds and judged it ‘dangerous to public morality;’ the Chief Constable returnedwith a warrant and seized wax models of ‘nine naked women, and divers (to wit) 34 otherfigures, articles, and representations in obscene and indecent situations.’ On this occasionthe professional witness was Mr Nunneley, a lecturer at the nearby Leeds School of Medi-cine, who gave evidence that these were ‘the most disgusting and beastly figures he hadever seen, even in Paris.’ The defence barrister Mr Maule replied with a ‘lengthy andable address’ arguing that the museum would prevent rather than promote immoralityby warning of the dangers of ‘uncontrolled indulgence,’ that anatomical models did notcome under the scope of the Obscene Publications Act, and that only an ‘ill-regulated’mind would feel anything other than ‘disgust’ at seeing the effects of venereal diseaseupon the body.34 Under cross-examination, Nunneley admitted that the models were‘not untrue in fact,’ though he called them ‘clumsily made.’ The chief magistrate acknowl-edged that ‘these models might be very proper things to exhibit in a purely medical andanatomical museum’ but thought they ought not to be shown ‘merely for gain,’ an uncer-tain distinction since, as Woodhead observed, medical museums such as that at Queen’sCollege Birmingham charged for admission.35 However, the magistrates ruled the wax-works obscene and ordered them impounded pending destruction, prompting theBritish Medical Journal to celebrate the end of ‘a pair of disgusting charlatans.’36

The obscene nature of any artefact was contextual: the courts might seize and destroymaterial likely to corrupt the public, from engravings and photographs to novelty tooth-pick cases, but typically ignored anything deemed ‘improving’ or educational such as fineart and antiquities.37 The legal test was whether a work would deprave or corrupt its audi-ence; the intention of the exhibitor was irrelevant.38 There are no records of ordinary visi-tors’ experiences at English anatomy museums, but convictions for obscenity assumedthey were acquiring demoralizing knowledge there — for example learning how toavoid or treat venereal disease — and some probably went for that reason. Museum cat-alogues presented a moralizing agenda, and Woodhead’s was especially puritanical: thebody was ‘the temple of God’ that the visitor was urged not to ‘defile,’ biblical quotationswarned of the dire consequences of a ‘depraved life,’ and there were constant reminders of‘what misery [a] few hours of pleasure may bring.’39 Prosecutors implied that such senti-ments were a hypocritical facade behind which immorality was encouraged, a view notdissimilar to that put forward in popular tales of the dissecting room, where, it wasalleged, medics operated under a cloak of science while privately indulging their sexualpassions. Despite the appetite of the popular press for anatomical scandals and their indig-nation over ‘obscene’ anatomical waxworks, there were no reports of students of anatomy— popular or medical — actually indulging in immoral behaviour.40 The loucheanatomists and depraved visitors to public museums were figments, it seems, of journal-istic and legal imaginations. It was, however, convenient to prosecute museums forobscenity — the charge was difficult to defend and if found guilty their models could

194 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

be destroyed — even if this was a pretext and the real grievance against them was, asWoodhead claimed, their links with irregular medical practice. Although the Lloydshad allegedly ‘committed breaches of the Medical Act’ in several places and under differentnames, they were never prosecuted for this (had they been convicted would have facedonly a modest fine) but an obscenity conviction cost them their museum.41

Woodhead’s museum proved the most durable, becoming a quasi-official fixture inLiverpool’s Paradise Street (while a separate selection of models went on tour). In 1858he lent some gynaecological waxworks to a Manchester court to help explain to thejury the evidence in an abortion trial: the defendant was found guilty and sentenced todeath, and Woodhead was duly thanked.42 This indicates not only that the models wereconsidered instructive but also that Woodhead had no connection with abortion orother illegal practices, as he would hardly have risked being involved with such a case ifhe were vulnerable to a similar charge himself.43 In the mid 1860s he was selling Physiologyof Marriage, with its florid accounts of successful cures for sexual problems and glowingtestimonials that luminaries such as Sir Charles Locock and Sir Henry Holland indignantlydenied having written, but this made no mention of birth control.44 It was generallyassumed that visitors to anatomy museums resorted there for reasons that were embarras-sing rather than illegal, hence the following exchange in another of Woodhead’s courtappearances:

‘Mr. Segar [prosecuting]: What were the bills you used to give the plaintiff to give out?Defendant [Woodhead]: For the museum.Mr. Segar: What was upon them?The Recorder: We had better not go into that (Laughter.)Defendant: I can give you a copy of one of those bills.The Recorder: Mr. Segar, Mr. Woodhead thinks one of the bills might be

useful to you (Laughter.)’45

Woodhead’s museum continued to attract vague allegations of obscenity but nocharges were brought. Dudley magistrates called it ‘disgusting and demoralizing’ butdid not think themselves authorized to suppress it,46and a Derby clergyman com-plained that the Temperance Hall was an inappropriate venue for the show,though the owners of that institution did not object.47 Newspaper stories of ‘obscen-ity’ probably did Woodhead no harm, and he may even have encouraged them: whenhe said in court that he practised ‘a little’ as an accoucheur but did not advertise assuch there was laughter in the gallery: his museum provided all the publicity he couldwant.48

Woodhead’s obstetric practice gave him another day in court in 1868 when he sued apatient’s husband for slander. The quick-tempered defendant had become jealous of theshowman’s attentions to his wife and pushed his way into the private office, whose fur-nishings included a seven-foot wide divan. He threatened to attack Woodhead, who heaccused of running a ‘common [knocking] shop’ and of having ‘debauched everywoman who went there as a patient.’49 Though the basis of this allegation was thetraffic of women to Woodhead’s office from the museum, counsel for the defendant didnot questionWoodhead about his obstetric practice but concentrated on the inflammatorynature of the waxworks:

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 195

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

‘Mr. Segar: Have you got a single decent figure in your museum? — Plaintiff: It all dependswhat a person calls a decent figure. A man of intellect calls them every one decent figures.’50

Woodhead’s confidence in the intelligence of his clientele may have swayed a local jurywho felt that they had every right to visit an anatomy museum if they wished: if the RoyalCollege of Surgeons could display real anatomical specimens in their London museum,‘there could be no harm or wickedness in giving the people of Liverpool an opportunityof seeing a Model.’51 The jury decided that Woodhead had not debauched his patient,and awarded him a penny damages, and that only after being told they had to award some-thing. These so-called ‘contemptuous damages’ were reserved for cases where the libel wasproven but the plaintiff had suffered no harm to his reputation. Indeed, the proceedingsprovided still more publicity for Woodhead as a ‘general medical practitioner andaccoucheur.’52

Woodhead maintained his links with herbalists and naturopaths, now organized underthe banner of the British Medical Reform Association; these irregular practitioners werenot eligible for the medical register but wished to demonstrate acquaintance with thescience of anatomy and used the museum as an examination centre for their membershipdiploma.53 The British Medical Journal disapproved of this arrangement, complaining that‘we have no knowledge of any such institution or association’ and recommending that theattention of the police be drawn to the museum.54 The magistrates of Liverpool — a bus-tling, rough seaport with many transient visitors desirous of educating themselves before avoyage or sorting out health problems afterwards — tolerated the museum’s convenientpresence, but an opportunity to prosecute eventually arose when Woodhead unwiselytook his collection to Manchester in 1874.

The seizure of Woodhead’s museum

An early visitor to the museum in its new location was Detective Inspector Henderson, aplain-clothes policeman to whom the unsuspecting Woodhead gave a tour in the course ofwhich he described dozens of life-sized models, lifting the gauze that covered each as hedid so. On the walls were signs reading ‘to the pure all things are pure,’ ‘Man know thyself,’and ‘knowledge is power.’ The inspector, having promised to call again, obtained a magis-trates’ warrant, returned the following day with the deputy chief constable and somedetectives, and seized a van load of models and some printed ‘lectures on anatomy’ as evi-dence for a prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act.55

Unwelcome as the raid must have been to the sixty-year-old Woodhead, it could nothave been unexpected after more than twenty years in the business. All the travellinganatomy shows except his were now gone, even Kahn’s having been ousted from its fam-iliar Leicester Square location the previous year after some of the models, which weresimilar to Woodhead’s, were seized and smashed in court.56 Kahn had long since leftthe country and the museum’s new owners, sellers of dubious venereal disease cureswho traded on his reputation and sometimes impersonated him, closed it downwithout a struggle, leaving Woodhead as the last exponent of a controversial trade.57

To prevent his models being destroyed, he offered to close to the public and keep themuseum as a private collection, although, as his defence counsel observed, the models hadbeen exhibited in ‘every important city in England’ over the past twenty years, and in

196 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

Manchester for eight, without any apparent ill effects. The magistrates ordered eight of themodels to be destroyed, and returned the rest on condition that he promised not to exhibitthem again.58 The promise did not extend to Liverpool and a catalogue of the museumthere (Figure 2), produced sometime after 1877, includes models that may have beensimilar to those confiscated in Manchester: ‘the female organs of generation,’ ‘the breastwith the nipple,’ and ‘the disastrous effects of onanism in the female.’ Material of thistype was, however, a minority of the collection: out of over a thousand models onlyeighty-eight depicted the genitalia or the effects of sexually acquired diseases. In additionto all the other parts of the body, there were complete sets illustrating the five senses andthe development of the embryo, plus various curiosities including animal horns, stigmata,and the skeleton of a bat.59 By banning everything, the Manchester magistrates made itclear they regarded the whole museum as potentially obscene. It was not Woodhead’s per-sonal conduct, or eight particular models, but the very idea of a public anatomy show thathad been on trial.

From his Paradise Street premises, Woodhead offered a ‘Course of Six Lectures onMid-wifery’ to ‘Ladies and Female Emigrants’ using models and coloured diagrams, and con-sulted in person or by mail for ‘diseases affecting the mental and generative organs… andthe numerous concomitants to sexual disorganization.’60 He became President of theMedical Reform Association, in which capacity he made a final return to the Manchestercourts to defend his younger brother, William Henry Woodhead, who had been chargedunder the Medical Act with falsely claiming to be a registered medical practitioner— partof a crackdown on ‘quack doctors.’61 Soon after, the Medical Reform Association fell intodesuetude but Joseph Woodhead continued to work as an accoucheur and eclectic prac-titioner, untroubled by the authorities.62 On his death at the age of 67 he left a respectable

Figure 2. Woodhead’s Liverpool museum as depicted in its catalogue. From the author’s collection.

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 197

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

£6,679 to his two daughters.63 His museum remained open to visitors, though little adver-tised, until the late twentieth century.64

Anatomy shows and the profession of medicine

Despite the considerable differences between public waxwork shows and medical anatomycollections, museum proprietors emphasized the similarities between their own museumsand medical schools: ‘anatomical museums are wax hospitals, to which mostly all the dis-eases that the human frame is liable to are admitted, and exhibited, under glass, for thepayment of one shilling.’65 Woodhead, Kahn and the Lloyds set themselves up inmedical practice, using their museums as a draw for clients and an advertisement oftheir learning. It is therefore unsurprising that, aside from some early positive commentsin the Lancet about Kahn’s museum, the attitude of ‘regular’ medical practitioners wasadversarial. The regulars dismissed museum owners as quacks, an ill-defined categorywhose hallmarks included advertising, using pseudonyms, dispensing secret remedies(rather than writing prescriptions) and deliberately keeping patients in ignorance.66

Museum proprietors indulged in all these behaviours except the last, but their mostblatant breach of medical etiquette was advertising: they hired men to give out handbills,placed posters in public places and advertised constantly in local newspapers.67

From the 1830s onwards, medical men increasingly regarded themselves as scientificprofessionals rather than gentleman practitioners, and organized quackery, which hadlong competed with orthodoxy for trade, came to be seen as an affront to the scientificauthority of medicine.68 In the 1850s, medical journals often carried subscriber-pleasingeditorials calling for legislation to curb quacks and charlatans (‘woe betide them!’) andrestrict practice to qualified men.69 What was to become the Medical Act of 1858 had along gestation — sixteen unsuccessful bills in eighteen years — during which the detailswere thrashed out.70 A target of the proposed legislation was the museum practitioner:a draft bill published in 1852 allowed a medic’s name to be erased from the register for‘disgraceful’ conduct that brought ‘scandal or odium’ on the profession, for which theexample given was ‘publishing indecent advertisements or pamphlets, or immoral orobscene prints or books,’ activities particularly associated with the owners of publicanatomy museums.71 Though the Act as passed in 1858 omitted any examples of whatwas therein called ‘infamous’ conduct, the rare sanction of erasure was employedagainst the few museum doctors who managed to get themselves onto the register. Inthe ten years to 1868, only fifteen names were erased out of over nine thousand: sevenof these had been fraudulently registered from the start, one was automatically excludedafter his qualifications were revoked, and three were convicted of serious felonies. Ofthe four struck off for infamous conduct, two — Samuel La’Mert (author of Philosophyof Marriage) and Robert Jacob Jordain — were linked with anatomy shows (Kahn’s andthe London Anatomical Museum, respectively). Samuel’s cousin, Lima AbrahamLa’Mert, was threatened with erasure but remained on the register, to the chagrin ofthe General Council, as the Society of Apothecaries could not be persuaded to revokehis legitimately acquired licence.72

That there were not more erasures was due to the difficulty in museum doctors becom-ing registered in the first place. Although the Medical Act allowed unqualified prac-titioners to register under a ‘grandfather’ clause, and recognized a variety of

198 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

qualifications, Joseph Kahn’s application was turned down after the Council decided that,as a museum proprietor, he had not been in practice.73 Since they later attempted to chargehim with unlicensed practice it appears the criteria were flexibly applied with a view toexcluding Kahn and those like him. However, the Act did not ban unlicensed practice,and itinerant museum doctors could still treat patients provided they did not ‘falselypretend’ to be registered. In a defiant response to this ambiguity, Woodhead acquiredan MD from the Metropolitan College of New York — a degree to which he claimed tohave ‘as good a title’ as any physician in Liverpool — displayed his diploma in themuseum, and challenged detractors to summons him under the Medical Act.74 None did.

Unregistered practitioners were so numerous in the mid nineteenth century (newspa-per advertisements for museums were almost lost among many others for spermatorrhoeatreatments, vapour baths, remedies for nervous exhaustion, and other patent medicines)that museum doctors would have made little difference to orthodox medicine in termsof trade. They were, however, a highly visible threat to the hegemony of a system of insti-tutionalized medical training that was based around licensed anatomy schools. To havelearned anatomy from dissection was a rite of passage that reinforced professionalunity.75 Although only some doctors, notably surgeons, needed to know anatomy fortheir work, all aspiring registrants had to learn it, sometimes reluctantly and withoutunderstanding. What Ponce calls its ‘socializing’ aspects (habituation to unpleasantsights, objectification of the body, and building professional camaraderie in the dissectingroom) were clearly important, though these were not usually acknowledged as reasons todissect.76 Public anatomy museums placed themselves in the tradition of anatomy as apath to self-knowledge whose value to all students was independent of its practical appli-cations. They proclaimed its enlightening potential through slogans such as ‘know thyself,’but their capability to deliver such transformative self-understanding was no more evidentthan the benefits of cadaveric dissection to general practitioners.

Anatomy museums resembled other popular attractions such as panoramas, mena-geries and freak shows in combining education and entertainment, but their proprietorsemphasized the former, claiming that visitors could gather sufficient information totake responsibility for their own health and that of their family.77 Even those opposedto anatomical waxwork shows conceded that they could be educational for the right(medical) audience, and efforts to censor them were an admission that the public couldalso acquire knowledge there. For their critics, the museums harboured ‘secrets’ that thepublic should not learn: for example, the early signs of venereal disease could bestudied, the better to avoid what moralists deemed the just deserts of debauchery. It isnot known what museum lecturers taught in relation to the models of uteri and ovariesthat featured in every collection, but they had an opportunity to challenge some unsub-stantiated popular beliefs, such as that pregnancy did not occur apart from the femaleorgasm (hence the culpability of ‘fallen women’).78 Married and unmarried coupleswere employing artificial contraceptive methods from the 1860s onwards, and it is possiblethat museum lecturers spoke about birth control, though it was unlawful to publish suchmaterial, as the Besant and Bradlaugh case would demonstrate.79 Other than museumsthere were few sources of information on reproductive health and ignorance on sexualmatters often extended into adulthood.80 Even if people had access to the standardmedical works on the subject they would have derived little practical benefit — untilthe 1930s, for example, most medical books gave the middle of the menstrual cycle as

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 199

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

the least fertile period.81 It seems likely that whatever the museums were teaching aboutreproductive health caused sufficient concern among anti-vice campaigners for them topush for their closure.

Because wax models could be used to teach anatomy outside licensed schools, publicmuseums also posed a challenge to the privatized culture of dissection-centred medicaltraining. Medics wont to criticize quacks for their ignorance of anatomy were discomfitedwhen museum owners told their visitors that it was not necessary to endure ‘blood andfilth’ in order to learn anatomy.82 In North America, the eclectic movement, under thebanner of medical reform, succeeded in creating an alternative stream of medical training,with colleges for the common man.83 Their English counterparts were fewer and less wellorganized, and althoughWoodhead briefly managed to run an anatomy diploma indepen-dently of the medical schools, it never achieved state recognition. Their potential to under-mine the medical training system by democratizing anatomy meant that anatomy showswere resented by many in the medical profession. Though magistrates and anti-vicesocieties were the agents that prosecuted anatomy museums, it was usually localmedical men who complained and testified against them.

Conclusion

There are no surviving attendance records or account books for anatomy shows (if theyeven kept them) but assuming a conservative thirty visitors a day (museums were oftenopen for ten hours and Kahn claimed 2000 a day) at least a million visited an anatomymuseum of some kind and the total was probably much higher. The extent of the travellingmuseum trade puts into perspective the critical responses to them. Magistrates andmedical men protested that museums were obscene, disgusting and demoralizing, butthere were rarely complaints from visitors and what few there were related to treatmentsreceived and not to the models or lectures.

For the nascent medical profession, whose authority was based on professional unityand institutionalized training, public anatomy museums were an unwelcome challenge.84

Freedom to visit them encouraged the consumer, rather than the practitioner, to takecontrol of their own and their family’s health. For women in particular it was an oppor-tunity to learn a few secrets: how the embryo developed, how conception occurred, andhow sexually transmitted diseases looked. Of course, what was learned in a museumcould be put to bad use: one unfortunate man killed his wife and then himself, in a fitof insanity; at the inquest his brother reported that it had been his habit ‘to attend awell-known anatomical museum to study the effectual way of committing suicide,’ andthe surgeon who examined the body, willing to concede the didactic potential ofmodels on this occasion, confirmed that the throat cutting had been done with ‘great sur-gical precision.’85 Opponents of public museums argued they encouraged sexual impropri-ety; museum proprietors that they promoted abstinence: neither case was provable, but itis difficult to imagine that the syphilitic models had an aphrodisiac effect.

After the passage of the Medical Act, running a public museum became officiallyincompatible with medical practice because of the necessary reliance on advertising.That museums were also places of entertainment, with some characteristics of freakshows,86 were less grave handicaps— the Hunterian museum admitted non-medical visi-tors and contained many freaks — though they also militated against professional

200 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

acceptance. After Woodhead’s death, collections of anatomical models entirely lost theirconnection with medicine and were kept for the curious to stare at. In a generation,medical professionals had moved from teaching that only charlatans benefited frompatients’ ignorance of anatomy, to perpetuating that ignorance themselves by preventingthe general public from seeing anatomical models in an educational context.87 On theContinent, public anatomy shows were accepted as vehicles for popularizing knowledgeof sexual health and pathology.88 In England, the charges of obscenity that had beenthe most effective pretext for closing down museums in the nineteenth century were per-petuated in the twentieth by a medical profession that still felt threatened by anatomyshows. In his 1877 catalogue, Woodhead expressed a hope that the value of anatomywas being more appreciated, that ‘groundless prejudices against it have… seen theirday’ and the time will not be far distant when it shall become more popular ‘and forman essential branch of education.’89 That goal has still to be realized.

Notes

1. R.D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 242;M. Craske, ‘“Unwholesome” and “Pornographic:” A Reassessment of the Place of Rack-strow’s Museum in the Story of Eighteenth-Century Anatomical Collection and Exhibition’,Journal of the History of Collections, 23 (2011), 75–99.

2. M.R. Burmeister, ‘Popular Anatomical Museums in Nineteenth-Century England’ (PhDdiss., Rutgers University, 2000); M. Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and EmbodiedSocial Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2002); S.J.M.M. Alberti, ‘Wax Bodies: Art and Anatomy in Victorian Medical Museums’,Museum History Journal, 2 (2009), 7–36 and Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nine-teenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

3. I. Podgorny, ‘Travelling Museums and Itinerant Collections in Nineteenth-Century LatinAmerica’, Museum History Journal, 6 (2013), 127–46; Alfonso Zarzosa and José Pardo-Tomás, ‘Fall and Rise of the Roca Museum: Owners, Meanings and Audiences of an Anatom-ical Collection from Barcelona to Antwerp, 1922–2012’, in The Fate of AnatomicalCollections, ed. by Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015),pp. 161–76.

4. A.W. Bates, ‘“Indecent and Demoralising Representations:” Public Anatomy Museums inMid-Victorian England’, Medical History, 52 (2008), 1–22.

5. R. Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2000).

6. On the history of these, see Anna Maerker, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlighten-ment in Florence and Vienna, 1775–1815 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011)and ‘Anatomy and Public Enlightenment: The Florentine Museo “La Specola,”’ in MedicalMuseums: Past, Present, Future, ed. by Samuel J.M.M. Alberti and Elizabeth Hallam(London: Royal College of Surgeons, 2013), pp. 88–101.

7. F.P. de Ceglia, ‘The Importance of being Florentine: A Journey around the World for WaxAnatomical Venuses’, Nuncius, 26 (2011), 83–108.

8. ‘The Florentine Anatomical Gallery, Margaret-Street’, London Standard, 28 March 1839, p. 3;W. Mawhinney, Anatomical and Physiological Description of the Late Signor Sarti’s New Flor-entine Venus: Together with the Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment of the Diseases of the Prin-cipal Organs, 7th edn (London: J. Mallett, 1849).

9. ‘The Florentine Anatomical Gallery’.10. ‘The Late Signor Sarti’, Blackburn Standard, 16 October 1850, p. 3.11. ‘Dr Kahn’s Anatomical Museum’, Lancet, 57 (1851), 474.

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 201

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

12. D. Barker, ‘The Mercury and the Florentine Models’, Norfolk Chronicle, 19 February 1853,p. 1.

13. Sexual content began to be segregated from the British Museum collection in the 1830s andthe secretum was formalized in 1865; nude statues at Crystal Palace were supplied with figleaves in 1854: D. Gaimster, ‘Sex and Sensibility at the British Museum’, History Today, 50(2000), 10–15; M. Myrone, ‘Prudery, Pornography and the Victorian Nude (or, What dowe Think the Butler Saw?)’, in Exposed: The Victorian Nude, ed. by Alison Smith(London: Tate Publishing, 2001), pp. 23–35.

14. ‘Man Know Thyself, all Wisdom Centres there’, Newcastle Courant, 24 November 1848, p. 1.15. ‘The Late Signor Sarti’s New Florentine Model’, Ipswich Journal, 2 April 1853, p. 2.16. ‘Signor Sarti’s Moorish Venus’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 20

March 1847, p. 1.17. A.W. Bates, ‘Dr Kahn’s Museum: Obscene Anatomy in Victorian London’, Journal of the

Royal Society of Medicine, 99 (2006), 618–24.18. ‘Court of Exchequer Nov. 10’, The Times, 11 November 1858, p. 9.19. A.W. Bates, The Anatomy of Robert Knox: Murder, Mad Science and Medical Regulation in

Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), pp. 117–8.20. ‘Woodhead’s Anatomical Museum’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 4 September

1852, p. 8.21. J. Woodhead, ‘Anatomical Museum’, Sheffield Times, 2 October 1852, p. 3.22. Anon., Catalogue of the Royal Institute of Anatomy and Science, 369, Oxford Street, 1859, p. ii.23. ‘Two Anatomical Museums’, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 7 August 1853, p. 8.24. T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995),

pp. 29–30.25. ‘Information against Reimer’s Anatomical Museum’, Leeds Intelligencer, 11 September 1852;

Catalogue of J.W. Reimers’s [sic] Gallery of All Nations, and Anatomical Museum, SavilleHouse, Leicester Square, London… (Leeds: Jackson and Asquith, 1853).

26. ‘Information against Reimer’s Anatomical Museum’.27. ‘Reimer’s Anatomical Museum’, Leeds Mercury, 18 September 1852, p. 1.28. ‘Indecent Exhibition’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 31 December 1853, p. 8.29. ‘Indictment of the Proprietor of an Anatomical Museum’, Bradford Observer, 20 April 1854,

p. 8.30. ‘Woodhead’s Anatomical Museum’, Bradford Observer, 20 April 1854, p. 3.31. H. Shimmin, Liverpool Life: Its Pleasures, Practices and Pastimes (Liverpool: Egerton Smith

and Co., 1857), p. 22.32. ‘Man Know Thyself! Knowledge Centres Here!’ Falkirk Herald, 24 September 1857, p. 1;

Shields Daily Gazette, 12 June 1882, p. 2; ‘Chaste, Classical and Beautiful’, SunderlandDaily Echo, 6 January 1883, p. 2; Dundee Courier, 14 February 1883, p. 1.

33. Bath Chronicle, 27 December 1855, p. 2; Bradford Observer, 6 March 1856, p. 1; Leeds Times,19 April 1856, p. 1; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 30 September 1856, p. 1; Coventry Herald, 3April 1857, p. 1.

34. ‘An Anatomical Museum Impounded at Leeds’, Manchester Times, 7 January 1860, p. 3;‘Suppression of an Anatomical Museum at Leeds’, Leeds Mercury, 3 January 1860, p. 3.

35. J.T. Woodhead, ‘Gore’s New Directory Again’, Liverpool Mercury, 15 January 1862, p. 7.36. ‘The Week’, British Medical Journal, 1 (1860), 15.37. L.M. Friedman, Guarding Life’s Dark Secrets: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Pro-

priety, and Privacy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).38. N. St John-Stevas, Obscenity and the Law (London: Secker and Warburg, 1956), p. 70.39. Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, pp. 23, 25, 29–30, 52.40. S. Powell, ‘Black Markets and Cadaverous Pies: The Corpse, Urban Trade and Industrial Cor-

ruption in the Penny Blood’, in Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation, ed. by G. Mooreand A. Maunder (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 45–58; Bates, Anatomy of Robert Knox,pp. 162–3.

202 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

41. ‘The Late Seizure of an Anatomical Museum’, Sheffield Intelligencer, 10 March 1860, p. 7. TheLloyds were never prosecuted under the Medical Act.

42. ‘Murder at Manchester in Attempting to Procure Abortion: Sentence of Death’, LiverpoolMercury, 15 December 1858, p. 5.

43. Woodhead’s museum catalogue speaks of ‘The Union between the Mother and the Child’ tendays after conception: Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, p. 21.

44. There were several editions of this popular work: for example, Samuel La’Mert, The Physi-ology of Marriage: A Popular Medical Essay… (London: Mann and Company, 1864).

45. ‘A Turn of the Wheel of Fortune’, Liverpool Mercury, 26 July 1864, p. 5.46. W.F. Wilkinson, ‘A Pertinent Exposure’, Derby Mercury, 4 April 1866, p. 3.47. W. Horsley, ‘Anatomical Museum’, Derby Mercury, 25 April 1866, p. 2.48. ‘A Turn of the Wheel of Fortune’.49. ‘A Delicate Case – Classical Figures and Classical Language’, Liverpool Daily Post, 8 January

1868, p. 7. A ‘knocking’ shop (the word was modestly omitted from the report) was a brothel.50. ‘Females of Intellect and the Study of Anatomy: Unpleasant Results of a Visit to Dr Wood-

head’s Museum’, Liverpool Mercury, 8 January 1868, p. 8.51. Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, p. 50.52. ‘Females of Intellect’.53. The Association was formed in 1862 with 150 members: J.S. Haller,Medical Protestants: The

Eclectics in American Medicine, 1825–1939 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,1994), p. 164.

54. ‘Notices to Correspondents’, British Medical Journal, 2(1871), 252.55. ‘Seizure of “Dr.” Woodhead’s Museum’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Adver-

tiser, 30 May 1874, p. 10; ‘Police Seizure’, Leicester Chronicle, 30 May 1874, p. 12.56. Bates, ‘Indecent and Demoralizing Representations’.57. ‘Trial at the Old Bailey’, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 9 February 1873, p. 4.58. ‘Seizure of “Dr.” Woodhead’s Museum’.59. Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, pp. 20–25, 27, 32–34, 53–55, 57–8. There

were six models showing the effects of masturbation (‘the latent cause of misery and deathto tens of thousands’) in the male and five in the female, 74 showing syphilis, and threegonorrhoea.

60. Ibid., pp. 26, 63.61. ‘The Raid on Quack Doctors’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 4

November 1876, p. 4.62. Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, p. 63.63. Of the same order as the legacies of orthodox medical contemporaries included in the Oxford

Dictionary of National Biography.64. It was listed in Gore’s Liverpool Directory as late as 1938. The models were then acquired by

Louis Tussaud’s museum in Blackpool. They are still there, but not on public display.65. ‘Two Anatomical Museums’.66. Roy Porter, Quacks: Fakers & Charlatans in Medicine (Charleston: Tempus, 2003).67. Burmeister, pp. 209–39.68. Michael Brown, Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England,

c. 1760-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 195–6, 224–6.69. Medical Circular and General Medical Advertiser, 1 (1852), 40; ‘The State of the Profession’,

London Medical Gazette, 28 (1840/1), 356–59.70. M.J.D. Roberts, ‘The Politics of Professionalization: MPs, Medical Men, and the 1858Medical

Act’, Medical History, 53 (2009), 37–56.71. ‘The New Medical Reform Bill’, Lancet, 1 (1852), 101–5.72. Minutes of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration, 2 (1860), 158; 3

(1863), 66–67.73. Bates, ‘Dr Kahn’s Museum’.74. Woodhead, ‘Gore’s New Directory Again’.75. Brown, Performing Medicine, pp. 138–9, 202–3.

MUSEUM HISTORY JOURNAL 203

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016

76. R.N. Ponce, ‘“They Increase in Beauty and Elegance:” Transforming Cadavers and the Epis-temology of Dissection in Early Nineteenth-Century American Medical Education’, Journalof the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 68 (2013), 331–76.

77. ‘The Seizure of the Contents of an Anatomical Museum’, Manchester Guardian, 10 June1874, p. 6.

78. Physiological evidence that ovulation occurred without intercourse had begun to emerge inthe 1840s: T. Laqueur, ‘Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology’, Rep-resentations, 14 (1986), 1–41; M. Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1994), pp. 200–3.

79. They were prosecuted in 1877 for publishing Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy: seeS. Chandrasekhar, A Dirty, Filthy Book: the Writings of Charles Knowlton and AnnieBesant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

80. Mason, pp. 7, 141, 179–80.81. Laqueur.82. Catalogue of the Royal Institute of Anatomy, p. ii.83. Haller, pp. xvii–xix, 139–41.84. Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies, pp. 55–58; M. Sappol, ‘The Odd Case of Charles Knowlton:

Anatomical Performance, Medical Narrative, and Identity in Antebellum America’, Bulletinof the History of Medicine, 83 (2009), 460–98.

85. ‘Inquest on the Murderer’, London Evening Standard, 30 June 1860, p. 3.86. N. Durbach, ‘“Skinless Wonders:” BodyWorlds and the Victorian Freak Show’, Journal of the

History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69 (2014), 38–67.87. When Spitzner’s museum, founded in 1856, came to London in 1903, it was immediately

indicted for indecency: Burmeister, pp. 209–10.88. TatjanaBuklijas, ‘Mapping Anatomical Collections in Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, in The

Fate of Anatomical Collections, ed. by Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg (Farnham:Ashgate, 2015), pp. 143–59.

89. Descriptive Catalogue of the Liverpool Museum, inside back cover.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Professor Michael Brown and Dr Irina Podgorny for their helpful com-ments on the manuscript.

Notes on contributor

Dr A.W.H. Bates, Department of Cellular Pathology, Royal Free Hospital, London NW3 2QG, UK.Email: alan.bates@ucl.ac.uk

204 A. W. H. BATES

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ala

n B

ates

] at

09:

43 0

2 Ju

ly 2

016