By the time of the Italian Boy killings, the secretive nature of anatomists and goings-on in dissection rooms was being widely criticised. Public opinion towards science would be improved, many said, if doctors would only be more open and honest about what went on during dissection, and about what became of the remains of the anatomised subject.

In 1829, illustrious surgeon George Guthrie wrote an open letter to the Home Secretary, trying to put the record straight on various aspects of the subject. Guthrie believed that his years of experience had given him access to the powerful emotions, and sometimes lack of them, aroused by permitting a body to be opened up for medical teaching. In a letter that challenges many of the commonly held notions of the day, he claimed that the poor were, in fact, nothing like as squeamish about having their bodies anatomised (and possibly bottled up in a medical museum) as was generally believed. Guthrie also challenged the comforting myth that dissected remains ever finally received a Christian burial.

Guthrie wrote: “Few individuals really care much what becomes of their bodies after they are dead; they wish to be buried, or disposed of, according to the custom of their country. It is the last sad duty of their friends to attend their remains, and it is considered either as a want of regard or of respect for the dead, when it is not done in the usual manner. When a person is dissected, without Christian burial, or exhumated afterwards, it is the feelings of the surviving friends which are injured; it is their rights that are outraged, and they resent it accordingly. Many individuals, and medical men in particular, would devote their bodies to dissection if it were not that they do not wish to distress those whom they leave behind.

“When permission is given to open a body, it is often accompanied with the express condition that no part whatever shall be taken away in order to be preserved in the museum of the anatomist. It is the feeling which dictates this request that operates against the complete dissection of a body. If a relative or friend submits to have the body of his relation or friend examined – as a debt due to mankind and in order to facilitate the means of obtaining information, by which the sufferings of others may be mitigated or removed – he sacrifices his feelings only for a moment; but if he were to yield a beloved mother, wife, or sister, for complete dissection, he has, in the first place, to conquer the feeling of the indelicacy of the proceeding; and, secondly, the horror of afterwards hearing that various parts of the person he most esteemed and loved are exposed in bottles, and the gaze of the curious.

“It has been proved that where dissecting establishments have been attached to hospitals, they have not had the slightest influence in diminishing the number of applications for admission; although it is the common opinion of the poor that all who die without friends are regularly dissected in them. They place no reliance on the form of burial they see going on; they do not believe the body is actually buried in the coffin, which goes to the churchyard; still they are not deterred from seeking admission into hospitals; they care very little about the matter.

“To one patient I said, half in jest, ‘I certainly will have a skeleton made of you, if you die, that you also may be of use to others.’ His reply was, ‘If you do not, I dare say somebody else will, and I had rather you than anybody.’ He said this laughing loudly, in which he was accompanied by every other patient in the ward. If he were to die, it would be a matter of perfect indifference what became of him.”

There was nothing secretive about anatomy nor the places where it was practised, Guthrie continued: “The doors of every dissecting room in London are always open, there is nobody to watch them, they swing backwards and forwards on a pulley and weight, that they may shut of themselves in case anybody leaves them open; every man may walk in and walk out whenever he pleases; many persons do, but no one gives himself any concern about what is going on. The neighbours care nothing about it, and unless, from some accident, the place becomes offensive, no one interferes; although the resurrection men, for their own purposes, sometimes endeavour to excite a little commotion.

“In fact, the public care nothing about it, and the dissection of dead bodies requires only the support of the law, and proper regulations, to become as accessible a study in London as in any other part of Europe.

“It is not to the bodies of persons who are hanged that dissection should be confined; all persons who die under sentence for criminal offences should be given up for dissection. . . Few of those who die in the hulks or on the criminal side of gaols have friends who care what becomes of them, either alive or dead.

“It has been gravely stated, and some faith has been given to the assertion, that, after dissection, the remains of a body may be still buried with religious rites and ceremonies. Some converts to dissection have, perhaps, been gained by this statement than which nothing can be more unfounded; for few of the bodies given up for dissection either can, or ought, to be afterwards committed to the ground. I have no hesitation in saying that few ever will be buried. . . It is the separation of each part in very small portions which establishes in the mind’s eye an intimate acquaintance with the whole structure. . . The soft parts being thus treated, what should be done with the bones? They ought to be in the possession of the surgeon, articulated or made into a skeleton.

“The remains of non-criminals may be buried but it should be done privately, and without ceremony; those religious rites, which it is no less our duty than our inclination to afford, having been performed previously to the dissection taking place.

“Thirty years ago, none wished to look at the body of a murderer; now, the desire for knowledge induces many to overcome their prejudices and not only to look at a dead body, but to hunt it out in a dissecting room; and examine all the bumps on the head, and compare the resemblance with the penny woodcuts placed at the head of the dying speech and confession. . . The very fact that the increased desire for knowledge has brought indifferent persons into a dissecting room in such numbers as to make their presence troublesome shows that prejudices upon this point are fast subsiding.”

A Letter to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the Report of the Select Committee on Anatomy (1829)