An account of the circumstances attending the imprisonment and death of the late William Millard, formerly superintendent of the Theatre of Anatomy of St. Thomas's Hospital, Southwark.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the circumstances attending the imprisonment and death of the late William Millard, formerly superintendent of the Theatre of Anatomy of St. Thomas's Hospital, Southwark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    With this man, Mr. Green, one of the hospital surgeons of St. Thomas's, and until the recent separation, coadjutor of Sir Astley Cooper at that hospital, contracted for a certain number of subjects. In pursuance of this agree- ment. Murphy brought to the dissecting room of St. Thomas's two bodies, one of which Millard refused to receive from the state it was in (it was the corpse of an unfortunate child, which had been killed by the wheel of a coach or waggon passing over its head). Murphy would not leave one without the other, and consequently took both of them away with him. The next day 3Iurphy acquainted Mr. Green with the circumstance, stating, that he had brought two subjects, which Millard had refused to receive: and in order to be more effectually revenged on Millard for his noncompliance, he added that there was no doubt Millard was in the interest of Mr. Grainger: an intimation which he knew of all others was the best calculated to excite the suspicion and to alarm the fears of Mr. Green. As we shall have occasion to advert again, more than once, to this gentleman (Mr. Grainger), we shall not apologize to our readers for giving some explanation respecting him ; the more especially as it will tend to place the character of Sir Astley Cooper in a light in which it has not hitherto been generally viewed. Mr. Grainger was one of the students or pupils at St. Thomas's Hospital, but his application and his talents were such, that in a compa- ratively short time, from a student he became qualified to become the instructor of his fellow pupils, and in this capacity he was accustomed, occasionally, to demonstrate to them in the hospital; besides these services which he thus rendered them, he was sometimes in the habit of, what is professionally termed grinding the students: that is to say, of preparing those whose talents or whose industry were inferior to his own, for the ordeal of the examination they had to undergo previously to obtaining their certificate. About this time Sir Astley Cooper proposed that dissection took place. On applying a second time to the watchmen, the latter, who had been schooled for the occasion by Murphy, insisted on receiving from the students ten guineas before-hand; this sum the students, with reluct- ance, paid. Whilst they were hovering about the burial-ground in anxious expectation of receiving the promised booty, Murphy's emissaries snatched the bodies which had been disinterred that day, and this king of the resurrection-men then went to make merry with the faithful guar- dians of the dead, at the expense of those whom they had thus duped. And thus ended the attempt of the students of St. Thomas's Hospital to become their own resurrection-men.