![]() ![]() 6 He remains there still, a sad example of how those who think their cause noble can fail to see that ends do not always justify means. After Hunter’s death in 1793 the collection was purchased by the government for the Royal College of Surgeons, who opened the Hunterian Museum and displayed Byrne there. 5 Then, in 1788, he exhibited the articulated, skeletal Byrne as the pride of his anatomy collection. Hunter skeletonised Byrne’s body in his cellar and hid him for 4 years, fearing challenge by Byrne’s friends 4 or even, given growing public anger regarding bodysnatching, the public. The coffin put into the sea, unknown to his friends, was full of stones. When the friends stopped overnight at a tavern en route, the undertaker removed Byrne. 2 His friends duly took the coffin to Margate (on the English coast), but Howison had bribed the undertaker. ![]() Hunter had hired a man called John Howison to follow him around but Byrne, knowing that he was dying and determined to avoid dissection, ordered a lead-lined coffin and persuaded ten Irish friends to promise to bury him at sea. The anatomist John Hunter wanted Byrne’s corpse for anatomisation and display, 1 but Byrne had refused to sell it to him. On JCharles Byrne, an Irishman with acromegaly, died at 12 Cockspur Street, London. ![]()
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