How a society views death and how it deals with the practical problem of what to do with its dead is very revealing. There are always Philosophical and attitudinal issues around disposal of the dead, but at least as important are the practical matters relating to Public Health and Finance.
We are delighted to announce that in April 2018 the Museum’s learning team will be running an intensive revision workshop for Key Stage 4 students studying the Medicine Through Time GCSE History series. This 4-hour session will cover the key themes of the current Edexcel: Medicine through time, c1250-present, but will also be useful for those studying AQA: Health and the People.
Before 1832 dissection was a feared and hated punishment for murder. The 1832 Anatomy Act requisitioned instead the corpses of the poor, transferring the penalty from murder to poverty. The Anatomy Act contributed to the terrible fear of the Victorian workhouse and influences attitudes towards death even today. This talk by author Ruth Richardson analyses the subject drawing on many disciplines to explore the fundamental issues of folklore and science, life and death and the political struggles surrounding ownership of the body in the 19th century.
Join your guides, Romany and Sam, as we pay homage to the fearless women interred in Abney Park cemetery – pioneers who ripped up the rule books and whose stories are inspiring, surprising, and poignant. The nurse whose two-fingered salute to bureaucracy invoked the wrath (and later respect) of Florence Nightingale; the Suffragette incarcerated and force-fed in Holloway Prison; and the aeronaut who risked life and limb navigating her hot air balloon above England’s skyline: these women both suffered and soared in making their marks in their landscapes and ours.
