ABSTRACT
Lunatic asylum mortuaries were busy places during the nineteenth century, inside which several different kinds of post-mortem work were carried out. Autopsies were undertaken when a coroner ordered one, in order to determine the cause of a person’s death. In addition, post-mortem examinations were performed when an asylum medical offi cer sought inside a particular body for signs of its morbid anatomy. During both of these kinds of examinations, body parts were routinely removed and retained as specimens and to be turned into preparations for museums. There, they joined material removed from corpses that had been dissected by students in medical schools. Those bodies had been collected from institutions including lunatic asylums, under the terms of Anatomy Acts in Britain and Australia, joining corpses taken from workhouses, hospitals and gaols. All were conscripted as subjects for dissection.
