ABSTRACT
In January 1847, parliamentarian Thomas Dunscombe revealed in the House of Commons the latest scandal concerning the ways in which British convicts were treated on board the hulks moored in the Thames at Woolwich. Dunscombe demanded that a Select Committee investigate the medical treatment meted out to those awaiting exile to Britain’s colonies aboard these makeshift prisons and what became of their corpses when they died. Prisoners’ corpses were being subjected to post-mortem examinations during which, Dunscombe asserted, surgeons threw entrails into the river rather than burying the bodies intact in the marshland graves that had for decades served this purpose. The convicts on board the Woolwich hulks told Dunscombe that they feared they were being allowed to die so that their bodies could be sent to a school under the Anatomy Act of 1832. In parliament, Dunscombe demanded to know how many hulk corpses went to such destinations rather than to graves, but the government brought a halt to his disclosures. Home Secretary Sir George Grey remonstrated with Dunscombe for raising the matter, suggesting that instead he should have quietly expressed his concerns with the executive government. In this way, one call among many made during the nineteenth century for an investigation into how the Anatomy Act worked was effectively sidelined. 1
