 |
Lusk Kidney Revelation:
A London Hospital Surgeon Speaks
by Tom Wescott
(from the July 2004
issue of Ripper Notes)
About the author: Thomas
C. Wescott is a long time contributor and supporter of Ripper
Notes. Some of his previous articles include "Sickert,
Ennui and the Ripper Letters" and "An Inspiration 'From
Hell'?"
|
When PC William Pennett of H-Division was making his rounds on
the morning of September 10th, 1889, he made a discovery that
would, for a short time, raise the spectre of Jack the Ripper.
In his own words, PC Pennett sets the scene:
|
"I was passing along Pinchin-street,
at the foot of Backchurch-lane, about a quarter-past five this
morning, when I saw lying on the ground the trunk of a woman,
the head and legs of which had been severed and were not present.
The body was quite naked, except for a piece of torn linen which
might have been a shift or portion of a pair of drawers, thrown
over it. The body was fearfully disemboweled, and was marked
as if it had been carried in a sack. My own opinion is that it
had been so conveyed to the spot where I found it. The stench
was something terrific. It would have been impossible to have
passed it."
Pall Mall Gazette,
Sept. 10, 1889
|
Although the idea might seem
preposterous to us now, there was a very strong opinion at the
time that the whole affair of the "Pinchin Street torso,"
as it has since become known, had been a hoax, perpetrated by
medical students from the London Hospital. These same medical
students apparently held in somewhat low regard by the
denizens of East London had, just the year before, been
the object of much finger-pointing when chairman of the Whitechapel
Vigilance Committee, George Lusk, opened a small parcel to find
a portion of a human kidney, purportedly taken from the body
of Catherine Eddowes by none other than Jack the Ripper.
The logic was sound; if the kidney
had not come from Eddowes, which quite possibly was the case,
then suspicion would naturally fall on those working or residing
in the one place in the East End where human organs could easily
be procured the London Hospital. And as a doctor, or more
specifically an English doctor, was seen as being above such
gruesome shenanigans, a young medical student would be the logical
suspect. Even today this theory is accepted by those who believe
George Lusk to have been the victim of a senseless prank. Unfortunately,
we know very little about how a dissecting room operated in late
19th Century London, or how easy or difficult it would have been
to obtain such an item as a human kidney, to say nothing of an
entire torso, without raising any eyebrows. But the following
interview with an unnamed London Hospital surgeon, first appearing
in the Pall Mall Gazette and lost and forgotten until
its appearance here, gives us a small peek behind the closed
doors of a Victorian dissecting room:
|
Interview with a London Hospital Surgeon
What He Thinks of the Medical Hoax Theory
Wishing to find out whether there
is anything in the theory which has been suggested, and which
has become somewhat popular in the East-end, that the trunk of
the woman found in Pinchin-street last Tuesday morning has come
from some dissecting room, a correspondent of the Pall Mall
Gazette called at the London Hospital and had a chat with
one of the resident surgeons.
"I am not at all surprised,"
said the doctor, smiling, "that many people think this affair
a hoax on the part of medical students. It is, of course, within
the range of possibility that students may get possession of
a body; but as to the theory that this particular trunk has been
taken from some dissecting room, it is really, in my opinion,
absurd. It is the most unlikely thing in the world that a trunk
should be in the state in which I understand this one to be in,
after being in the dissecting-room. It is against dissecting-room
rules that it should be as it is."
"Will you kindly explain
how?"
"Well, you see there are
standing rules for dissecting bodies. The corpse is dissected
in a thoroughly systematic fashion. It is left almost entirely
to the students. The body is laid out on the dissecting table
and each student takes a certain part. By the time a body is
dissected it is, as you may imagine, quite unrecognizable."
"Is it a fact, as you have
seen alleged, that it is a common thing for students to possess
themselves of portions of bodies after dissection?"
"Oh, yes. They often take
away a foot or a hand, but it is not very likely that they would
cart home a head or a leg."
"What, may I ask, is done
with the remains after dissection?"
"The different portions
are collected and the whole buried together."
"May I inquire where you
get your dissecting-room subjects from here?"
"We get them generally from
the workhouse."
"Could students obtain a
body from the workhouse on their own account?"
"Well, that I can't say.
It might be possible for them to do so. I may observe so long
as I remember that even if this trunk affair is a hoax by medical
students, none of our young men have anything to do with it,
because they are all away just now. This is vacation time, and
the dissecting-room is not open."
"From what you have heard
about this trunk, do you think that great surgical skill must
have been possessed by the person or persons who disemboweled
it?"
"Of course I have not seen
the remains, and I can only go by what I have read and heard;
but let me say that it is ridiculous to talk about surgical skill
in the way that people are doing with the Whitechapel horrors.
Any butcher could do what has been done in any of the cases,
this trunk case included. One does not necessarily require to
be a doctor or a medical student to be able to dismember a body.
I think there has been rather too much made of this point in
connection with the murders."
Pall Mall Gazette,
Sept. 13, 1889
|
This interview is remarkable
not only in the light it sheds on the likelihood of the medical
hoax theory, but in how nonchalant the good doctor is in defending
his students, hospital, and profession; he seems to have had
no problem sharing with the that it's a matter of course for
students to abscond with the foot or hand of their loved ones,
while reassuring the public that "it is not very likely
that they would cart home a head or a leg"!
Although it doesn't seem likely
that the Pinchin Street torso was the work of medical students,
the information provided here clearly indicates that the process
of dissection was not strictly supervised, if supervised at all,
and that anyone in the hospital with a mind to obtaining a body
part could have done so without risk of capture or punishment,
should they have been a doctor, a medical student, a porteror,
just perhaps, a patient.
Reprinted online at
www.RipperNotes.com/lusk-kidney-revelation.html as a sample article
from the July 2004 issue of Ripper Notes. This article
is copyright 2004 by Tom Wescott, all rights reserved, and used
with permission.
|
The text and images on
this site are protected by copyright, all rights reserved. The
Ripper Notes name and logo are trademarks and cannot be used
without permission.
Web hosting by HostIdea. |
| |
|
 |
