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Usually topical, frequently fun and almost always thought-provoking, join us as we take a conversational dive into the news stories from the University of Aberdeen and beyond that are making headlines around the world.
This podcast reflects the views and opinions of its contributors, not necessarily the institutional position of the University of Aberdeen.
Speaker 1: (00:02) Let’s be honest, most of us do this – see something interesting on our
news feed, give the headline a quick scan, read a couple of pars, skip to the comments and
then move on pretty quickly. In this podcast series from the University of Aberdeen, I want to
explore the stories making the news in more depth and ask the people involved what it
means in a wider context. And I want you to come with me. I’m Laura Grant and this is Into
the Headlines.
Intro music: (00:23)
Speaker 1: (00.39) Episode one. The Irish Giant. Today I’m joined by Dr Thomas Muinzer,
senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen School of Law, and Neil Curtis, head of
Museums and Special Collections at the University. Welcome both.
Speaker 2: (00.53) Glad to be with you.
Speaker 1: (00.55) I’m going to start with you Thomas as a campaign you’ve been involved
in for a good many years has been in the headlines recently and that’s the story of Charles
Bryne, or the ‘Irish Giant’ as he called himself. Born in 1761, due to a growth disorder before
he rose both in stature – reaching a height of 7ft 7 in - and fame before dying at the age of
just 22. Since then his remains have been on display at the Hunterian Museum in London.
That is until recently, when they were removed in response to the efforts of campaigners
such as yourself. What can you tell us about who Charles Bryne was and how his skeleton
ended up on display to the pubic in the first place?
Speaker 2: (01.34) Yes, as you pointed out Laura, Charles Byrne was an eighteenth century
celebrity Irish giant. So he was born quite a long time ago and he had what we would
understand to be a medical ailment with his pituitary gland which sits at the base of the brain
and helps regulate our height. So he ended up with the condition gigantism and he shot up
to this prodigious height, and as you pointed out he as around 7ft 7in based on skeletal
studies but he worked as showman and exhibited himself as a human curiosity and as part
of that we know from old advertisements and accounts of Charles that he exaggerated his
height somewhat he was considered sometimes to be 8ft or 8ft 4in and it was at a time when
the national height average was a lot lower than it is today. And from a young age, as his
height began to increase, he eventually hit on a notion to go off and seek fame and
adventure with a friend of his called Joe Vance. He left his home in what is present day
Northern Ireland, or Ireland back then, he goes to Scotland first and works his way down to
London exhibiting himself as a human curiosity and he soon becomes a celebrity. The
newspapers are fascinated by him, the public are paying coin got go and see him and he
builds up quite a substantial amount of money but tragically one night, he‘s having a few
pints in a pub called The Black Horse in the Charring Cross area, and poor Charles is
pickpocketed and he had his money compressed into a sort of bank note or bond note, back
then of course they didn’t have bank machines and all the sorts of things we have today, that
was stolen sadly and he lost his worldly fortune basically in that theft and he went into a
depression, went to bed and a couple of months later he was dead. Those difficult
circumstances will have exaserbated that and also his low immunity and his medical
condition will have played a part, and there are some accounts suggesting he may have
contracted tuberculosis as well.
Speaker 1: (03.45) And what happened after his death?
Speaker 2: (03.47) When he passed away in 1783 it was well known that the surgical
community were keen to get a hold of his corpse to study it and dissect it. Charles was
terrified of this so he said to his pals shortly before he died, look, weigh my coffin down and
bury it at sea because even if he’s buried in the ground resurrectionists or gravediggers
could easily have dug it up an sold it to the surgical community on the black market, which
was quite rife at the time, this black market for cadavers, so Charles’ pals arranged for the
funeral. He was taken to Margate on the English coast and buried there, it was thought, but
that wasn’t quite what happened. As the funereal train stopped for a night to rest up and
have a bite to eat and what not, a crooked person in their party who was in the pay of
eminent surgeon John Hunter, was able to secretly switch the body for dead weight, so
when the burial took place, and its reported on in the old newspapers of the day, Charles’
remains were not in that coffin. They were transported to Holburn, secretly, in a hay cart, and
they arrived at the home of John Hunter, and Hunter reduced the corpse to its skeleton and
then the famous surgeon packed the skeleton away and four years later he revealed this
new exhibit in his anatomical collection and when we fast forward to today, we have a
memorial museum to John Hunter in the Royal College of Surgeons in London and Charles
Byrne’s remains have been a centrepiece of that memorial museum as part of his specimen
collection so there’s a very rich kind of story behind this.
Speaker 1: (05.27) It’s a rich story but it’s also a very sad story. He didn’t want this to
happen. How did your interest in it come about?
Speaker 2: (05:32) I entirely agree, it’s a very sad story. I was a law student some years ago
sleeping through, to be frank a rather tedious class on property law and I had to go write an
essay and I noticed in a source when I was reading a particular source for this course a
mention of, words to this effect, a one-time remembered celebrity Irish giant whose remains
were stolen on the way to its funeral, or something like that. And I was studying in Northern
Ireland, I am Northern Irish, and it just caught my interest, this note was querying some
technical legal issue relating to Charles Bryne and I got fascinated by Bryne and his story
and as you know if you want to learn more about someone interesting from history you tend
to lift down a biography, and there was no biography on Charles Bryne. He’d been a great
celebrity in his day but he was largely now forgotten. So I started to piece together his life a
little bit, I became more and more interested and I gradually wrote my research up in a
couple of papers, one in 2013 called ‘A Grave Situation’ and a couple of others and I just
became fascinated by the man and his life and I could see very clearly that a great wrong
had been done to his memory and it was inappropriate for his remains to be on display in the
memorial museum so that galvanised my fascination and on I went from there.
Speaker 1: (06.57) Yes, so the campaign was born and it’s obviously had support from lots
of different quarters, including Wolf Hall author Dame Hilary Mantel who also wrote The
Giant O’Brien, a fictionalised account which draws on Burns’ story. What is the key issue at
the heart of the calls requesting the museum take the remains off public display, what’s at
the core of this?
Speaker 2: (07.16) The issue at the core is the tragic treatment of Byrne’s posthumous
memory, we maybe can’t say of the treatment of Byrne because he has passed away but his
posthumous memory, respect for the man that was and so forth by putting his skeleton on
display as a curiosity object in the memorial museum to the man who was responsible for
contributing to the pain and terror in which he died and then the mistreatment of the remains
subsequently. There are many good things that can be said about John Hunter, he was a
very eminent surgeon, but this is not one of them. It is a stain on his record as a historical
figure as well.
Speaker 1: (07:55) And this is relevant to people today isn’t it?
Speaker 2: (07:58) When it comes to burial, in some sense we’re not just dealing with some
story from a couple of hundred years ago that may sound interesting and tragic but isn’t
relevant to us. There’s a personal relevance to all of us, burial wishes are not legally binding
under UK law and they typically haven’t really needed to be in so far as the living tend to
respect the wishes of the dead. So you and I, and all of us, we are relying on precisely what
Charles Byrne was relying on when it comes to burial and our remains. Are people going to
respect our wishes and treat our posthumous memory and remains respectfully, or are
people just going to overlook those and treat them in ways, especially in this case, that go
against the grain of our commonly shared morality?
Speaker 1: (08:44) I think I’m right in saying that this was the Museum’s probably most
famous exhibit and no doubt thousands of people will have viewed it over the years. Some I
would imagine out of a sense of the macabre but, given this was a collection of anatomical
specimens linked to the Royal College of Surgeons, for many others there will have been a
genuine interest in science and the human body. Where for you is the line between
education and public interest when it comes to collections like this?
Speaker 2: (09:11) Education is generally very important of course when it comes to
museums and certainly public interest is certainly key but in the case of this narrow exhibit
again we contextualise the exhibition against the backdrop of the context that we have. And I
should say that if you look at old news accounts in the newspapers of the day when Charles
was dying, there were rather chilling accounts of the surgical community, or representatives
of its members sort of hanging around and keeping an eye on his area so that once he dies
they can swoop in and try to procure the corpse, trying to bribe people and so forth. So these
sort of gothic or macabre write ups in the old newspapers of the day, I quote several in A
Grave Situation if you’d like to go to the source. In terms of the medical value of the
specimen like Byrne’s skeleton, medical researchers have taken DNA from his teeth and set
out the DNA record for us so Bynre has been of medical value in death but given that we
now have these full medical studies we have people who will come forward under the
principal of informed consent with the same condition and so forth, there is no discernible
medical value to the retention of Byrne’s skeleton. I should point out as well it is possible to
construct and exact replica of the skeleton and display that and provide a respectful burial to
the remains. I don’t think that’s an appropriate course but that is still possible if it comes to
the display issue. So we draw a line around those sorts of parameters and what follows from
that if we don’t have further medical value is again this momentum towards the correct
outcome which is to respect the man that was, his memory and to arrange a respectful burial
of those remains.
Speaker 1: (11.00) So your campaign continues?
Speaker 2: (11.02) Yes indeed. It’s been very positive that the Hunterian Museum have
announced that when they reopen in March of this year it will be with the remains of Charles
Byrne removed from display. Campaigners, myself and others, are hoping that the trustees
will now take the next step which would be to arrange a respectful burial. There are a couple
of schools of thought on which type of burial might be most appropriate. Since the whole
raison d'etre or purpose is to respect and carry out Byrne’s wishes it seems obvious that one
would undertake a sea burial, a respectful sea burial, because that’s what he asked for.
Although if you take a purposive approach where you look at the purpose of his wishes, we
know they were to evade the resurrectionists, these bodysnatchers that might dig the
remains up and the surgical community purchasing the remains on the black market, now we
don’t need to worry about those problems in current day so it could be that if you look at the
broader purpose which was to secure a safe, respectful burial, you could argue that perhaps
a more conventional burial might be suitable. There is, well there was, a very interesting site
in Charles’ townland called the giant’s grave and it was said that Charles had lain down
there when he was young and he was growing and growing and he had lain down and had
his outline dug around to measure the height, probably for a bit of fun with his pals in the
local area, and that site was maintained as part of a local site of interest and when I first
went out to where Charles had lived, it’s a town called Drumullan in present day but it was
called Littlebridge back then, I met a lot of older members from the community who used to
go to that site which was known colloquially as the giant’s grave after Charles and you would
learn about Byrne when you were a young kid there and play at the, in inverted commas,
grave site and it was said that this was where he would like to be buried so I think there’s a
good case for a respectful burial on land and or as close as possible to that site. There is a
National Trust site called Springhill House which is a Downton Abbey type stately home in
the area that was there in Charles’ time, Charles used to hang out there a bit, they used to
invite him to dinners and things to dazzle people with his height and his kind of wit and all of
that, so I think I hear soundings that the National Trust would be amenable to a burial on
those grounds and a respectful plaque perhaps or a little memorial so that would be an
option. Just briefly, the giant’s grave is not there any more, it was dug up by a farmer who
took over the land for grazing. It was dug up about thirty to forty year ago but I did get a visit
to the site from some locals who used to play there as children when they were young so
that might perhaps be another suitable option for a respectful burial.
Speaker 1: (13.52) Neil, I’m going to draw you in here because, while not quite in the same
arena but certainly related in many ways, the University has been involved in a number of
repatriations of over the past 20 years, including the very high profile return of a Benin
Bronze in 2021.What are the Bronzes and how did the University come to have this one in
its collection in the first place?
Speaker 3: (14.14) The Benin Bronze that the University returned was one that had been
looted by a British Force in 1897 from Benin City, from the Royal Palace of the Oba of Benin.
They were records of the history of the Kingdom of Benin, they were on alters, they were
sacred, they were incredibly important. The University bought it at auction so, in some ways
the University’s legal title was based on that purchase, so we were thinking more about the
ethics and the morality of how it was originally acquired, that there wasn’t a straightforward
edict on the University on what to do but we did want to think what is the right thing to do
today and, given the circumstances were so clearly looting, the University decided it should
be returned and it is now back in the Court of the Oba in Benin City.
Speaker 1: (15:06) Clearly a very culturally significant item, was returning it a simple
process?
Speaker 3: (15:13) In some ways it’s not simple in so much as it took about 125 years for it
to get back again and it’s something that is in the news a lot today. For the University I think
we have a procedure, it has a sort of step by step approach, we have various criteria. We try
to have it in a consensual way so the people who are making the proposal they are also part
of the discussion, so we think about the history of it, we think about the significance to the
University and the significance to whoever we are thinking of returning to, we think about
issues, a bit like the ones we’ve just been hearing about, about making a replica and display
and research and so on, so it’s not simple in as much as it’s just about saying yes no, it’s
something you want to think through very carefully and I think it’s very important we do think
through very carefully because if items are of that importance they deserve to be taken
seriously and so that’s what that procedure does. It’s based on the idea of the University
having either legal title, hence being able to return, or in the case of human remains having
certain rights of possession that again mean we’re the appropriate organisation to be able to
make that decision but I[‘m much happier and so far it has always happened that its been a
consensual discussion, that its not actually been an either or, it’s something that we’ve
worked through together.
Speaker 1: (16:33) Aberdeen isn’t the only University of institution looking at this. Many
counties, not just the UK, have long and often challenging histories to contend with and there
is an obligation to address the legacies of slavery and empire – and the ‘in inverted commas’
ownership of historic collections. The return of the Benin Bronze by the University has been
followed by similar moves by other institutions - why do you think this is gaining traction now
and what does it mean for museums and the role they play in knowledge-sharing and
education?
Speaker 3: (17:10) I think there are many things all have come together. There has been a
long term shift in what museums think they are for from being simply sort of treasure houses
where museums keep things and they are primarily for scholars, to thinking much more
about them being for the public, that it’s for the public good, and thinking therefore about all
the different reasons that people might want to visit and want to engage with collections. So
there’s been a lot of work over the past couple of generations trying to understand how
people and objects and human remains relate and understanding how some of the
emotional power as well as just the scholarly value. So that’s been a long term change. I
think in parallel with that museums have been looked at quite critically from the outside, and
particularly by indigenous people in North America, Australia and New Zealand where
human remains were stolen, often for display and for study for racial types, so there was a
very overt racist background to the creation of collections and sometimes human remains
were acquired along with cultural material in dreadful ways, and that’s been critiqued and
there’s been a move to have ancestors reburied, to have sacred items returned, and then
more recently we’ve seen, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, a greater focus
on the rest of the world and how it’s been colonised by European powers and so thinking
about that relationship as well so it’s been a number of things that have come together, its
not just at museums, a lot of this is coming from museums and I think most people working
in museums are now very comfortable taking part in these debates and these discussions
and thinking very openly about what do we do with all these legacies, it’s not simple and
there are lots of different viewpoints, how do you navigate through that.
Speaker 1: (19:03) Thomas, from your experience with the Charles Bryne case, where does
the law come into this and is that also changing, is there going to be something different
coming down the line given how the landscape for museums is changing and these
conversations are taking place?
Speaker 2: (19:20) The law’s role is very interesting in this. If you look at the Charles Bryne
case narrowly you tend to find that say for example if you are a campaigner and you’d like to
compel the release of the remains there don’t seem to be any credible legal avenues, at
least that I can detect and some other colleagues, that would allow you to do that so in terms
of the law as it related to Bryne directly, the trustees of the Hunterian Museum they do have
legitimate custody of the remains and they can decide to divest themselves of the remains or
otherwise but rather than looking for a legal solution here it seems clear that we are looking
for a moral solution so were making a moral case rather than a legal one.
Speaker 1: (20:00) Neil you also sit on the Ethics Committee of the Museums Association –
how do you approach cases like this from an ethics perspective?
Speaker 3: (20:09) The Museums Association has a code of ethics that we all work with an
it considers areas like caring for the collection, working with people and forms of institutional
governance and at an international level, the International Council of Museums also has a
code of ethics and they are consistent so often museums operate a code of ethics
themselves, rarely do cases come to the ethics committee for consideration but I think
what’s really important when we’re trying to thing ethically is understanding that there are
different viewpoints and so a good ethical discussion is often one where you bring different
viewpoints and that’s really a powerful case when you are thinking about some of the items
in collections where we might think of it as an object, as property, whereas to someone else
this may be a sacred item and it’s a very different way of thinking about it. And then whether
you are thinking about people who have a scientific interest in seeing something or an
approach which some of us might not be comfortable with but none the less they still have
that and we might call it a morbid fascination but I think we have t accept that some people
might have that view so trying to have a discussion that looks at all the different possibilities
and aims not necessarily for what is absolutely the right thing to do we probably can’t do that
but is trying to have a conversation at least about what’s the best thing we can do with all the
evidence we have. So that’s where the University’s approach to, certainly to repatriation,
takers that sort of approach. With the Benin Bronze the suggestion came from within the
University, from ourselves, that this is something that we felt was wrong for us to have and
that then led to us having a discussion with people in Nigeria about who were the right
people to take custody of it now. So that richness of an ethical discussion I think it really
important, as I say it gives that respect to what we’ve talking about as well. It means we can
also be responsive, we can be proactive. It’s open.
Speaker 1: (22:10) And what about when it come to Byrnes specifically?
Speaker 3: (22:15) Thinking about ethical guidance there’s one particular code that’s useful,
this was the World Archaeological Congress’ Vermillion Accord and it’s interesting the way it
structures a conversation. So it says that you should have respect for the mortal remains of
the dead, which is a very general statement. It then specifically says respect for the wishes
of the dead, you know, where you know them or where they can be inferred should,
wherever possible, be followed. Then there’s respect for the wishes of the local community,
and respect for the scientific research value and I think that quite nicely shows that there is
different, sometimes competing sometimes not, approaches that need to be balanced and
need to be thought of but I do think in this particular case it’s quite striking that Byrne’s
wishes were very clearly stated and are known so that, in an ethical discussion, using that
framework I think the outcome would be very clear.
Speaker 2: (23:09) Just to underscore a comment Neil was making about human bodies
and artefacts and how they can differ in terms of legal perception. We’re used to
distinguishing between property and people so in the case of Byrne’s remains we would tend
to see those remains as being in the custody or possession of the Hunterian trustees, we’re
less inclined to think of ownership because we’re dealing with the remains of an actual
person or human being. Technically in law they can actually be subject to limited ownership
entitlements but generally, and as Neil points out, we have this division between people and
things, and part of that goes to the respect that we accord the deceased and human remains
which is a very special kind of respect based on our shared humanity.
Speaker 1: (23:55) Well, look, I’m sorry to say it cause this is a fascinating subject and I
think we could keep talking for hours but I’m afraid we’ve run out of time.
Thank you both for being part of this discussion, it’s been dark but great. And thanks also to
our listeners, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s look into the headlines. I’ll be back to explore
more tales from the University of Aberdeen with you very soon but if you just can’t wait,
please do visit abdn.ac.uk slash news and you’ll find all the latest stories and
announcements.
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