Tony Kelly, an artist, was given permission to sketch exhibits in the
Royal College of Surgeon's Hunterian Museum.  With the help of Neil
Lindsay he removed several dissected body parts from the College (not
from the Museum but from either or both of a basement stoor or the
dissecting room -  the evidence was not totally clear from where).  The
parts had come from bodies donated to the College under the 1832 Anatomy
Act.  At Kelly and Lindsay's trial for theft, the defence argued that
according to section 13 of the Act, the bodies should have been buried a
long time ago; therefore the College's possession of them was unlawful;
therefore Kelly and Lindsay could not be guilty of stealing them, even
if (which the defence also denied) it was possible for body parts to be
property capable of being stolen.  They were convicted and their appeal
against conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in May last year
though their sentences were reduced.  The judgement of the Court of
Apeal is reported at [1998] 3 All England Law Reports 741.


In case it interests anyone, the following is an excerpt from a piece I
am writing about the case:

"In 1988 Bonham's advertised the auction of a preserved tatooed head of
a New Zealand Maori who had died in about 1820.  It was offered for sale
by a the owner of a house in Suffolk in whose attic the head had lain
for over a 100 years.  Despite the death having occurred so long ago and
despite the absence of any estate to administer the President of the New
Zealand Maori Council successfully applied to High Court in New Zealand
for letters of administration of the deceased's estate in his capacity
both as President of the Council and as the chief of the deceased's
likely tribe or clan.  Having obtained the letters of administration the
President sought an injunction at the High Court in London to prevent
the sale.  The auctioneers agreed not to dispose of or destroy the head
and eventually it was repatriated to New Zealand.  Granting the letters
of administration Greig J commented: "There can be little, if any,
dissent from the proposition that the sale and purchase of human remains
for gain and for purposes of curiosity is abhorrent to New Zealanders
and, I hope, to any civilised person.  There is a macabre circumstance
to the proposed transaction that has some of the attributes of
necrophilly.


Footnote
Patrick O'Keefe, "Maoris Claim Head" (1992) 1(2) International Journal
of Cultural Property 393; The Times 20 May 1988, 2a; Bernard Levin,
"Foul Deeds of Desecration" The Times 6 June 1988, 14b; The Times 6 July
1988, 15a.  The legal action lead to Christie's halting the simultaneous
auction of a collection of South American, Pacific islander, and
European heads, The Times26 April 1988, 4f; The Times 24 May 1988, 4g.
Other Maori heads were recently returned by British Museums to New
Zealand, The Times 4 July 1988, 12g, and in 1990 seven Aboriginal skulls
and a penis amputated in 1990, some of which had come from exhumations
were returned by British museums to Australian Aborigines, Michael
Mansell "Tasmanian Aboriginal Bones" (1985) 1(6) Anthropology Today 27;
the Times 18 July 1990, 3c." 

In message <l03020902b2e1b611e4b9@[137.158.116.83]>, Pippa Skotnes
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I am a new member to this list, and see that it is not very active. Perhaps
>I could encourage a little discussion by asking (and forgive me if this is
>inappropriate) to hear details (not having attended the Glasgow conference)
>of the "stealing body parts case". My own interests intersect here -- I
>teach on a museum course and am interested not only in the political use of
>human remains in museums (the claims of aboriginal peoples for the return
>of human remains from European Museums, and the ) but also in the theft and
>use of relics in the Middle Ages.
>
>In the United States, an inventory has been drawn up which lists over 10
>000 individuals represented by their remains and over quarter of a million
>funery objects in museums and other collections. Many are being
>repatriated, but some are to remain, with Native American approval, in the
>museums.  There is a good web-site for the Native American Graves
>Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) at
>http://www.sfsu.edu/~nagpra/web.htm
>as well as links to the curation of human remains in museums around the
>world at
>http://archnet.uconn.edu/museums/
>
>It is interesting that in contrast European museums have been notoriously
>uncompromising in negotiating with indigenous groups in former colonies
>about the return of human remains. Nor have they produced inventories of
>their collections for public scrutiny--on the contrary these remains are
>often deliberately kept secret. It is a fascinating idea to think of these
>collections of body parts, human skins, stuffed heads and skeletal material
>as an unacknowledged colonial heritage of uncelebrated mass graves.
>
>Pippa Skotnes
>
>************************************************
>Associate Professor
>Lucy Lloyd Archive Resource and Exhibition Centre
>University of Cape Town
>************************************************
>
>

-- 
Stephen White ([log in to unmask])
16 Tymynydd Close                               Visiting Lecturer
Radyr                                           Cardiff Law School
Cardiff CF4 8AS                                 University of Wales
Wales, U.K.                                     Museum Avenue
01222 842453                                    Cardiff CF1 1XD
                                                Wales, U.K.



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