Historian and curator. Museums, Victorians, and medicine.
Currently curator at Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds
Jack Gann
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But they were always at risk of pushing it too far. The Leeds case was the first, but it would be far from the last anatomy exhibition prosecuted for obscenity.
Fortunately, there was no such response to ours.
Jack Gann
Anatomy exhibits, with their intimate displays of human bodies, stripped down and exposed, skirted the line between education and titillation. The veneer of scientific respectability allowed people like the Lloyds to display naked private parts in public exhibitions.
Jack Gann
A Mr Nunneley from Leeds Medical School was sent to view it and reported that the museum's anatomical waxworks were "utterly useless for any scientific object, and would only have the effect of pandering to the worst passions of human nature." Leeds magistrates impounded the waxes.
That January, the old Corn Exchange at the top of Briggate was the venue for Louis and William Lloyd's itinerant anatomy museum. However, the city's magistrates took the view that the museum's exhibits could be dangerous to public morality.
Toy Company: At long last we have created the Chattermax from classic Bluey episode 'Don't Create a Chattermax'
Our anatomy exhibition closes today, but it has lasted a lot longer than one past exhibition on a similar theme.
In 1860, Leeds had the dubious honour of hosting the first museum to be forcibly closed for exhibits that violated the Oscene Publications Act.
We have a copy currently on display in our Anne Lister exhibit. Lister wrote that reading Aristotle's Masterpiece (in a copy confiscated from a maid) left her "in a high state of excitation".
Historian Anna Clark suggests the book was the origin of Lister's knowledge of the clitoris.
Jack Gann
Jack Gann
Jack Gann
Jack Gann
Jack Gann
Today’s Find: “Aristotle's Works: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, & Counsel & Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies” by Anonymous. First published 1684; this edition 1704 tinyurl.com/249hkc2f #histmed #medicalhistory
