162
Thomas L. Muinzer
the law recognised that adequate burial of the dead was necessitated on
grounds of both public health and decency – see for example the case
Jenkins v Tucker (1778) – and it is likely that in reducing Byrne’s corpse
to its skeleton in his cauldron with the intention of placing its bones on
display Hunter engaged in action that would have been considered indecent. Furthermore, the action of switching the body for dead weight and
thereby causing the weight rather than the body to be buried is likely to
fall within the parameters of the longstanding common law offence of
‘preventing the lawful burial of a body’ (Hirst 1996).
At present the trustees of the Hunterian Museum have legal custody of
the remains, the skeleton constituting one part of the collection that the
British Government presented to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1799.
None of the giant’s blood relations are known today. If such relatives
were to step forward they could endeavour to activate a familial possessory right to the remains for the purposes of burial under the duty to bury
principle. Whether or not the claim would prove successful in a court of
law is open to debate. Matthews’ influential paper ‘Whose Body’ indicates that such an argument would at the very least be legally credible
(Matthews 1983: 219-220).
Byrne as Symbolic
The law as it stood in Byrne’s time and the law as it stands currently are
remarkably similar. At present burial instruction is not legally binding:
the ‘no property’ in the body rule remains in place; the duty to bury principle and the associated possessory right for the purposes of burial are
still operative; and, the framework setting out the hierarchy of those who
are imbued with this duty to bury is still based upon the conventional
‘family unit’ structure.
Keeping this historical similitude in mind, one notes that it is possible
to interpret the Charles Byrne exhibit at the Hunterian from a range of