Ravaging the Dead

By Diane Morris

The year is 1816, and James Hammond is training to be a surgeon at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. He spends hours dissecting cadavers to learn anatomy and recognizes the moral hazard in this enterprise. Who are the monsters: the resurrection men who dig up newly buried bodies and deliver them to London’s medical schools ... or the surgeons who pay for the fresh corpses? His conscience is not much bothered by the answer. He readily pays the body-snatchers for their filthy commodity, for they spare him the trouble of digging up the dead himself.

When his friend Franklin Doyle begs him to treat his fiancée’s broken arm, Hammond answers the call of duty. He travels to Chertsey, where Doyle’s fiancée, Henrietta Lavelle, lives. On arriving he finds that Henrietta’s mangled arm has been treated by a local surgeon whose old-fashioned ideas and poor surgical skills threaten her life. Never before has Hammond felt such anxiety when treating a patient, but then he remembers that he stands at the elbow of giants—those surgeons who dare to perform complex operations without anesthesia, without good antiseptics ... with little more than courage and raw skill. The decision to treat her is right and proper, but it challenges his confidence and upends his future. "Ravaging the Dead" is Book 1 in the "Surgeon’s Duty" series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diane Morris
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781941033098

Diane Morris

Diane H. Morris took up historical fiction after a career as a nutritionist. Her first novel, "Rosings Park," was written to appease Jane Austen's character Anne de Bourgh, who pestered the author for twenty years. She next wrote "Cousin Anne," a novella that examines Anne’s youthful relationship with both her cousin Mr. Darcy and the beguiling rogue George Wickham. These novels sparked her interest in body-snatching, surgery, and medicine during Jane Austen’s day and led her to write the Surgeon’s Duty series. When she’s not writing and researching, she enjoys traveling with her husband (before COVID, of course); meeting friends for coffee; reading mysteries, bestsellers, and the occasional Regency romance; and playing her digital piano (quite badly, but with pleasure).

Book preview

Prologue

Cross Bones Cemetery

Southwark Borough, London

March 1816

A pox on this. ’Tis naught but mud. John Collinge pushed his wooden spade into the crusty muck with a groan. ’Twill take half the night.

Hush, warned Will, else Crow hear you.

Crow won’t bother us. He has been paid by the Borough Boys, who own this ’ere plot. Crow would never cross ’em. Anybody who does is a fool. John grunted again as he freed another spadeful of sodden soil. Shine the light over ’ere, Sam. I can’t see nuffin’.

Sam, standing not two feet distant, widened the opening on the lantern’s window, allowing a band of light to illuminate the growing hole. It caught the swirl of fog stirred by spades moving dirt. If he had a fancy for fear, he might think it a good night for the Devil to walk, especially here, in this wild field where the ground was mounded in strange little hillocks. Sam may have been a mere twelve years of age, but he possessed an ample portion of common sense. The idea of ghosts raised no gooseflesh, nor did he fear fairies or demons or dealing with the dead.

A woman’s raucous laugh broke the quiet.

Shrieks followed, the sounds muted by the quickening fog.

The brothers stopped digging. Sam shuttered the lantern. All ears were alert for night sounds. All eyes searched the gloom for sinister forms: an indignant cleric, a constable, or irate citizens.

No apparitions, real or imagined, appeared. A dog yipped two streets over.

’Twere nothing to do with them.

Sam again spilled light on the ground. The brothers took up their spades and turned the muck until the head of a cheap wooden coffin was revealed. Will dropped his spade onto the mounded earth and gripped two iron hooks. He forced them under the coffin lid and laid burlap sacks on top to dampen any noise while John planted his feet in the dirt to steady himself. With a quiet grunt John caught the hooks with the rope and pulled up, prying off a good-sized wooden piece.

He waved a hand while a miasma of foul odors billowed into the night air. His stomach never heaved.

Can you see the head? asked Will.

O’ course. The things are buried east to west, you know.

Sam ignored his uncles’ bickering and moved to shine more light on the open coffin.

Oy, muttered John, the thing is dressed in a winding-sheet. ’Tis bound as fast as the ribbons on a lady’s corset. Hold steady, Sam. He grunted while fighting to snare the corpse’s neck in the coffin’s tight confines.

Do you need the hooks? asked Will, watching his brother struggle.

Nay, ’tis nearly done. After a few mumbled curses, John raised a hand.

Will pulled the rope.

A small thing came free of its resting place.

Will unwound the winding-sheet and stuffed it into the coffin. Being caught stealing a corpse was a misdemeanor. Stealing coffins or grave goods like winding-sheets, fancy gowns, and stockings was a felony. Few resurrection men were willing to risk being fined and imprisoned or transported to a far-off colony for a dead person’s trinkets.

The body of a scrawny girl lay naked in the lantern light. She had been buried earlier in the day and was fairly fresh, her body only beginning to bloat.

The three body-snatchers looked down on it. None were disturbed by the child's skinny body, for they did not shy from digging up whatever was available: old grannies, a family's favorite son, dear fathers, feared fathers, a daughter who died after running off with the milkman, or infants whose squalls brought a harried mother to the crib, some picking up the child with delight, some with irritation. To the body-snatcher the thing was a commodity to be unearthed and sold to the highest bidder.

John, making the first move, leaned down, bound the thing with a rope, and folded it into a gunny-bag while Will tacked the end piece onto the coffin and scooped dirt on it.

Little effort was expended on the latter chore, for coffins buried in the Cross Bones graveyard were laid in shallow graves. The burial ground had been used since medieval times and held the bodies of hundreds of half-starved wretches and prostitutes. Hardly any decent persons cared about these poor souls. Only the grieving families spared a few salty tears for their dead. Their hearts would be rent in two if they knew they wept over empty graves, for the powerful gang of resurrection men known as the Borough Boys claimed dominion here and regularly plundered Cross Bones’ coffins.

After some semblance of order had been restored to the grave, John shouldered the sack and led his companions back to their one-horse wagon. Each took care where he placed his feet, else he break a long bone in the leg by stepping into a depression.

The thing was soon hidden in the wagon and transported to the dissecting room at St. Thomas’s Hospital, where Henry Cline, a surgeon, was working late. Because the thing was a child—a large small in the parlance of the resurrection man—the price was determined by the inch. Coins were handed over, the thing was dumped in the dead house, and the threesome headed for home.

John scowled the whole way. It did not sit well with him that a rather large portion of their earnings this night must go to Ben Crouch and his Borough Boys, but they had no choice. If the Boys caught them stealing from their graveyards, they would beat him and Will again—or worse. The Boys, like most resurrection men, did not tolerate rivals.

Six weeks had passed since the night they had been discovered robbing a grave in Crouch’s territory. John did not care to suffer again, but he was tempted to hold back more of tonight’s brass than he ought. He must think on it.

He might be a fool.

He glanced at his brother, fast asleep, his chin all but resting on his chest. Will would argue against brewing trouble.

Gor, ’tis cold tonight, John said to himself, shivering.

Sam Fry, sitting between his uncles, half asleep, felt nothing but relief, for the porter taking the delivery had not recognized him. Good fortune indeed.

Volume 1 — April 1816

Chapter 1

Sam Fry stood in the shadow of an ancient gabled house and regarded the line of carriages queued to enter St. Thomas’s Hospital across the street. He listened to the hum of enterprise: tea dealers, tobacconists, hatters, brandy merchants, comb makers. Pedestrians streamed from every direction: from the southern reaches of Southwark Borough, heading north to the City on the opposite bank of the river Thames, and from Bank Side and Clink Street up along the river, funneling their way south through a narrow lane before spilling into the borough’s crowded High Street. Behind him the door to Anderton’s confectionery shop swiveled to and fro like a wind-tossed weathervane. Whiffs of cinnamon and sugar sailed along the sidewalk, a pleasing contrast to the stench of horse dung and piss underfoot.

He shivered at the prospect of another day spent at St. Thomas’s.

Every brown greatcoat caught his eye. He was watching for his mentor.

It had taken months to locate him. In this pursuit Sam’s determination was exceeded only by his longing, for he believed—beyond reason and common sense—that James Hammond was his savior.

His quest had begun in February, on a day when he least expected to rub against anything half so extraordinary. Working his way along Watling Street, he aimed to secure a job with one of the warehousemen situated there. At times the Wainhouse and Scarborough warehouse owners paid him to deliver small goods around Town and help move barrels and crates within the warehouse, but his luck dwindled this morning. His misfortune was worrying, for his uncle expected him to surrender his brass at day’s end.

Sam despised this daily ritual, for the coins were fair wages for fair work. They were his to hoard and not squander on cheap gin, which was his uncle’s habit.

Sam would readily share his takings with his good-hearted aunt, but he had no truck with his uncle.

One evening he had risked squirreling several pennies in his socks—a much regretted gamble, for his uncle had detected his trick and thrashed him from one end to the other. The bruises on his arms and back had taken days to subside. Since then, Uncle John, often disguised on gin and harboring a suspicious glint in his eyes, patted Sam’s clothing and fingered his shoes.

Sam would not risk the deception again, but he must do something to escape his uncle’s mercurial temper. A day would come when he would return the fight, give a slap for a slap, throw a punch for a punch, and the consequences be damned.

He never pictured himself winning the brutish battle.

On that fateful February day, the air had smelled of snow, as if Providence threatened to sprinkle a mantle over the sooty City. Hands tucked in his armpits to keep them from freezing, Sam gave up the search for work. He was walking along New Queen Street in the direction of Cheapside when screams rent the air behind him. Swiveling, he beheld a grubby girl at risk of being trampled by a wagoner’s excited horse. The wagoner ran to the horse’s head to calm the creature, while the girl, thrown on her backside, scuttled crablike to escape the animal’s horny hooves.

A plump orange, bright as the sun, rolled out of her coat pocket.

Several spectators gathered.

A heavily jowled man wearing an apron pushed his way through the circle, shouting, You young scoundrel. You stole one of my oranges, and very dear they are. He shook a finger at her. I would see you arrested and sent to Newgate, thief.

Prison is a severe punishment for a hungry child, said a well-formed man wearing a brown greatcoat.

Sam’s attention was caught.

"’Tis easy for you to criticize, sir. That is not your orange lying there in the filth."

True. Allow me to pay for it. The man handed over a coin. This will allay any concern you might feel for the child’s welfare. The man turned his back on the grocer and looked down on the girl, whose tears scored her dirty cheeks.

Insufferable busybody, said the grocer to no one in particular.

The handsome man squatted at the child’s feet. Keep this hidden. He handed the child her orange. I am a surgeon. Will you allow me to examine your legs?

Wild-eyed, the girl shrank back, suspicious of kindness. She wiped snot from her nose with the back of one hand.

Sam crept closer.

May I remove your shoes? I wish to know whether any bones are broken. The girl shied like a nervous colt but did not resist.

The surgeon removed her too-small shoes and lay them at his feet. You must tell me if something hurts.

The girl nodded once.

Sam believed he stood over a sorcerer. The man’s long fingers gently kneaded the soles of the girl’s feet, probed her ankles, and advanced along her legs. His thumbs caressed the bones. His fingers massaged the muscles. His movements mesmerized—a magician’s sly hands conjuring a rabbit.

You have been lucky today, Sam heard the surgeon say. No bones are broken, but you have a deep bruise. Do you live nearby?

Budge Row, the girl whispered.

Close by, then. If I carried you, would someone be at home? asked the surgeon as he pulled on her shoes.

Me mam.

Good. Put your arm around my neck. Hold tight to your orange. With those words, he lifted her.

The wagoner called his thanks. The observers became restless and took up their errands.

Sam watched the surgeon disappear like a phantom dissolving in a swirl of smoke.

Later he berated himself for not pursuing, but at the time he had been too entranced to move. He felt a strange fluttering inside. His stomach turned queasy. He could not shake the certainty that his future was tied to this man.

As the crowd dispersed, he surveyed his fingers, holding them out like red-tipped dowsing rods in the piercing cold. In form, they were long and slender like the surgeon’s. Did they possess any magic?

The spell broke when an old woman bundled in shawls bumped him. Ye cod’s head. Must ye stand ’ere like a wigeon?

That evening, long after supper, when the hearth fire smoldered and the candle had been snuffed, Sam huddled under his blanket, recalling every detail—the surgeon’s neat fingernails, the sparse tufts of hair on the back of his fingers, his tender pats and strokes. In the darkness a secret smile grew on Sam’s lips. Suffused with delight, he awakened to a new purpose. One image looped in his head: the strong, elegant fingers reading the girl’s legs, searching for hidden injuries. He wanted to know how to do that. But how to start? Where to go? Could the surgeon be found, and if he were found, would he help?

Sam could not shake his nervous excitement. Some strange glow must have lit his face, for a few days later his aunt Mary noticed his odd behavior. Sam, wot are you about this evenin’ that you be sittin’ so quiet like? Twice I told you to go to bed, for yer uncle has business tonight. Yet twice you have sat ’ere like ye’re deaf. Now go to bed. I will wake you when it be time.

Sam did as he was bid, but his head was full of his astonishing experience in New Queen Street. The otherworldly sensation of having glimpsed his future stayed with him. He could not shake it. He could not explain it, this strong tug on his heart. One thing was certain: he must find the surgeon.

His search took him to St. Bartholomew’s, which he haunted for several weeks, only because the Royal hospital lay closest to where the girl had been trampled. Failing to find the surgeon there, he explored the Westminster and London hospitals and also the General Dispensary, where his luck proved no better. He next searched south of the river, starting with St. Thomas’s, one of London’s largest and most respected charity hospitals. He explored the facility until he understood its layout and habits.

One day he encountered Hammond.

You are becoming a nuisance, young fellow. What is it you seek? the surgeon had asked.

Sam’s heart leapt to behold his hero. I wish to be a surgeon, sir. He hoped an honest reply would secure his future.

The surgeon raised an eyebrow. What is your name?

Sam hesitated for half a heartbeat. Sam Fry.

Perhaps he should have lied.

Sam Fry, mused the surgeon, as if he suspected a fib. My name is James Hammond. I am a surgeon pupil here. Are you interested in anatomy?

Aye, sir.

Come with me. We shall see whether you have the stomach for it.

It felt like a dream, the best dream Sam could imagine.

He intended to make it come true, although he wasn’t sure how to go about it. Even so, he knew, by some natural animal instinct, that he wished to learn the surgeon’s skill.

He began by allying himself with Hammond, which meant visiting St. Thomas’s whenever possible. He continued to toil in the Watling Street warehouses and handed his brass to his uncle. On more than one occasion, however, he was forced to withstand his uncle’s pointed questions, for his earnings from the warehouse district were less now than they had been. Undaunted, Sam held fast to his new-found mission, which meant waiting for Hammond’s arrival at St. Thomas’s.

Sam kept his eyes trained north as pedestrians surged around him this chilly forenoon. Hammond had said he would examine his patients at ten o’clock, but Sam could not wait until then. He wanted to observe a dissection.

A break in the carriage traffic spurred him to scamper across the street. He sneaked through the hospital’s massive iron gates flanking the High Street entrance and kept pace with a large carriage wheeling slowly into the courtyard. In this manner he avoided the porter’s surveillance and blended with the crowd of nervous patients and their families milling about the courtyard. Confident of his destination, he made his way to the dissecting room.

Chapter 2

Several days later Sam Fry found his mentor in the apothecary’s laboratory. Sir, the lady has come.

Is Spink there too?

Aye. He asked me to fetch you.

Tell him I will come directly. The surgeon refrained from looking at the boy hovering in the doorway.

Fry hesitated, not wishing to provoke the surgeon. Aye, sir, he barked before stepping outside into the hospital’s busy back yard. He would wait, else he miss this evening’s special dissection.

James Hammond felt sheepish on being caught loitering in the apothecary’s laboratory. He had been prickly of late. The cause of his surliness was well known to himself but was not a matter he could speak of to anyone else. Even Gregory Campbell, his most trusted companion in this place, only suspected the truth.

He’s keen, that one, said one of the apothecary’s assistants.

So it seems, said Hammond as he watched the man crushing poppy heads for a poultice.

Hammond had come to this familiar room for a moment’s respite. Having served as an apothecary’s apprentice for six years, beginning when he was fourteen, he was familiar with the tools of the apothecary’s trade: measuring tubes, gallipots, and bottles, the latter laid in long rows rising high above his head, shelf upon shelf, the dusky vessels bearing labels, some smudged with grime. Here were figs, coriander, nutmeg, and squill root; there, arsenic, poisonous hellebore, and hartshorn. The labels’ words had been written in a style common to nearly all practitioners of pharmacy.

He had no particular business with the hospital’s apothecary, but instead sought peace of mind, which had deserted him this past week. His thoughts were fixed on Miss Lavelle. The deed will be done. I must accept the outcome, however much it pains me. He pictured Henrietta laughing, a toss of her head setting her tawny curls to joggling about her ears. Recalling the dimple in her cheek and her brown eyes sparkling with mischief brought a smile.

Therein lies madness, he reminded himself.

He gave the assistant a quick salute and stepped into the yard where he spied Fry.

Sir, Dr. Wadhurst and Mr. Campbell wish to attend.

Do they now?

The boy fell in step beside him. I reckon Spink will hold ’em off.

Nobody sneaks past him, it’s true.

Hammond and young Fry crossed a handsome courtyard and entered the hospital’s dissecting room.

Beneath the high ceiling with its massive skylights, a dozen pine tables stood aligned in rows. The space could accommodate up to two hundred students dissecting subjects. Now that the winter session had ended, only three bodies lay in various states of mortification.

The stench of putrefying flesh clung to the candle stands and permeated the walls. A cloying sweetness soon coated the back of the throat and glazed the tongue. The foul miasma would fell most hale and hearty men. The surgeons and their students took little notice of it.

In the far corner two men waited near a table on which lay a sheet-covered body. They observed Hammond’s approach.

Dr. William Wadhurst, the taller of the two, was a physician’s pupil at St. Thomas’s. He enjoyed a pedigree that conferred many privileges, among them being his present appointment. He did not himself pay the fee of twenty pounds for two years of training. Rather, his father, a prominent London physician, paid the account, which the son thought only proper. Senior in years and position to Hammond, Wadhurst assumed a confident authority, saying, We will attend the dissection.

The other man—Mr. Gregory Campbell, an assistant surgeon—leaned against a high table, amused by Wadhurst’s officiousness. In character Campbell was laconic; a studier of people, both living and dead; and disposed to think well of his friends. Expecting a test of wills, his wry grin fell on his surgical colleague.

Hammond shot Campbell a warning and slipped on his apron. I cannot allow it, he said while fastening the filthy covering. It took some persuasion to secure the father’s permission to examine his daughter’s body. I will not go back on my word. The dissection will be private.

It came as no surprise that Wadhurst took immediate offense, for his creed placed the science of anatomy above the misguided resistance of fathers and the tender feelings of family. The body is not that of a St. Thomas’s patient, he said, stating the obvious in an accusing tone. Has Mr. Arkwright approved this business?

Hammond was tempted to lie, for Wadhurst was often tedious and haughty. Instead, he told the truth. Of course. I would not knowingly ignore the hospital's rules.

Hugh Arkwright was the hospital treasurer. His power rivaled that of the institution’s president and his permission was required before a body could be dissected or dismembered.

Campbell grinned. There was something about Wadhurst, poor soul, that invited scorn.

Wadhurst scowled as if Hammond had somehow gotten the better of him.

The men observed the wrapped body while Fry positioned candles and Spink laid out saws, knives, and nippers.

Hammond read his colleagues’ disappointment. You may view the diseased part when I am finished. It may take some two hours.

Your offer is not ideal, but we must honor it, said Wadhurst. He turned to Campbell: Does dinner suit you? His fat fingers worked to button his wool greatcoat. We will wait at the George. Send the boy to fetch us. He glared at Fry.

Hammond caught Campbell’s sly smile before the two men exited the room.

Did I do wrong? he asked Fry.

You did say, sir, that no one would watch the dissection, so why did you agree to let ’em see her body?

It’s a thorny problem. Hammond’s gaze traveled the length of the winding-sheet. No doctor or surgeon would fault him for reneging on his agreement to keep the dissection private. Here in this filthy, stinking hall there was one goal: to seek the truth. What killed this person? Was the diagnosis correct? Are the marks of disease the same on this body as those found on another body suspected of having the same malady? The answers to these questions were not his alone to ponder. They were grist to the mill for all medical men driven to understand the functions of the body’s organs and their response to disease.

In this case, Hammond had obtained permission for the dissection only after promising privacy. He would abide by the father’s wishes in the main.

The father of the deceased was Lewis Pollen, a respectable corn and coal merchant, who had sought Hammond’s advice when the eldest of his five daughters developed a mysterious malady. On her death six months later Hammond had tried persuading him to allow a dissection, but the heartsick man turned apoplectic.

My daughter is no murderer! She is no coarse criminal to be filched from the hangman’s scaffold and carted off to be dissected. A vein throbbed on Mr. Pollen’s flushed face as he pictured the Tyburn hanging tree as it had been when he was a child and accompanied his grandfather to watch a murderer hanged. He had witnessed the ugly skirmish between two determined surgeons and the wailing family, all wrestling for the deceased’s body like crazed savages. He never knew the outcome of their struggle, but the memory still distressed him. I will not have her flayed like a fish, he had shouted. Never will I allow an anatomist to touch her pure flesh. Mr. Pollen had gasped and grabbed his chest before collapsing onto a sofa.

Hammond regretted the lost opportunity but had no heart for arguing a truth many would find reprehensible: every surgeon, every physician, every apothecary was expected to study anatomy, although some men (including a few surgeons) avoided the distasteful duty.

In the succeeding weeks dozens of new cases scrubbed his memory of Mr. Pollen’s grief, until the day he was contacted a second time: another daughter had taken ill with symptoms much like her sister’s. Hammond was called to treat her, but after nine months of suffering she also succumbed.

Mr. Pollen, not yet recovered from burying one beloved daughter, now mourned another.

Hammond had pressed for permission to examine the second daughter’s body. I appreciate your abhorrence. The idea must offend every noble virtue, but it is—

Unspeakably vile. Ungodly! Mr. Pollen had spat the words as if to protect his dead daughter from further injury.

Yet essential in guiding my intuition. The examination is like a torch carried in the dark. It lights the candle of understanding. It illuminates the accuracy of my decisions. Was there anything else I could have done? Can I prevent this outcome in the future? However repugnant the idea is to you and to most persons, the examination has one vital purpose: it serves the living. Hammond saw a desperate grief flickering in Mr. Pollen’s red-rimmed eyes. Your heart is broken, sir, and will not soon mend. The only comfort you may find in the coming days is knowing that some other man’s child may be spared your daughter’s fate because of what I learn in this case.

Mr. Pollen stifled a sob and blew his nose. For several minutes he did not speak as he struggled to master himself. It will be private? You stand by your word on that?

I do.

And my daughter … She will be—? No part will be—?

I will honor your daughter’s privacy. I promise to examine only that part affected by disease. She will be returned to you whole.

A spasm crossed Mr. Pollen’s ruddy face. He patted his eyes with a crumpled handkerchief and gave a feeble nod.

Hammond had spoken gently: Wrap her in a winding-sheet. A carter will fetch her this evening and return her to you tomorrow morning.

He did not state the obvious: he must work quickly before the body decayed further. On leaving Mr. Pollen’s house he had caught the puffy eyelids of the servant girl who handed him his overcoat and hat.

To Fry he said, I must weigh the father’s right to protect his daughter from unseemly intrusions, even in death, against my need to know whether my diagnosis was correct. The only way of confirming my diagnosis is to dissect her body. I shall share my findings with Dr. Wadhurst and Mr. Campbell and any other medical men here this evening, since they are as dedicated as I in their pursuit of real understanding. Why should I alone benefit from my discoveries?

Fry considered this rather lofty question while Spink helped Hammond unwrap the winding-sheet and position the body.

Unlike Dick Spink, Sam Fry was not a dresser—the title given a surgeon’s assistant who paid for the privilege of studying under a surgeon.

Fry was a meddler, to Spink’s way of thinking. In the past few weeks, the boy had proved adept at creeping past the porter who guarded the hospital’s High-Street gate and avoiding the beadles on their rounds. Fry sneaked into the men’s wards and the bake house, watching wraith-like from dark corners and behind doors. Because he did not steal clothing or supplies and disappeared at sundown, no one raised an alarm. The sisters and bakers simply shooed him out the door like a mangy dog.

Eventually a dresser grew resentful of the