72 REMINISCENCES OF 



pocket-money for the subsequent summer. In those 

 days, student life in Manchester schools was some- 

 what Bohemian. Though there were one or two 

 lecturers of the professional calibre of the late Sir 

 James Bardsley and Mr. Jordan, most of them were 

 decidedly men of but ordinary powers; amongst 

 these were several who were not only commonplace 

 teachers but irregular in attendance. The dissecting- 

 room was left entirely in the hands of students, no 

 official superintending teacher having been ap- 

 pointed. A not uncommon occupation of the students 

 was to gather in a semicircle round the fire, and 

 exercise their talent of glee singing ; that is, when 

 they were not actually engaged in more mischievous 

 schemes. The " subjects," by the dissection of which, 

 in those days, medical students acquired their know- 

 ledge of human anatomy, were obtained from the 

 prisons and the workhouses, but people who died in 

 the latter abodes were carefully protected by the 

 Anatomy Act. Any relative or friend could claim a 

 dead person, and prevent him or her from being 

 transmitted to a medical school. Not only so, but 

 a dying inmate of a workhouse could authorise the 

 master of the house thus to protect him. With 

 each " subject " arriving at the school, a coffin was 

 sent to receive " the remains " when they had 

 served their purpose; which remains were for- 

 warded for interment to a particular church, in one 

 of the suburbs of Manchester. On one occasion, 

 a lecturer had acquired a dead donkey, which was 



