The Lancett Club at a Thurtell Feast, by Thomas Rowlandson

AMONG Thomas Rowlandson’s (1756–1827) extant drawings, which may exceed 10,000, the depiction of a dissection in progress is rare. ¹ An early pen drawing The Dissection, ca. 1776–1778, and a watercolor, William Hunter in his Anatomy School at Great Windmill Street, ca. 1790, are well known. ² The Lancett Club at a Thurtell Feast, watercolor ca. 1824, comes from the artist’s later years and has not been fully described. ³ It recalls a contemporary event—the dissection of murderer John Thurtell (1794–1824) under the direction of surgeon John Abernethy (1764–1831) at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London on 10 January 1824. Abernethy stands behind the chair, on the right, among staff and students following the progress with avid interest. Next to him, peering over the prosector’s shoulder, is surgeon William Lawrence (1738–1867), associated with Thomas Wakley in founding the controversial medical journal The Lancet, which first appeared on 5 October 1823. Edward Stanley (1793–1862) demonstrates on the left. ⁴ The prosector, exaggerated in the style of satirical renderings, contrasts with the cadaver, dignified and serene in death.

John Thurtell (1794–1824), amateur boxer, promoter of sports spectacles, and gambler, was the best-known criminal of his day. ⁵ For the grisly, premeditated murder of a fellow gambler, Thurtell was sentenced to “be hanged . . . and delivered over to be dissected and anatomized.” ⁶ The sensation of Thurtell’s trial, relentlessly reported in the press, and the appeal of his person, handsome, poised, and well spoken, resulted in folk hero status for the murderer. Curiosity seekers and reporters arrived soon after Thurtell’s body at St. Bartholomew’s where, reluctantly, viewings were granted for several days whenever dissection was not in progress. Engraved portraits, circulated during and after the trial, and published descriptions of the body account for Rowlandson’s rendering of Thurtell’s likeness, including height, musculature, unblemished skin, and cauliflower ear. In his delineation of the skull, Rowlandson alludes to phrenologists’ embarrassment at the discovery of an enlarged “organ of benevolence” rather than the “organ of destructiveness” which they expected to find. ⁷ On the right, a mother and child in a hamper, the next subjects for dissection, are a reminder that St. Bartholomew’s was a frequent destination of the resurrectionists. ⁸

John Abernethy quarreled with Thomas Wakley and The Lancet after unauthorized publication of his lectures began on 9 October 1824. Rowlandson’s drawing probably dates from early 1824 when Thurtell’s execution and dissection were matters of current interest. It is possible, but less likely, that Rowlandson used the event, embedded in public imagination, to comment on the medical feud a year later.