War of words over ‘Irish Giant’

MUSEUM chiefs have rejected a suggestion by experts in law and medical ethics that the skeleton of an 18th century man known as the “Irish Giant” should be removed from display and buried at sea.

Charles Byrne, originally from Derry, stood just over 7ft 7in tall.

He found fame in the 1780s exhibiting himself as a curiosity or “freak” in London.

Celebrity life eventually got the better of him, and he took to drink and died at his home in Charing Cross aged just 22.

His body was acquired by surgeon John Hunter, and his skeleton remains at the Hunterian Museum at the London headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In the British Medical Journal Len Doyal, emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, and Thomas Muinzer, a lawyer at the School of Law in Queen’s University, Bel-fast, call for the skeleton to be buried at sea “as Byrne intended for himself”.

They accept that the skeleton played an important part in linking the condition acromegaly, where excess growth hormone is produced, with the pituitary gland, which has enabled the diagnosis and early treatment of people who have it.

The authors say Byrne’s wish to be buried at sea was not fulfilled because Hunter, the pre-eminent surgeon and anatomist of the time, was determined to possess Byrne’s cadaver for his own purposes.

Byrne told friends that when he died his body should be sealed in a lead coffin and buried at sea, but Hunter bribed one of them and managed to acquire the body, boiling it down to the skeleton.

Dr Sam Alberti, director of the Hunterian Museum said: “The Royal College of Surgeons believes that the value of Charles Byrne’s remains, to living and future communities, currently outweighs the benefits of carrying out Byrne’s apparent request to dispose of his remains at sea.”