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increasingly important in the preservation of life, an active campaign was mounted by burial reformers to change people’s attitudes about what should be done with their bodies after death and to destigmatize dissection. If anyone, it was the scientists and burial reformers who would have to lead by example. A nameless French scholar in 1829 had delivered a lecture to the British Forum on the virtues of dissection, which concluded with a reading of his will, wherein he stipulated that his body should first be dissected, and then his skin tanned and made into a leather chair. In addition, his bones should be cleaned so that the head could go to the London Phrenological Society and the smaller bones could be made into “knife-handles, pin-cases, small boxes, buttons, etc.” 111
    More famously, the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham left his body to science, stuffed and arranged in what he called his “Auto-icon,” the description of which he detailed in his will: a wooden box with a glass front in which his body could be seatedin a chair “usually occupied by me when living in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought.” Bentham went so far as to stipulate that he be dressed “in one of the suits of black occasionally worn by me” and that he be made to hold his beloved walking stick, nicknamed “Dapple.” His head was replaced with a wax replica (the original having been badly treated during the autopsy), and the “Auto-icon” was acquired in 1850 by University College London, which put it on display. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-icon was wheeled into the meeting of the College Council, and when the roll was called, Bentham was listed as “present, but not voting” (though the college maintains that it is a myth the stuffed corpse has ever cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie).

    Jeremy Bentham in his “Auto-Icon.”
    PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL REEVE.
    In 1875 the Anthropological Society of Paris founded a Society of Mutual Autopsy, not only tofurther the destigmatization of dissection but to recast autopsy as a form of immortality: Upon death a member would be immortalized in a detailed description of his body, particularly his brain— which would be added to the society’s collection for all time.
    But most people were not about to let their mortal remains be used as scientific toys or gothic mementoes. The fear of grave robbing was still strong through much of the nineteenth century, and new technologies arose to foil the resurrectionists. There was, for example, the “mortsafe,” an iron grid that encased the coffin to prevent any molestation of one’s remains, and in 1818 an Englishman named Edward Bridgman introduced the first device invented specifically to combat grave robbing: the “patent coffin,” a cast- or wrought-iron coffin with spring catches hidden on the inside of the lid, configured in such a way that it was impossible to pry off the lid with a crowbar. The patent coffin was such a sensation that a man named Charles Dibden composed an ode to this “prince of coffin makers” and sold it as a broadsheet, an upbeat ditty that included the following choice verses:
    Each age has boasted curious selves,
    By patent notoriety,
    Whose inventions have enriched themselves,
    For advantage of society.
    I, an immortal artisan,
    Pray, gents, favour your scoffing,

Produce tonight, muse, sing the man
    That made the patent coffin.
    CHORUS:
    Then toll the knell, each passing bell
    Shall of the mighty name of this wondrous man be talking,
    While foremost in the ranks of fame
    His coffin shall be walking.
    Resurrection men, your fate deplore,
    Retire with sore vexation,
    Your mystery’s gone, your art’s no more,
    No more your occupation;
    Surgeons, no more shall ye ransack
    The grave, with feelings callous,
    Tho’ on the Old Bailey turn’d your