The bedlam cadaver, p.1
The Bedlam Cadaver, page 1
The Bedlam Cadaver
First published in 2024 by Melville House
Copyright © 2023 by Robert J. Lloyd
All rights reserved
First Melville House Printing: April 2024
Melville House Publishing
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Brooklyn, NY 11201
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Melville House UK
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16/18 Woodford Road
London E7 0HA
mhpbooks.com
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ISBN 9781685890957
Ebook ISBN 9781685890964
Book design by Beste M. Doǧan, adapted for ebook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024933316
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
a_prh_7.0_147266664_c0_r0
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Characters
Chapter One: The Gresham Dissection
Chapter Two: The New Justice
Chapter Three: The Bedlam Altercation
Chapter Four: The Bedlam Suicide
Chapter Five: The Women’s Gallery
Chapter Six: The Bedlam Mortuary
Chapter Seven: The Grieving Father
Chapter Eight: The Necessary Business
Chapter Nine: The Kidnapped Heiress
Chapter Ten: The Rhenish Winehouse
Chapter Eleven: The Monmouthite Bonfire
Chapter Twelve: The Brisk Boys
Chapter Thirteen: The Singular Issue
Chapter Fourteen: The Changed Mind
Chapter Fifteen: The Self-Satisfied Man
Chapter Sixteen: The Garden Elaboratory
Chapter Seventeen: The Bedlam Cadaver
Chapter Eighteen: The Suspicious Justice
Chapter Nineteen: The False Witness
Chapter Twenty: The Tyburn Fair
Chapter Twenty-one: The Swedish Count
Chapter Twenty-two: The Hard Decision
Chapter Twenty-three: The Dawn Robbery
Chapter Twenty-four: The Malevolent Thames
Chapter Twenty-five: The Rotherhithe Tailor
Chapter Twenty-six: The Noticeable Woman
Chapter Twenty-seven: The Delicious Breakfast
Chapter Twenty-eight: The Welcome Shelter
Chapter Twenty-nine: The Sleepless Night
Chapter Thirty: The Unwelcome Question
Chapter Thirty-one: The Questioning Men
Chapter Thirty-two: The Faraway Signal
Chapter Thirty-three: The Serviceable Glue
Chapter Thirty-four: The Silk Breeches
Chapter Thirty-five: The Makeshift Flag
Chapter Thirty-six: The New Philosophy
Chapter Thirty-seven: The Nighttime Angel
Chapter Thirty-eight: The Goodbye Kiss
Chapter Thirty-nine: The Wine Delivery
Chapter Forty: The Artist’s House
Chapter Forty-one: The Windsor Beauties
Chapter Forty-two: The Five Women
Chapter Forty-three: The Atelier’s Visitors
Chapter Forty-four: The Huntsmen’s Prey
Chapter Forty-five: The Boghouse Sanctuary
Chapter Forty-six: The Mercenaries’ Calash
Chapter Forty-seven: The Bethlehem Return
Chapter Forty-eight: The Wounded Cherub
Chapter Forty-nine: The Black Box
Chapter Fifty: The Percy Lion
Chapter Fifty-one: The Finsbury Madhouse
Chapter Fifty-two: The Overturned Household
Chapter Fifty-three: The Musquetoon’s Threat
Chapter Fifty-four: The Pall Mall Ambush
Chapter Fifty-five: The Minced Belly
Chapter Fifty-six: The Rotherhithe Escape
Chapter Fifty-seven: The Unlocked Box
Chapter Fifty-eight: The Ugly Word
Chapter Fifty-nine: The Missing Papers
Chapter Sixty: The Mile End Gibbet
Chapter Sixty-one: The Bloomsbury Homecoming
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements and Thanks
About the Author
To Stan and Vic, with love
CHARACTERS
MR. HENRY HUNT, Gentleman. (More usually, HARRY.)
MISS JANET WEBB, Harry’s Maidservant.
MR. OLIVER SHANDOIS, Harry’s Manservant.
M. HUBERT DIEUDONNE, Harry’s Cook.
MR. ROBERT HOOKE, Secretary of the Royal Society of London, Gresham Professor of Geometry, Architect, and Surveyor for the City of London.
MISS GRACE HOOKE, Robert Hooke’s Niece.
MR. THOMAS CRAWLEY, Observator of the Royal Society of London.
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, President of the Royal Society of London, Surveyor of the King’s Works.
M. DENIS PAPIN, Acting Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society of London
MR. EDMUND WYLDE, Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
MR. JOHN AUBREY, Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
HIS MAJESTY CHARLES II, the King.
SIR JOHN RERESBY, Baronet of Thrysbergh, Justice of Peace for Westminster.
MR. JOSEPH FENN, Marshal’s Officer.
MISS SEBILIAH BARTON, Bethlehem Patient.
DR. THOMAS ALLEN, Bethlehem Physician.
MR. JEREMY LESTER, Bethlehem Apothecary.
MR. JOSEPH MATTHEWS, Bethlehem Porter.
MRS. MILLICENT MATTHEWS, Bethlehem Matron.
MISS HANNAH MATTHEWS, Bethlehem Nurse.
MR. JOHN CARTER, Bethlehem Steward.
MR. WILLIAM JONES, Bethlehem Basketman.
MR. EDWARD LANGDALE, Bethlehem Basketman.
SIR BENEDICT CANTLEY, Deputy-Governor of the Royal African Company.
MISS DIANA CANTLEY, Sir Benedict’s Daughter.
JAMES SCOTT, the Duke of Monmouth. (The King’s Son.)
MR. THOMAS THYNNE, Member of Parliament for the Country Party and the richest Man in England.
MRS. ELIZABETH THYNNE (née Percy), Heiress to the Percy Estates.
MR. JOHN KIDD, Thomas Thynne’s Gamekeeper.
MR. RICHARD SINGER, Thomas Thynne’s Steward.
MR. JOSIAH KEELING, Salter and Oilman.
KARL JOHANN VON KÖNIGSMARCK, Swedish Count.
KAPITÄN CHRISTOPH VRATZ, Pomeranian Mercenary.
LÖJTNANT JOHANN STERN, Swedish Mercenary.
PAN JERZY BOROSKI, the Count’s Polonian Servant.
MRS. SARAH UNSWORTH, Tailor.
MRS. RASZKA LEJBOWICZOWA, Tailor.
SIR PETER LELY, the King’s Painter in Ordinary.
DHR. JAN-BAPTIST JASPARS, Sir Peter Lely’s Senior Assistant.
DHR. PROSPER LANKRINK, Sir Peter Lely’s Assistant.
DHR. JOSEPH BOKSHOORN, Sir Peter Lely’s Assistant.
MR. KILL-SIN ABBOTT, a Waterman.
CHAPTER ONE
THE GRESHAM DISSECTION
An opportunity had arisen.
A woman had ended her own life at Bethlehem Hospital.
No family wanting her, the Hospital gave her body to the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge—or, rather, to its Secretary, Mr. Robert Hooke. He was friendly with Bethlehem’s Physician, and had, after all, designed the place.
Hooke summoned the Fellows.
About thirty of them gathered at Gresham College, jostling by the entrance to its repository.
Even in the shade of the colonnaded walkway, most stood hat-less and holding their coats, for the midday sun was remorseless. Sweat darkened the backs of their waistcoats as they waited for admittance. Some had removed their perukes.
Hooke promised an extraordinary demonstration.
* * *
ALL THEIR TALK WAS OF THE forthcoming dissection. It was to be performed upstairs in the repository—more spacious than the anatomy room, or the Reading Hall, where most of the Society’s experimental trials took place. Hooke expected more Fellows than usual; he was right.
Led by Sir Christopher Wren himself, the trial would reveal a brain and spinal cord. Then—by some method not yet divulged—Wren planned to impart movement to the limbs. The idea came from a meeting of Hooke’s New Philosophical Club at the Angel and Crown a few nights before, when John Aubrey—his speech slurry from genever—had mentioned the mouths of those beheaded continuing to move in prayer. Anne Boleyn was one such. Her eyes had moved, too, roving around her from the straw.
May self-awareness continue even after the blade’s descent, the person knowing of their own predicament?
* * *
WORD WAS, HIS MAJESTY MIGHT ATTEND. At the Office of Works that morning, Sir Christopher had invited him. The King replied he was free and wanting entertainment.
Was this him now? The Fellows strained to see.
Red-faced from their load, two men carrying a sedan entered the quadrangle from Broad Street.
Once they had settled the chair, their passenger emerged and paid them; both looked gratified by the amount.
The newcomer wore a suit of blue silk, his waistcoat long, shirtsleeves copious, breeches beribboned. He repositioned his hat—also blue, with a swan’s feather curling around its brim. His peruke was a pristine creamy white, dazzling in the sunlight. His boots, of soft Moroccan leather, transported him silently across the grass, which had toasted over the summer.
Not the King, but Mr. Henry Hunt.
His appearance differed markedly from their last sighting; some Fellows did not even recognise him. Despite the news of his good fortune—rewarded handsomely by the Duchesse de Mazarin for services to her, and by the King for services to the Queen—they still expected the scruffy youth they knew as Harry, in the brown leather coat scarred by his adventures. Not this gentleman of sumptuous appearance. He had gained weight, too, his features softened by new flesh.
The door to the repository’s stairway swung open, and out stepped Robert Hooke. Standing in his hunched fashion, dressed in habitual grey, he welcomed each Fellow as they filed in. All the men bowed and expressed their pleasure for the forthcoming demonstration.
A fragile-looking youth carrying a tray full of tools hastened past them. This was Thomas Crawley, Harry’s replacement as Observator, about to assist Sir Christopher. Hooke patted his back as he went inside.
On spotting Harry, Hooke’s demeanour changed. His mouth formed a sour line. Harry, feeling shame, knew why: over three months had passed since they last saw each other, on his last visit to Gresham.
Warily, the two men bowed to one another, then shook hands for old times’ sake. Harry was careful not to squeeze too hard, for Hooke looked frailer than he remembered. Besides, all the rings Harry wore might cause him pain.
‘Sir Christopher awaits,’ Hooke said stiffly. His bulbous eyes, their irises mercury grey, held no warmth in them at all.
‘I am gladdened to see you, Mr. Hooke,’ Harry replied. ‘I have been busy. My new house…its decoration, and choosing furniture.’
Hooke raised an eyebrow. Harry’s voice had changed. Elocution lessons raised him up a class. His spectacles, Hooke noticed, were gold-rimmed.
‘Grace made mention of your improvements,’ Hooke said. ‘I await your invitation to view them.’
Harry opened, then shut, his mouth, and gestured that he would follow Hooke upstairs to the repository.
Hooke smiled tersely. Even Harry’s attempt at courtesy seemed superior. More a command that Hooke should walk in front.
* * *
ONCE UPSTAIRS AND INSIDE THE REPOSITORY, Harry could see Sir Christopher on the dais at the far end of the long, narrow room, setting out the tools Crawley passed to him. The new Observator exhibited—to Harry’s critical eye—a clumsiness about him. Between them and the assembling spectators stood a table supporting the cadaver, covered over by a thin cotton sheet.
The Society’s curios filled the repository. The Fellows nudged for spaces among the cabinets and chests of drawers.
Hooke went crookedly through the crowd of men towards Sir Christopher. His stoop from the hunch in his back had worsened, Harry observed. Hooke was one of the few men in the room without a wig; his long hair, tied back, looked disreputably unkempt.
Denis Papin, now in all but title the Society’s Curator of Experiments—at last, Hooke could concentrate fully on the Secretaryship—waved Harry over. Harry negotiated his way around a Roman statue of a woman dredged from the Fleet; the two men embraced happily.
‘The prodigal son returns at last,’ Edmund Wylde remarked in a stage whisper.
Harry ignored the gibe—which he knew to be good-natured, for he knew Edmund Wylde—and acknowledged him, and also John Aubrey, with a dip of his head. Wylde, leaning on a case full of fossils, shared an amused glance with Aubrey.
Nowadays—in appearance, at least—Harry was quite the gentleman.
At a hushing of the audience in readiness for the demonstration, they concentrated on the dais.
The tools—serrated knives, chisels, hammers—were by now arranged on a smaller table turned at a right angle to the one supporting the corpse. Harry recognised them from Gresham’s anatomy room; he had used them himself when assisting Hooke.
Loud claps and a bellowed ‘Lords, Sirs, Gentlemen…the King!’ made everyone turn to the door. Despite their squash, the Fellows did their best to show their servility, all getting in one another’s way as they made their bows, deep and sincere.
Sir Christopher, the Royal Society’s President, descended from the dais and pushed his way through the company.
‘Your Majesty, you do us great favour by your visit. You—’
‘Let there be no speechifying!’ The King sounded cheerful, glad of the distraction anatomy could provide. ‘Sirs, I greet you all. I am most pleased with the invitation. Hmm. And, as you see, to accept it.’
He waved at the Fellows to settle them. Sir Christopher led him through the opening channel of men, all still bowing.
Unless occasion demanded, the King dressed informally. Today, in a russet-coloured suit. A head taller than most of the Fellows—his height further increased by heels and a full black wig—he looked over them as he walked towards the dais. Although the windows were open, the heat in the repository was considerable; he stayed cool and unruffled. His face, with its dark complexion and exaggerated features of his Medici forefathers, tended towards solemnity, but for now he was smiling, seeming free from the cares of Whitehall.
Hooke positioned a chair at the foot of the dais. With another happy look behind him, the King sat down to observe the dissection.
Returning behind the table, Sir Christopher tied on a leather apron. A smile played around his mouth as he waited for quiet.
Despite being nearly fifty, he was unlined and fit-looking, more like a man ten years his junior. He radiated energy and enthusiasm. Rare for him nowadays to undertake anatomy; as the King’s Surveyor of Works, his time was greatly taken up with building. But his expertise with brains—had he not illustrated Willis’s Cerebri Anatome?—made him the natural choice to lead the demonstration.
‘May it please Your Majesty, my Lords, Sirs, Gentlemen, Fellows all,’ Sir Christopher began. ‘I shall reveal the brain, the brain stem, and its continuation through the bones of the spine.’
Applause broke out. Sir Christopher waited for it to quieten. His expression promised there was better to come. ‘Perhaps we may animate the material of this dead woman’s brain, its folds and undulations, into giving movement to her limbs. It is, therefore, a postscript to the investigations of Dr. Thomas Willis, with whom I had the honour to work.’
‘You made the drawings for his excellent book!’ Aubrey cried, unable to help himself.
‘Yes…thank you, Mr. Aubrey,’ Sir Christopher said, put out of his stride by the interjection. ‘He had other help, too. Mr. Millington. Mr. Lower. The bulk of the work, though, was his—to say otherwise would do him disservice.’
All the men murmured their assent. Willis, dead five years, was one of the Royal Society’s founders, and a well-liked Fellow.
‘Willis studied the treelike arrangement of the cerebellum, and the corpora striata, the optic thalami, the parallel lines of the mesolobe. He numbered the nervi craniales. He discovered God’s providential design—which we now call the Circle of Willis—allowing the blood’s flow to proceed even if one of its arteries is blocked. He avoided the usual mutilation of autopsy by cutting at a brain from beneath. He invented ways of preservation, so putrefaction did not curtail his investigations. It was these preserved brains I drew, using Mr. Hooke’s perspectograph.’
As more applause broke out, Sir Christopher gestured to Crawley.
Crawley removed the sheet, revealing the cadaver.
Before the dissection, Crawley had positioned the dead woman on her back. Her face was turned away from them.
All the Fellows wondered if she made a pretty corpse. None spoke the thought.
Her skin was the colour of cream. Her age, Harry guessed, was eighteen or so. She was slim—hipbones and ribs discernible beneath her flesh—and muscular, so obviously had been active. Released from under the sheet, a gamy smell arose; not yet too unpleasant, even in the repository’s stifling warmth.
Crawley had already shaved her head. A pile of long dark hair—almost black—lay on the floor, shining glossily. The assistant swept it further under the table with his foot.
‘Firstly, I shall expose the spine,’ Sir Christopher announced.
