The Lady and Her Monsters (9 page)

He hoped to see those dismal cells as well as a glimpse of those unhappy beings inside who were on their way to the gallows. On more than one occasion he witnessed criminals being hung and used their lives and experiences in his books, such as
Bleak House.
But all in all, he found it deplorable that such occasions were often seen as amusing sociable gatherings, as if the passing of a human being at the hands of another carried with it a note of joviality.

“I did not see one token in all that immense crowd of any emotion suitable for the occasion,” he wrote in a letter following the hanging of a famous prisoner. “No sorrow, no salutary terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness, nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes. I should have deemed it impossible that I could have ever felt any large assemblage of my fellow creatures to be so odious.”

On a gray and desolate day akin to those described in many of his novels, Charles Dickens walked around the prison. He was struck most by the cells of the condemned, where the prisoners stayed just prior to their execution. “It was a stone dungeon,” he later wrote, “eight feet long by six wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a Bible and a prayer book. An iron candlestick was fixed on the wall at the side; and a small high window in the back admitted as much air and light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars. It contained no other furniture of any description.”

The institution was dilapidated and suffused by the odor of death and suffering. As Dickens looked at what was then an empty cell, he began to conjure the shape of a man, a doomed young man crouching upon himself. “Conceive the situation of a man,” he wrote. “Spending his last night on earth in this cell . . . [having] neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his spiritual consoler; and now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now that eternity is before him and guilt behind, now that his fears of death amount almost to madness, and an overwhelming sense of his helpless, hopeless state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupefied, and he has neither thoughts to turn to, nor power to call upon.”

Much like the phantom criminal convicted and awaiting execution in Dickens's article, George Foster also found himself alone in his madness and fears of death. But his fears—as with those of the others condemned to die—must have gone beyond the actual moments on the gallows. Like many, he also must have feared eternity, as well as the possibility of not getting there at all.

In the Murder Act, passed in 1752, dissection had been added to the sentence of hanging for the specific purpose of inflicting “further terror and a peculiar mark of infamy” upon the criminal. The act, named “an Act for better preventing the horrid crime of Murder,” had been drawn up because killings were on the rise in the city and Parliament wished to frighten people into keeping law and safety. It stated that “whereas the horrid crime of Murder has of late been more frequently perpetrated than formerly and particularly in and near the Metropolis of this Kingdom, contrary to known Humanity and Natural Genius of the British Nation: and whereas it is thereby become necessary, that for some further terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy be added to the Punishment of Death.”

In addition, severe punishment was also extended to those who tried to help the criminal in any way. Because the hangings were in reality just slow strangulations (the necks did not break cleanly, but the convicted merely asphyxiated slowly), family members and friends were often seen running from the crowd toward the gallows and pulling on the men's legs to hasten their deaths and diminish their tortures. The Murder Act stated that if the family tried to rescue the body from the anatomists before or after death, they could be arrested and punished with transportation “to some of His Majesty's Colonies of Plantation in America, for the terms of Seven Years.” If somehow they made it back to England before the seven years ran out, they could also suffer death by hanging.

A series of articles printed by the Royal College of Surgeons under the title
Echoes from the College of Surgeons
outlined the whole process in clear and matter-of-fact prose. Its readers found themselves repelled by the proceedings:

The executions generally took place at eight o'clock on Mondays, and the cut-down, as it is called, at nine, although there was no cutting at all, as the rope, with a large knot on the end, was simply passed through a thick and strong ring, with a screw, which firmly held the rope in its place, and when all was over, Colcroft, alias “Jack Ketch” would make his appearance on the scaffold, and by simply turning the screw, the body would fall down . . . On extraordinary occasions visitors were admitted by special favour. The bodies would be stripped, and the clothes removed by Colcroft as his valuable prerequisites, which, with the fatal rope, were afterwards exhibited to the morbidly curious, at so much per head, at some favored public house. It was the duty of the City Marshal to be present to see the body anatomized, as the Act of Parliament had it. A crucial incision in the chest was enough to satisfy the important city functionary above referred to, and he would soon beat a hasty retreat, on his gaily-decked charger, to report the due execution of his duty. Those experiments concluded, the body would be stitched up, and Reatison, an old museum attendant, would remove it in a large cart to the hospital, to which it was intended to present it for dissection.

George Foster must have worried about the possibility of awakening during the act of dissection. He had probably heard stories of those who had not been truly dead when cut down from the gallows and had reawakened on the anatomists' table, just as the surgeon's knife was being plunged into their abdomen. If this had happened to him, he would have been taken to the gallows again, for a renewed hanging. In addition, there were religious connotations attached to the act of dissection. Most Londoners believed that, on the Day of Judgment, physical bodies would rise from the dead in order to meet the Lord. But if a body had been hacked to pieces and its remains scattered who-knows-where, that would be impossible. Thus, most criminals hated dissection for more reasons than could be realized: it would be the end of them not only in this lifetime but forevermore.

On the day of his execution, Foster confessed to the murder of his wife and daughter. His confession was later printed in the
Newgate Calendar,
the prison's bulletin, and everyone seemed satisfied with it, particularly Dr. Ford, the prison's priest, who now believed Foster could go to the other side with a clean conscience. It did not matter that the confessions were usually coerced and made only as an act to appease prison officials.

In the crowd, Mr. Pass, a somewhat unknown and shadowy character in the entire ordeal, waited for Foster's final demise. Mr. Pass was a failed surgeon who now worked as a middleman of sorts for the Royal College of Surgeons; nicknamed “the Beadle,” he procured corpses for the anatomists whose experiments required certain services and secrecy. Not only had he helped Aldini in his pursuit, but he stood by as Foster's “cap was pulled over his eyes, when the stage falling from him, he was launched into eternity.”

Prior to his death, Foster was asked if jealousy had led him to commit the “horrid act.” He never responded. It was later reported that neither jealousy nor drink had been at play: Jane had jumped into the river, taking Louisa with her. But by the time those details were uncovered the deeds on Foster's body had been committed, and all of London and beyond had come to know of them.

“F
irst, the fluid took over a large part of my brain, which left a strong shock, a sort of jolt against the inner surface of my skull. The effect increased further as I moved the electric arcs from one ear to the other. I felt a strong head stroke . . .” Giovanni Aldini was no stranger to galvanizing himself. He had tried such experiments in Bologna, prior to doing so on the mentally ill. Now he repeated them again. Restarting the heart required precision, and he wanted to make certain everything was in order. He used himself before the January 17 date, which was to be the climax of all he had worked for.

The Royal College of Surgeons. Many anatomical experiments were conducted within the halls of this institution. Giovanni Aldini appealed to the members of the College in order to test his ideas on galvanism, but also for assistance in finding the perfect subject to galvanize.

As the law required, after Foster was executed, his body was left hanging for an hour. It was January, and the winter temperatures played havoc on Aldini's plans. He later complained about the condition of the body, which had been left dangling “in temperature two degrees below the freezing point.” And after the noose was cut, the body was brought to a house, a small shed really, where it remained for a while longer, further cooling it down, which the courts required. Mr. Pass was not allowed to take possession of the corpse until the Royal College of Surgeons' necessary regulations had been followed.

Aldini surrounded the body, along with Mr. Keate and Mr. Corpue, officials from the college. They clustered around Foster as Aldini attached the first electrodes to the limbs, spots marked on the face, near the ears, and by the eyes where a solution of salt had been applied. Aldini powered his battery, which began to sizzle loudly, then “one arc being applied to the mouth and another to the ear . . . galvanism was communicated by means of three throngs combined together, each of which contained forty plates of zinc, and as many of copper.”

The officials looked on as connections were made, and in a corner of the room, Mr. Pass watched, uttering not a word, not even when “on the first application of the arcs the jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye actually opened.” For those who had not witnessed such things before, Foster actually appeared to have returned to life and was now staring up at them.

Aldini had barely begun. He moved the arc to the ears, which caused the head to turn from side to side, again giving the impression that the corpse was taking in the crowd. Aldini gave more power to the battery, and the movements became more pronounced, so that “a convulsive action of all the muscles of the face” occurred, and “the lips and eyelids were also evidently affected.”

But Foster was still dead. Despite Aldini's best intentions, the heart did not pump. As that had been the goal, he “endeavored to execute the action in the ventricles, but without success.” He administered galvanism externally where the heart was located, but still nothing happened. As such, he concluded that if the arc were administered directly onto the organ, a reaction would be had. He cracked open Foster's ribs, “exposing the heart in situm.” The heart, where the vital force, he believed, resided, now lay exposed before all to see. It rested, ready to take life anew.

Aldini reached for the arc and neared the surface of the organ, “then . . . the substance of the fibres, to the carnal columnae, to the septum ventriculorum, and lastly, in the course of the nerves by the coronary arteries.” Stubbornly, Foster refused to reawaken. Aldini continued on, but all was “without the slightest visible action being induced.”

For a second prior to opening the chest cavity, they had seen the chest heave up and down as if the corpse, to match their eagerness, had caught its breath. But in reality, nothing had occurred. The futile attempts continued for a bit longer, until they were given up altogether. Everyone was aware of the sobering reality that George Foster had been dead at the gallows and he remained so after being galvanized. Disillusioned, they disbanded into the night.

A
lthough Aldini had failed, he still believed in his theories. The battery had caused the botched galvanization, not him. “The troughs were frequently renewed, yet towards the close they were very much exhausted,” he was later to write in his notes. “No doubt, with a stronger apparatus we might have observed muscular actions much longer.”

One person who would not attend any more of Aldini's galvanizations was Mr. Pass. Shocked by what he'd seen, he died that evening, possibly of fright, as the
Newgate Calendar
explained. In reporting on Aldini's experiments and Pass's death, it was written, “On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process, the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion. Mr. Pass, the Beadle of the Surgeon's Company, who was officially present during this experiment, was so alarmed that he died of fright soon after he returned home.”

Unbeknownst to Giovanni Aldini, his experiments, though flawed, would live on, albeit fictionally, in the hands of another scientist, Victor Frankenstein. It was Frankenstein who would successfully bring to life his own fiend.