The Barber Surgeons & the missing statues
“There were two bodyes that had been anatomised one the bones were fastned with wires the other had had the flesh boiled off and so some of ye Ligeament remained and dryed with it”
In Newcastle the history of medical education and anatomy overlaps with the history of crime and punishment. Connecting these two spheres was the Company of Barber Surgeons and Tallow Chandlers, a craft guild which was established in 1442 and licensed generations of men to practice surgery and barbering in the town. Their meeting house, or Surgeons’ Hall, was erected in 1730 and was a prominent building in the Manors for over 100 years. It was located just south of Carliol Croft along the town wall and sited in the midst of other related civic institutions, including the Holy Jesus Hospital (still extant), the workhouse, a charity school, and some almhouses.
The Hall was only 130 metres from the walls of Newcastle Gaol and some brethren of the Company served as prison surgeons. The Barber Surgeons were also required to host the dissection of several murderers who had been executed locally, as stipulated by the Murder Act 1751. Like the Gaol, the location of the Surgeons’ Hall put it in the cross-hairs of developers and by the 1840s railway construction spelled the end for the Hall and the gradual demise of the Company as a place for education and anatomical instruction in Newcastle.
Early years
After years of wandering, in 1648 the Barber Surgeons successfully petitioned the town corporation for a grant of land in the Manors to build a meeting house. It was not until 1691 that the Company officially began to engage in the study of anatomy and a body was given to them that year for dissection. A few years later in 1698 Celia Fiennes visited the Hall and confirmed that dead bodies were used for anatomical education there.
“At Newcastle. I went to see the Barber Surgeons' Hall which was within a pretty garden walled in, full of flowers and greens in potts and in the Borders; its a good neate building of Brick. There I saw the roome with a round table in it railed round with seates or Benches for ye Conveniency in their dissecting and anatomising a body, and reading Lectures on all parts. There were two bodyes that had been anatomised one the bones were fastned with wires the other had had the flesh boiled off and so some of ye Ligeament remained and dryed with it, and so the parts were held together by its own muscles and sinews that were dryed with it. Over this was another roome in wch was the skin of a man that was taken off after he was dead, and dressed, and so was stuffed-the body and limbs. It Look'd and felt like a sort of parchment. In this roome I could take a viewe of the whole town, it standing on high ground, and a pretty Lofty building.”
The Hall was rebuilt in 1730 in the piazza style of the Holy Jesus Hospital opposite and in his history of Newcastle (1736) Bourne described it as,
“not a little sumptuous; it stands upon tall Piazzas, under which is a very spacious walk. There is before it a fine Square, divided into four Areas or Grass-Plats. surrounded with Gravel-Walks, each of which is adorned with a Statue. The first of the two next the Hall is the Figure of Aesculapius placed upon a tall Pedestal, upon one side of which is a Motto. In the area, opposite to this, is the figure of Hippocrates, who bears an open book. This was set up in the year 1710, John Shaw and Robert Golightly Stewards. On the other two Grass-Platts are the figures of Galen and Paracelsus which were erected 1712, Robert Golightly and William Handby Stewards.”
Standing eight foot high on four foot plinths, these classical statues were frequently praised by visitors to the town. Although they are marked on Thomas Oliver’s map of 1830, there are very few images of the statues extant today, and those that exist lack any detail.
However, thanks to the preservation work of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, and recent cataloguing work at the Northumberland Archives, we are able to publish for the first time detailed pencil drawings of the statues just before they disappeared. Drawn by a local artist named George Bouchier Richardson in June 1843, they show the four statues as they appeared in the long walled garden leading up the entrance to the Hall: Aesculapius (north-west), Hippocrates (north-east), Galen (south-west), and Paracelsus (south-east).
Later years and demolition
Across from the gateway to the gaol on Carliol Square was Bell’s Court, a narrow thoroughfare with an exit onto Pilgrim Street. Here in 1832 John Fife and some colleagues rented a converted auction room and opened the first medical school in Newcastle. That winter session attracted eight students, one of whom was John Snow, then a surgeon-apothecary apprentice but later a pioneering epidemiologist world-renowned for his study of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London. The Bell’s Court venture was so successful that in 1834 the lecturers decided to rent the vacant Surgeons’ Hall and expand their offering. They enclosed the covered space under the hall with glass and fitted out some lecture rooms and so began “The Newcastle-upon-Tyne School of Medicine and Surgery”.
Bell's Court Newcastle upon Tyne Dept of Environmental Health c.1935. Bells Court was rented in 1832 by Surgeon, and later mayor, John Fife and some colleagues to open the first medical school in Newcastle. Image courtesy of Newcastle Libraries
Former Barber Surgeon’s Hall, Houston Street. Image (2012) by Stephen Richards, reproduced under the Newcastle University Co-Curate project.
Teaching and dissection continued in Surgeons’ Hall until 1850 when it was demolished to make way for the railway bridge which connected North Shields with Central Station. John Dobson, the architect of Newcastle Gaol, was commissioned to design a new Surgeons’ Hall and Medical School and this was unveiled in 1851 in Rye Hill, just off Victoria Street, on the other side of the town. Although the lecturers split into two rival medical schools that year, by 1871 the factions had united and diversified their offerings as the “College of Physical Science”. This in turn evolved into other institutions affiliated to Durham University, until the University of Newcastle upon Tyne was established in 1963. What began in small rooms in Bell’s Court a stone’s throw from a prison is now Newcastle University, a global research university with a staff of over 3000 people and a student body of over 27,000.
The Mystery of the Missing Statues
Despite the high hopes for the new Surgeons’ Hall in Rye Hill, in 1862 it was sold to become St Paul’s Church of England School. In 1992 the school moved to a site adjacent to the Hall and it was put on the market for just £1500 - around the same price it cost in 1851. Unfortunately this small but palatial Grade II listed building has been neglected for some time and has been used for storage.
One mystery which remains unsolved in Newcastle is what happened to the four statues when the old Hall was demolished. They may have been sold on around this time with some other relics of the old Hall, just as the dissecting table was. On the other hand, it would be strange to get rid of such antique and iconic objects when a new establishment was emerging, especially given the disputes between the two rival medical schools in 1851. There is no evidence the statues were ever put on display outside the new hall and they do not appear on a detailed Ordnance Survey map from around 1860. Several surgeons and medics searched for clues as to the fate of the statues, most notably Dennis Embleton (1810-1900) and Frederick Pybus (1883-1975). The late Gordon Dale, a biochemist in Newcastle, was convinced the statues were buried underground in what is now a play area of St. Paul’s School. In the 1980s he commissioned a dowser named Dennis Briggs to survey the area. Briggs believed he pinpointed the spot, but no further investgation was carried out. If these statues could be found they would surely be among the oldest in Newcastle. Perhaps the solution to this mystery will involve the use of ground-penetrating radar to supplement the dowsing?
If you visit Manors today the only sign of the existence of Surgeons’ Hall is a cottage at 2 Croft Stairs now known as “Sinclair’s Cooperage”. This eighteenth-century building was once the gardener’s cottage at the end of the walled garden. When the main Hall was demolished for the railway bridge the lecturers of the Newcastle medical school briefly used this building for teaching and dissection before moving to Rye Hill. But what did dissection entail during this period, and what was the connection between the gaol and the Barber Surgeons’ Hall? To find out more see here.
