From Knapp and Baldwin’s Newgate Calendar
This case is interesting not because of the crime, but because Duell survived the punishment, coming back to life as the students at Surgeons’ Hall prepared to dissect his body. The use of cadavers was recognized as being essential to the training of doctors at this period, and the bodies of malefactors were frequently given to the surgeons for this purpose. This practice, known as ‘anatomization’, both horrified the superstitious populus, who believed the dead bodies of criminals should not be thus desecrated, and created a demand for cadavers that could not be satisfied by the supply of criminals alone and was increasingly filled by grave-robbers (see Holmes and Wilson in ‘A Miscellany’). (The complete entry is printed here.)
WILLIAM DUELL,
EXECUTED FOR MURDER, WHO CAME TO LIFE
AGAIN WHILE PREPARING FOR DISSECTION IN
SURGEONS’ HALL
This man met a better fate than a criminal in a similar situation in Germany. The body of a notorious malefactor was stretched out upon the table, before an assembly of German surgeons, for dissection. The operator, in placing it in a proper position, felt life in it; whereupon he thus addressed his brethren of the faculty, met to witness the operation:
‘I am pretty certain, gentlemen, from the warmth of the subject, and the flexibility of the limbs, that by a proper degree of attention and care the vital heat would return, and life in consequence take place. But when it is considered what a rascal we should again have among us, that he was hanged for so cruel a murder, and that, should we restore him to life, he would probably kill somebody else: – I say, gentlemen, all these things considered, it is my opinion that we had better proceed in the dissection.’ Whether this harangue, or the fear of being disappointed in so sumptuous a surgical banquet, operated on their consciences, we cannot tell; but, certain it is, they nodded accordance; and the operator, on the signal, plunged his knife into the breast of the culprit, thereby at once precluding all dread of future assassinations – all hopes of future repentance.
Duell was convicted of occasioning the death of Sarah Griffin, at Acton, by robbing and ill-treating her. Having suffered November 24 1740, at Tyburn, his body was brought to Surgeons’ Hall to be anatomised; but, after it was stripped and laid on the board, and while one of the servants was washing him, in order to be cut, he perceived life in him, and found his breath to come quicker and quicker, on which a surgeon took some ounces of blood from him; in two hours he was able to sit up in his chair, and in the evening was committed to Newgate; and his sentence (which might have been again inflicted) was changed to transportation.