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LAST UPDATE | 11 Jan 2023
THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM at the Royal College of Surgeons of England has decided to stop displaying the skeleton of a 7 foot 7 Irishman when the museum reopens next month.
Charles Byrne was born in Derry in 1761 with an undiagnosed benign tumour of his pituitary gland, an adenoma, which caused acromegaly and gigantism.
Byrne grew to be over seven and a half feet, or 2.31 metres, tall and made a living exhibiting himself as the ‘Irish Giant’ at shows in Britain.
From 1786, three years after Byrne’s death, until 2017, his skeleton was on display at the museum despite growing pressure to bury the body at sea in accordance with Byrne’s wishes.
In a statement today, the Royal College of Surgeons of England said that Byrne’s skeleton will not be displayed any more due to ‘sensitivities’, but it will still be available for ‘bona fide medical research’.
The museum’s board of trustees have been discussing the ethical concerns related to Byrne’s skeleton since the museum closed for renovation in 2017.
The Hunterian Museum was named after John Hunter, a distinguished surgeon and anatomist who bought Byrne’s body shortly after his death.
“It has been said that to prevent his body being seized by anatomists he wanted to be buried at sea. Before Byrne could be buried, Hunter intervened, paying Byrne’s friends £500 for his body,” the museum’s statement read.
“Three years later Hunter displayed Byrne’s skeleton in his Leicester Square museum and part of it is shown in the background of the portrait of Hunter by Joshua Reynolds.”
“John Hunter and other anatomists and surgeons of the 18th and 19th centuries acquired many specimens in ways we would not consider ethical today and which are rightly subject to review and discussion.”
The museum also said that keeping the body for research rather than holding a burial at sea “could allow greater understanding of the causes of pituitary acromegaly and gigantism”.
This portrait will be on public display in the museum for the first time in over two hundred years.
Dr Thomas Muinzer, a law lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, has campaigned for Byrne’s remains to be released since 2011.
In a joint statement today with fellow campaigner and academic Len Doyal, the pair said:
“We are delighted to hear the news that the battle that we and others have fought to have Charles Byrne’s skeleton removed from the Hunterian has finally be won.”
“There was never a coherent argument for the Museum to do otherwise, given Byrne’s explicit decision for his body not to fall into the hands of John Hunter for fear of what then precisely happened.”
They added that they could see no justification for the Hunterian to retain the skeleton for research.
“It is entirely unclear what further research the Hunterian has in mind. Our suspicion is that the museum still wants medical students simply to see the skeleton in private, which again would go against Byrne’s documented wishes.”
“Byrne’s wishes should at last be honoured and his skeleton should be buried at sea, we think with great fanfare!” the statement concluded.
In 2017 Muinzer told The Journal that he disagreed with the Royal College of Surgeons’ claims that there is still a scientific case to be made for retaining the remains.
He argued that there is already a full DNA record on file, that a number of extensive studies had been done, and that it was now possible to make a full scale replica to replace the skeleton.
Many other people with the same conditions as Byrne have donated their bodies to science for research purposes, meaning that there is no scientific reason to keep Byrne’s remains when it was against his wishes, Muinzer said.
The museum previously disputed whether a burial at sea was what Byrne had wanted, saying that no written records of this exist, however today’s statement seems to acknowledge that the museum’s founder intervened against Byrne’s wishes.
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Heartbreaking.
Unimaginable pain waking up not knowing what happened to your kid .
I was in college in Dublin when he went missing. It struck a chord with those of us around his age.
I hope some new and relevant information will be found.
I’m exactly the same Philip and I remember the story and his face just stuck with me so well. I can’t imagine how his family feel if it struck us all at that time so deep. Some closure is really needed on his case.
It was a horrible windy wet night when Trevor disappeared. I used to work in the area and remember all the volunteers sticking “Missing” notices up as the days went on and on. God bless his poor family not knowing what happened.
Honestly though what the hell happened to this guy ? This story still to this day gives me the chills ! he literally vanished into thin air ! Scary. Heart goes out to the family.
Many think he slipped into the canal and locks were open/opened later and out to liffey then sea. Its v sad. I remember this case well.
@Boo!-Fight the Board: That would need grand canal docks to be empty.
Did he have to walk over the Dodder on his route home?
I often thought about that myself but there’s a lot of water between Baggot Street and where the Canal meets the liffey. Surly somebody would have spotted a body in very slow moving water.. I think Donal McIntyre done a documentary on this case and he had a lad in a black hoody on CCTV following Trevor in a few places on his walk home..
@Get Lost Eircodes: Yeah, he had to cross the canal and the Dodder. They were flowing unusually fast because of all the rain.
I remember this happening very well, Trevor was same age group, it was a shock, a fit strong young man going missing like that. I remember walking to my student flat in Ranelagh same night, it was miserable and wet, no taxis (and even when they were running you could be waiting an hour or more to get one from the city centre) then all the posters going up.
The Gardai were very slow off the mark and missed a lot of basic stuff though. There would be no cctv footage if his friend Conleth Loonan hadn’t got it preserved by the bank. They never retrieved the last voicemail he left on his friends fphone that was deleted. The email he sent from work on his way home wasn’t retrieved. Who knows what would have been found if the canal and river were searched earlier?
That’s sad. Especially at this time of year
I can’t even imagine how families get on with their daily life after something like this. The not knowing, it’s just awful. Someone has to know something, Dublin is never ever quiet, even at that time.
Just terrible somebody knows something.
It’s hard to grasp the concept of a fully grown human being simply just “vanishing”. And possessions, or things, cannot evaporate into thin air either. Like, we all wear coats, shoes, maybe jewellery, and Trevor was carrying a huge golf umbrella that night too, surely even one thing belonging to him was found, or has surfaced? The eerie CCTV footage showing Trevor being followed closely is no benefit either, even if it was someone trying to mug him for his wallet, or if he had been injured by them, some evidence would be left behind. How have his poor family lived with all the ifs & buts of this whole ghastly scenario hanging over them, for so long, is just beyond human endurance.
Thoughts with his family this time of year, an awful experience for them.
The recent documentary showed CCTV footage where he is clearly being followed. It quite chilling to see.
Very sad for all concerned but should have highlighted the need for more CCTV in the capital just like they have in London.
VERY SAD
Terrible on the family,may the perpetrators rot in hell
You don’t know whether there is or is not a perpetrator (s) Tommy.
it is one of 3 things, there may not be any perpetrators.
(1) Accident
(2) Murder/Abduction
(3) Voluntary disappearance ( extremely unlikely by all accounts but cannot be 100% definitively ruled out since he just completely disappeared)
As a father it was something like this that had my nerves gone when they were out socialising.I feel so sorry for trevors father.It must be awful.
God 16 years? Doesnt seem like it. I have a son now myself and its awful to imagine. Hope can be a cruel mistress
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