The Surgeon's Theatre in the Old Bailey, c 1760.
The Macabre Epilogue of the Murder Act: Benjamin Cole's Surgeon's Theatre Cole, Benjamin [1695-1766], Engraver. The Surgeon's Theatre in the Old Bailey. [London: Printed for T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756]. Copperplate engraving, image size 8" x 13" (20.3 x 33 cm). Matted; margins trimmed closely but short of the platemark. Light, even toning to the sheet; a minuscule chip at the lower-left corner. The mat exhibits minor toning and edge wear. Text and image remain crisp and dark. $250. * This striking architectural plate was engraved by Benjamin Cole for the lavishly illustrated 1756 second edition of William Maitland's The History of London. Celebrated for its exactitude and aesthetic clarity, Maitland's work remains a cornerstone of 18th-century British topography and urban history. The building depicted-the Surgeons' Theatre (or Anatomical Theatre)-was built immediately adjacent to Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey sessions house following the separation of the Surgeons from the Barber-Surgeons Company. It served as a vital, grim node in the Georgian penal landscape. The publication of this print coincided precisely with the early enforcement of the Murder Act of 1752 (25 Geo. II c. 37). Enacted to add a terrifying layer of post-mortem deterrence to the death penalty, the statute mandated that the corpses of all executed murderers in London and Middlesex be denied traditional burial. Instead, they were delivered directly to this specific theater to be "dissected and anatomized" by medical students (Chaplin, 2009; Standring, 2016). The architecture itself was designed to accommodate both science and public theater; the bodies of notorious convicts were routinely exposed to onlookers on the lower tier of the lecture hall after dissection. The building stood as a monument to state power and scientific inquiry until it was demolished in 1809 to clear space for the expansion of the New Sessions House. This structure is immortalized in English art as the setting for William Hogarth's legendary satirical print, "The Reward of Cruelty" (Plate IV of The Four Stages of Cruelty, 1751). Where Hogarth offered a chaotic, moralizing caricature of the interior's gruesome realities, Cole's engraving provides the clean, authoritative, and sobering architectural reality of the building's facade. An exceptional acquisition f.
Price: $250.00
Book number 55776