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Archaeological Anthropology

Theses and Dissertations

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

2019

Pauper

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony May 2019

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …


Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony May 2019

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …