The red brick building which houses the Red House
Museum and Gardens and lends it its name was erected in 1763 as the parish poorhouse,
and later as its workhouse. Eventually, the number of inmates exceeded the space available
and in 1880 a new workhouse was built in Fairmile, later to become Christchurch Hospital.
Here the town's poor were provided with relief knitting stockings and making fusee
chains to pay for their upkeep. It was the children of the town's poor were employed
making fusee chains - the tiny links which where contained within the mechanisms of
Victorian pocket watches, sent to the watchmakers of London and Liverpool.
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The fusee chains were also made in a factory, still standing in Bargates, which was owned
by William Hart. Mr. Hart's son, Edward,
learnt taxidermy from his father and opened a museum in the High Street for
which hundreds of birds were shot. Many cases he prepared are now displayed at the
museum.
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The adavnces in surgery which were made during the 18th and 19th centuries required
the study of anatomy which was scarcely possible as the only legal source of cadavers
in Britain were the victims of the hangman's noose. This led to the widespread robbing of
corpses from graveyards by organised gangs of 'Ressurectionists' for anatomical study.
Edinburgh was the centre for the study of medicine and anatomy and two local
doss-house owners, William Burke and William Hare, saw the opportunity to make a fortune
by murdering thier transient guests to provide fresh bodies for dissection which would not
be missed. They could not meet the demand and greed caused them to embark on the murder
of local people and led to their capture by the authorities.
So great was the public outcry following these events that parliament was forced to pass
an Act in 1834 allowing the unclaimed bodies of the inmates of the copuntry's poorhouses
to be used for dissection.
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