Lindow Manchester

It was bound to happen. Ever since someone wrote to the M.E.N.   (7th February) and compared the Body Worlds exhibition at the Museum of Science & Industry with the display of Egyptian mummies and “Lindow Pete” at the Manchester Museum there have been letters to the press and requests for us to give interviews. 

One member of the public claimed that the Museum did not receive complaints about displaying the mummies. Actually the Museum does receive commments  from the public about the Egyptian mummies, and a number of people we consulted last year about displaying Lindow Man, expressed concern.

The Museums profession has been debating the issue of human remains for quite some time. Public opinion has shifted over the years and even if curators in museums are ahead of the debate, we are definitely living in a post Alder Hey world. Some people do understandably get upset about this issue and institutions can no longer assume they have an automatic right to hold material of this kind and to do with it what they will.   Museums have to be sensitive to both to public distrust of institutions and to growing concern about what happens to human remains.  

Our policy and practice at the Manchester Museum reflects changing social attitudes and the  debate within the museums profession about the ethical treatment of human remains. Hopefully our Lindow Man exhibition will demonstrate sensitivity and respect.

There are clearly implications for how we display other human remains at the Museum, like the Egyptian mummies and we are starting to consult on how we might present them differently.  So no, I don’t think it appropriate to compare us with the Bodyworlds exhibition.  A public  debate on the subject will be held at the Museum of Science and Industry in May.

I was really interested to see some of the comments  coming in about the Lindow Man Blog. One of them says we shouldn’t be grateful to the British Museum for returning something on loan that rightly belongs in  the North West anyway. After all, people in the North East  feel understandably that the Lindisfarne Gospels should be there rather than in London. So why not Lindow Man? 

The issue of repatriation came up at the consultation about Lindow Man last year.  Our exhibition “Lindow Man A Bog Body Mystery”  will reflect the concern about the repatriation of Lindow Man through the voices of the people we have interviewed. Some felt very strongly that as a local discovery, an ancestor, even a neighbour, Lindow Man belongs here in the North West. That is something we feel a fair amount of sympathy for here at the Manchester Museum, though I guess we have to declare an interest (but if he was repatriated to the North West would he necessarily come to Manchester?).  

In the summer of 1984, when Lindow Man was discovered, it seemed that the British Museum was the best place for him to go – at least to the Coroner – on the grounds that he would be seen by the most people there.  A campaign was launched by Barbara O’Brien to bring him back. The Lindow Primary School choir even recorded a song Lindow Man we want you back again with Granada TV. Does anyone have a copy of the record out there I wonder? We only have a cassette. It would help us tell another part of Lindow Man’s amazing story.

Delighted to see a sizeable newpaper article about the Lindow Man exhibition in today’s Manchester Evening News (5th February). This follows an over-the-phone interview with reporter Paul Taylor. There is one unfortunate  error at the end of the article. Talking about the somewhat partial nature of the historical accounts of people in Britain, I commented on the ‘Mediterranean perspective’ of Greek and Roman writers. This came out as ‘Medieval’. Nevertheless, it’s great to have this level of coverage.  

I think it is really interesting that Gunther von Hagens’ ‘Body Worlds’ exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry has made the front page of the same edition of the M.E.N. following criticism by Church leaders of the display of human bodies, which they liken to a Victorian freak show.  I haven’t been to the exhibition myself but I have recently seen film of the preparation of  bodies by von Hagens. Personally I find it shocking but people respond to human remains in different ways.

I don’t know if the newspaper coverage has happened by chance or by design but it is remarkable that there are two articles about human remains in the same edition of the local newspaper. Readers will no doubt compare the two exhibitions. It would be nice if visitors came to the Manchester Museum before or after seeing Body Worlds so that they can appreciate how we have tackled the display of human remains.   I’d like to think that we are doing this in a respectful and sensitive way. Perhaps we should invite the Bishop of Manchester to see  our exhibition.