The remains of a stillborn Bambuti baby have been removed from a museum’s catalogue of items that can be viewed for medical research after criticism from a Booker prize-shortlisted author.
Novelist Nadifa Mohamed is the presenter of an upcoming Channel 4 documentary examining the history of “human zoos” in Britain, in which African and Asian people were put on display to the wider public in a practice which is now deemed to have been deeply racist.
As part of the research, Mohamed looked into the actions of the explorer Col James Harrison. In 1904, Harrison brought two women and four men of the Bambuti ethnic group who lived in Africa to Britain as part of a tour around the country which many now describe as a “human zoo”.
In 1906, Amuriape, one of the Bambuti women, gave birth to a girl in Bedford who was stillborn. Mohamed and the documentary makers found that the remains of the stillborn baby are in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum in London. The remains were part of its catalogue and could be requested to be viewed on the grounds of medical research.
Mohamed said that the documentary team were horrified by their discovery that the remains of the stillborn baby were at the museum.
“I had a feeling that they would not have let this baby just be buried and put to rest,” Mohamed said. “So I felt that they would have done something like this, and to know that the baby’s remains are still in the Hunterian and still available for research, when we first found out about it I was really disgusted.”
Mohamed added that she had been in touch with members of the Bambuti tribe within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who were unaware that the stillborn baby had been left behind in the UK and was in the possession of the museum. “In their culture, the baby’s not at rest until she has been buried in her own soil in the DRC,” Mohamed added.
“I think in this particular case there’s zero reason for the Hunterian to be keeping her body. It was probably taken illicitly without consent, was treated as a plaything, I think, by this doctor from the time. She deserved the respect of being buried after almost 120 years.”
“The Hunterian Museum has often been advertised in things like Time Out as a quirky place to go on a first date, or for Halloween. I do have an objection to that, whether it’s a stillborn baby in a glass jar, I think we do need to think more deeply about how a lot of these human remains are kept, displayed, and treated, because we’ve inherited a Victorian age acceptance of this sort of thing and I don’t really know if it’s acceptable moving forward.”
The Hunterian museum said that after being contacted by the team, staff removed the baby from its collection available to be requested as medical research, although the remains are still being held by the museum and that there are no plans on whether the body will be repatriated to the DRC.
The Hunterian museum has faced previous controversy regarding its possession of human remains as part of its collection.
Earlier this year, the museum defended its decision to retain the skeleton of Charles Bryne, an Irish man who lived in the 18th century and who stood at 7ft 6in tall, despite removing it from public display.
Campaigners, including the late novelist Hilary Mantel, have long called for Byrne’s skeleton to be released for burial in accordance with his documented wishes.
A spokesperson for RCS England Museums said: “The remains of the Bambuti stillborn baby have not been on display in the RCS England Museums for 20 years. However, the remains were available for bona fide medical research.
“The RCS England Museums have an established procedure in place for the repatriation of human remains. In the first instance, the request would need to originate from a representative body recognised as such under the relevant regional or national legislation covering the return of human remains.
“Given the sensitivities of this case, and while we work to establish whether the Bambuti representative the documentary makers have been speaking to can act on this matter, we will ensure that no permission for bona fide medical research related to the stillborn child’s remains is given.”
Britain’s Human Zoos is on Channel 4 on Saturday 28 October
