Bury Charles Byrne With Dignity 

Charles Byrne A.K.A “The Irish Giant” had, by all accounts, a tragic life. What happened to him after his death is an injustice which this petition seeks to rectify. 

Born in 1761 with pituitary gigantism in a village on the border of Derry/Tyrone in Ireland, Byrne grew to a height of over 7ft 7in. Aged 21, he moved to London to seek his fortune. However, he died just one year later of suspected TB.

He was well aware of the interest the medical establishment in London had in his body and rejected offers to sell it for dissection (something reserved for executed criminals). Afraid of ending up as an exhibit, he made arrangements with friends that when he died, his body would be sealed in a lead coffin and taken to the coastal town of Margate to be buried at sea.

However, a physician bribed the undertaker and arranged for Byrne’s corpse to be stolen en route and replaced with rocks. The physician waited for four years before putting Byrne's skeleton on display in his museum in London as he knew there would be condemnation for his actions. His skeleton was then purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons in London and has been on display in their 'Hunterian Museum' for over 200 years despite Byrne making it explicitly clear that this is not what he wanted.

There have been repeated calls by both the medical and legal communities for Byrne’s skeleton to be either buried back in his hometown or at sea as was his wish. The board of trustees of the Hunterian Collection in England have refused this, reportedly citing the “educational and research benefits to merit retaining the remains rather than destroying them”. However, Dr. Cliona McGovern, the head of forensic and legal medicine at University College Dublin, has recently stated that Byrne’s DNA has already been extracted, sequenced, and used in medical research (all against his wishes) and so there is no good reason why his remains should stay in the museum.

In 2011, the trustees formally considered whether it should release Byrne's skeleton but decided to continue to exhibit his remains. In 2018, the trustees said it would reconsider their decision suggesting they may finally do the right thing. The museum is currently closed and plans to reopen again to the public after renovations in 2023.

The aim of this petition is to put pressure on the trustees to respect Charles Byrne's burial wishes.

"I paid a fisherman to throw me overboard, but my dying wish it was ignored,
Stole my body and boiled it to the bone,
Strung me up all bones and teeth, a sign there read underneath,
Here stands Charles Byrne from the county of Tyrone..."
                     Seamus Fogarty - 'Short Ballad For a Long Man'