Although death and dying are celebrated in some cultures,
people living in Britain
tend to shy away from it. Despite the fact that this is something that will
happen at some point, the subject is rarely discussed. However, there is an
exception to this, and that is crime writers. Perhaps they don’t speak about
death, but they certainly embrace it in their fiction. In fact, looking at my
own crime books, there is only one which doesn’t have dead or death in the
title, and that is the first book of the Dundee
Crime Series named Night Watcher.
Book two is Dead Wood, and book three
is Missing Believed Dead. Even my new
series features this taboo word, and we meet my new investigator, Kirsty
Campbell, in The Death Game.
So, when an invitation to be a friend’s plus one, on a visit
to Dundee University
The mortuary is situated in the award winning, Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification
(CAHID), and is headed by Professor Sue Black renowned all over the world
for her expertise in human identification, forensic anthropology, cranio-facial
reconstruction, and lots more besides. She appears regularly on the telly
during her visits to disaster zones and is the leading authority in her area of
work. Is it any wonder I accepted the invitation so readily.
The mortuary, as I’ve already said, is a state of the art
facility. This is thanks to the massive fundraising drive that was started in
2011, by the crime writer Val McDermid. You may have seen it advertised under
the catchy title of Million for a Morgue.
We don’t actually have morgues in Scotland , they’re known as
mortuaries, However, Million for a Mortuary didn’t have quite the same ring to
it, and anyway, a mortuary and a morgue are the same thing.
Crime writers taking part in the fundraising included Tess
Gerritson, Kathy Reichs, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Mark Billingham, Jeffrey
Deaver, Jeff Lindsay, Stuart MacBride, Peter James, Caro Ramsay, and Val
McDermid. The author with the most public votes (each vote cost £1) would win
the morbid honour of having the new mortuary named after them. Apart from the
money raised from the votes there were other fundraising activities going on,
one of which was publication of The
Killer Cookbook, described as the grisliest approach to dinner since
Hannibal Lecter. A lot of writers were asked to donate recipes, myself
included, but my recipe never made it onto the page – as you know domestication
is not my forte. Anyway, how could I compete with recipes like Lamb to the Slaughter; Deadly Drizzle Cake; or
Dead Man’s Breath. Did you notice
we’re back to death again?
Anyway, enough of the factual bits, and on with the visit.
Unfortunately our guide wasn’t Professor Sue Black because she was away for the
day. However the guide we had was excellent and provided the group with many
snippets of information. The first place we visited was the Stuart MacBride
Dissecting room. Stuart was a runner up in the competition, and dissection
appeared to be an appropriate area for him to be featured. The room was large
well lit and full of trolleys which, although covered, were obviously not empty.
Yes, you’ve guessed it, there were bodies under the plastic sheets, but they
remained covered. This was the room where medical students, surgeons, dentists,
scientists etc, practised dissection. Hip replacement was one such operation
mentioned. As our guide said, if we were having an operation would we prefer
the surgeon to have gained his expertise on real bodies or not.
The bodies used for dissection had been donated by their
‘owners’ prior to death. Any person wishing to donate their body to science has
to complete a consent form containing three areas of consent. They may consent
to one or all three.
1) Consent to their body being used for training purposes.
2) Consent to retaining parts – if this is not given all
parts of the body are returned for cremation at the appropriate time.
3) Consent for images to be taken.
The bodies are known as cadavers, and the use of the Thiel
process for embalming ensures lack of smell and full flexibility. The other
aspect the university enforces is respect for the bodies. Any student refusing
to show respect is not allowed to continue.
Our next stop was the Val McDermid Mortuary. Yes, Val won
the competition with the most votes cast in her favour. The first room we
entered was the embalming room, the only place in the UK to use the
Thiel embalming process. Every body arriving at the mortuary is embalmed, and
the process takes approximately an hour. After the body is prepared it is
immersed in the Thiel solution (embalming fluid) in one of the Thiel submersion
tanks in an adjoining room. There are 44 tanks in the room holding up to 110
bodies. Oh, and before I forget, all the other crime writers in The Million for a Morgue campaign have
had one of the tanks named after them. I spotted Peter James on one of them.
The cadavers are kept immersed for up to two months after
which they are removed, vacuum packed, and stored on ledges in metal cabinets
that look a bit like wall to ceiling filing cabinets. Prior to storage each
body is tagged, by cattle tags, in four places, one on each ear and the other
two on toes. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the vacuum packing it’s done
using an oversized shrink wrapping stand attached to a vacuum pump, and the
shrink wrap doesn’t look much different from the stuff in your kitchen,
although a lot stronger. By law, the cadavers can only be kept for three years,
so any dissection has to take place within that period of time, after which the
bodies are released for cremation, and the students attend the funeral service
as well as the families.
It was certainly an interesting and informative tour, but we
weren’t finished yet. We were invited to join the rest of the group in a
meeting of the Death Cafe. As neither I nor my friend had heard of the Death
Cafe before we were intrigued and, lacking any explanation of what it was, we
joined them in their meeting at the Students Union.
I started this article by talking about the last taboo –
death. Well that was what the Death Cafe was all about. You can check it out
here http://deathcafe.com/what/ where
it tells you that a Death Cafe is a place where people, often strangers, gather
to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. It is a discussion group ‘to increase
awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their
(finite) lives’. It is not a grief support group, nor does it involve
counselling. It is about facing up to death, the last taboo.
And now that I’ve faced the last taboo, it’s time I got back
to work, killing people – on the page that is – for the edification of my
readers.
Chris Longmuir
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