Talk:William Hunter (anatomist)

Was he a murderer?
This article suggests hunter and Smellie both murdered or commissioned the murders of women for their work http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/07/british-obstetrics-founders-murders-claim. Feel free to add if you feel it is suitable. Greatunknown1 (talk) 11:18, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * In today's BBC Radio 4Today Programme the author of a recent paper[1] claimed that the obstetricians Smellie and Hunter are the anatomists depicted in Hogarth's The rewards of cruelty - and that they had many pregnant women murdered in order to acquire the cadavers they needed for their anatomical studies.


 * 1. Shelton DC. The Emperor's new clothes. J R Soc Med 2010;103(2):46-50.


 * --peter_english (talk) 09:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Ancedote
The article contained an anecdote that William Wadd said Hunter recounted about helping to conceal a pregnancy. I found the source but I fail to see the value of the verbatim reporting of this anecdote. Fences &amp;  Windows  13:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Birthplace issue
Hello. I am an East Kilbride-based historian (where Hunter hailed from). The Long Calderwood birthplace is a well-ingrained myth which appeared in countless books and all others which copied earlier works. Long Calderwood was not in the possession of the Hunter family at the time of his birth, and parish records show he was born at Kirkton. Kirkton (the vernacular name for East Kilbride village), was a vague catch-all applied to those born within a particular territorial unit where the exact birthplace was not available at the time of notation in the books. Hunter himself claimed birth at Cantieswell, which research reveals was on the previous estate occupied by his parents at Calderfield (in what is now called Maxwellton village) in Calderwood.

The confusion seems to arise from the fact John Hunter senior's business premises were based in Kirkton whereas the family home was at Calderfield. It is important to understand that most of the thousands who lived in East Kilbride today, and who know the Hunter brother history, look laughably on the old myth and the associated old plaque on the outside of the building. It is not a subject which has been revisited in recent years. The reason for this is because an eminent Hunter researcher in the 1800s sought the provenance of the place 'Calderfield' during a research visit to the area, and was fallaciously informed that it was the name of an old portion of Long Calderwood. This was both false and imagined on the part of the informant, but it had the consequence that future researchers never revisited the subject, save for a UOG scholar who wrote a letter to the local library asking about the provenance of 'Cantieswell'. Although responded to, the scholar never went on to pursue it as a research topic. It was only in recent years that local researcher, the late W. Niven, informed Wendy Moore, author of the Knife Man re. John Hunter, that some semblance of the truth made it into published print. That alone may provide citation. In that work it appears as a mere footnote.

This is a subject which should really have a lot more presence in print, both scholarly and otherwise. Regardless of minor published status, it is a veritable mistake that his birthplace is recorded as Long Calderwood, and the primary records from parish records and Sasine conveyances to the man's own testimony prove a different origin. The only potential research contention for outsiders arises from the issue of Kirkton vs. Cantieswell. The assertion that Kirkton was a default catchall arises from the facts of 1. It appears constantly for a number of entries of births over time, for which many persons have their specific place of birth recorded in other records from family Bibles to commonplace books to memoirs and similar, and 2. It is the name of a wider settlement and not of individual properties as was required in the register. Regardless of the Cantieswell vs. Kirkton facet, it is a fact he was not born at Long Calderwood (which is nowhere close to the other places for that matter). C. Ladds 2A00:23C8:6684:C101:CD08:D852:55ED:1F6 (talk) 09:31, 10 January 2023 (UTC)