Claude Ambroise Seurat, known as the 'Human skeleton'. Stipple engraving by R. Cruikshank, 1825.

item

Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Shop

Café

We’re undertaking some research with website visitors to learn more about how people find access-related information provided by museums. This survey shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for your time!

Help us organize our website content.

Claude Ambroise Seurat was brought to England from France in 1825 at the age of 27. His skin was stretched tightly over his skeleton, and the external distance from the front of his thorax to the back was less than three inches. The beating of his heart was clearly visible. He was recorded as being in good health, though eating very little: a bread roll and a modest amount of wine each day. People paid to see him, and several artists produced a visual record of him. The very thin Frenchman was a popular stereotype at the time, originally based on the British perception that the French were under-nourished. It also helped to play off the French against the rotund figure of the English stereotype, John Bull. Napoleon was called "Boney" because the name not only was short for Bonaparte but also fitted the existing French stereotype of the thin man. Seurat probably helped to perpetuate this stereotype for a few years after Napoleon's death in 1821. According to some sources, he returned to France, was recorded in 1833 as performing in Dinan, Brittany, and is said to have died in that year, when it was discovered that he had inside him a tapeworm five metres long
According to R. Altick, loc. cit., Seurat died in London, his body was dissected by Sir Astley Cooper and his skeleton went to the Royal College of Surgeons Museum. No part of this story has been confirmed in any other source, including records at the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons
"One of the most impudent and disgusting attempts to make a profit of the public appetite for novelty, by an indecent exposure of human suffering and degradation, which we have ever witnessed"--The lancet, quoted by Altick, loc. cit.

Claude Ambroise Seurat, known as the 'Human skeleton'. Stipple engraving by R. Cruikshank, 1825.

Licence and re-use