May 18 in London, I’m giving a talk on forensic identification and the economic valuation of life before the advent of DNA. It looks specifically at the role that concerns about life insurance played in decisions to bury bodies at sea, and it’s entitled:
“Visibility, Value, and the Measure of a Life: Body Recovery and Identification after the Sinking of the Titanic”
I’ll be speaking at the Corpses, Cadavers, and Catalogs 2016 conference, held at the Bart’s Pathology Museum and the Hunterian Museum. That means that we’ll be in the company of floor-to-ceiling shelves of specimen jars that contain, among other things, one half of computer innovator Charles Babbage’s brain.
Hunterian Museum, London, 1853, Woodcut engraving by Sheperd and Radclyffe, from Dr. Nuno Carvalho de Sousa Private Collections, Lisbon, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1853_-_Hunterian_Museum.jpg
Jess Bier 
