Anita Manning auction house pulls £500 human bones sale
Great Western Auctions, the Glasgow business founded by anita manning and her daughter Larissa, withdrew a planned Friday sale of human bones after criticism from experts and contact from the. The lot included a skull and was valued at between £500 and £800.
The bones were listed in a box marked as belonging to an anatomy class at the University of Glasgow. Great Western Auctions had been due to offer them in Glasgow on Friday before pulling the lot.
Great Western Auctions and the lot
The auction house is based on Dumbarton Road in Glasgow and was founded in 1989 by Manning and Larissa. Manning first started making appearances on Bargain Hunt in 2010, but the sale at the centre of this case involved the business she helped launch rather than her television work.
UK law allows the sale or auction of human remains if they are more than 100 years old. That legal test left the Glasgow lot eligible for sale on paper, but it did not settle the wider dispute over where the bones came from or how they should be handled.
McIntyre and Findlater
Dr Lauren McIntyre, a British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology expert, said: “The buying and selling of human remains for commercial gain robs the deceased of their dignity, and is both unethical and unacceptable in any form.” She added: “Most medical and anatomical remains like the ones that were to go to auction in Glasgow are the product of 20th Century mass export from countries like India and China, rather than being from consenting donors.”
Professor Gordon Findlater, HM's Inspector of Anatomy, said: “Without knowing who is selling these bones, it is impossible to know how the seller came across them.” He also said selling donated body parts would breach “for any individual or organisation to make financial profit from bodies donated to medical science” under the current Code of Practice for Anatomical Examination in Scotland.
India and China bans
McIntyre pointed to two export bans that shape the market for these remains. The export of human skeletons from India was banned in 1985, and the export of human skeletons from China was banned in 2008.
For readers watching the outcome of this case, the immediate change is simple: the Glasgow lot is off sale. What remains in view is the broader question of how auction houses handle human remains that may have passed through overseas medical and anatomical trade before reaching the market.
