The high prices paid led some people to offer their bodies before death; but of course this was illegal. Sir Astley’s brief answer to one offer from a third party asking to know the truth, was—“The _truth_ is that you deserve to be hanged for making such an unfeeling offer.” But under other circumstances, when the obtaining of the corpse of a person who had died after an operation interesting to the surgeon was in question, Sir Astley paid large sums, and was thus enabled to add many valuable specimens of surgical results to his museum. Thus his accounts for 1820 show the following entries in regard to obtaining the body of a man on whom he had operated twenty-four years before: “Coach for two there and back, £3, 12s.; guards and coachmen, 6s.; expenses for two days, £1, 14s. 6d; carriage of subject, and porter, 12s. 6d.; subject, £7, 7s.; total, £13, 12s.” This subject was to be obtained, we read, “cost what it may.” It is no wonder, then, that of Sir Astley it might be said that no man knew so much of the habits, the crimes, and the few good qualities of the resurrectionists. He could obtain any subject he pleased, however guarded: and indeed offered to do so. No one could go further than he did before a Committee of the House of Commons, to whom he plainly avowed: “There is no person, let his situation in life be what it may, whom, if I were disposed to dissect, I could not obtain. The law only enhances the price, and does not prevent the exhumation.” At last the dreadful disclosures about the practices of “burking” in Edinburgh in 1829 led to the passing of the Anatomy Act, legalising dissection under proper regulations. Nor were human bodies the only ones laid under contribution by Astley Cooper. When animals were wanted for some physiological illustration or investigation, his man Charles could always procure them, and he had at one time as many as thirty dogs, besides other animals, shut up in the hayloft. Half-a-crown a piece was paid by Charles on receipt of the dogs, however obtained, and no doubt dog-stealing was one source. The menagerie at the Tower was to Mr. Cooper, as it had been to John Hunter, a considerable resource for specimens for dissection. In 1801 an enormous elephant came under his knife, and being too unwieldy to be got into the dissecting-room, it had to be cut up in the courtyard, where, assisted by several students, Mr. Cooper gave himself no rest till all the interesting parts were preserved and deposited in St. Thomas’s Museum. Bird-stuffers, fishmongers, and poultry merchants were also among the sources of supply for his unwearying knife.