It was very strongly urged that the Act of Geo. II., which ordered the bodies of all murderers executed in London and Middlesex to be anatomized by the Surgeons' Company, ought to be repealed. No doubt this provision much increased the dislike of the poor to any regulations by which the bodies of their friends might be given up for dissection after death. It was felt that dissection by the Surgeons was part of the sentence passed on a murderer, and therefore carried with it shame and disgrace. To make provision by law, therefore, for the dissection of the bodies of any other class of persons was, not unnaturally, distasteful, in that it partly put them in the same position as murderers. The answer to the desire for the repeal of this obnoxious clause was that nothing must be done to weaken the law; it was stated that to withdraw the part of the sentence which related to dissection would rob the punishment of its prohibitive effect. It is somewhat difficult to understand the argument; surely if the risk of suffering the extreme penalty of the law would not keep a man from crime, the extra chance of being dissected after death could hardly be expected to do so. As Sir Henry Halford said, "I certainly think that while that law remains they [the public] will connect the crime of murder with the practice of dissection; an order to be dissected, and a permission to be dissected, seem to be too slight a distinction." Another objection to the dissection of murderers came from the teachers. They stated that when the body of a notorious criminal was lying at either of the Anatomical Schools, the proprietor was pestered by persons of a morbid turn of mind for permission to view the body. This difficulty was also felt by the College of Surgeons, and in consequence a placard was hung up outside the place where the dissections were made, giving notice that no person could be admitted, unless accompanied by a member of the Court of Assistants.