Joseph Merrick's manager stole his savings, the London Hospital took him in, and after his death it kept his skeleton while his flesh went to an unmarked grave

Joseph Merrick was born in Leicester on 5 August 1862. Growths on his body worsened over time. His family left him in the Leicester Union Workhouse in 1879. In 1884 he joined a "human novelty" exhibition and was shown in a shop on Whitechapel Road, opposite the London Hospital. He received half the profits from his pamphlet autobiography. On a tour, his manager robbed him of his savings, about £50, and abandoned him in Brussels. He returned penniless to Liverpool Street station, where police found the card of the surgeon Frederick Treves in his pocket. In June 1886 Treves admitted him to the London Hospital. On 4 December 1886 the hospital's head, Carr Gomm, appealed in The Times, and within a week enough money was raised to keep him there. He died in his bed on 11 April 1890, aged 27. Treves made casts of his body and took skin samples. The body was dissected and the skeleton kept as a pathology specimen. It is owned by Queen Mary University of London and shown by appointment only. In 2019 the biographer Jo Vigor-Mungovin found the burial record for his other remains in a common grave at the City of London Cemetery. Campaigners have petitioned the university to release the bones for burial.