avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure in order to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor. After the execution Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body was a demonstration of this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that, "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion." Several of those present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead") and one man, Mr Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving. The hanged man was certainly dead, since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution. Media The Galvanism experiment performed on George Forster was explored in the Science Channel's Dark Matters: Twisted But True. George Forster was noted on History Channel show called, Zombies: A Living History References 18th-century births 1803 deaths 19th-century executions by England and Wales English people convicted of murder Executed English people People convicted of murder by England and Wales People executed for murder 1803 murders in the United Kingdom