Andrew Ure: The Mad Scientist Who Followed In Aldini’s Footsteps
Wikimedia CommonsAndrew Ure, like Giovanni Aldini, was determined to raise the dead.
On the subject of real Frankenstein experiments, Scotsman Andrew Ure was another mad scientist who tried to raise the dead. Born in Glasgow in 1778, Ure studied at universities in Glasgow and Edinburgh before becoming a Professor of Natural Philosophy at Anderson’s Institution.
Ure was a popular lecturer on chemistry and mechanics and drew large crowds of enthusiastic spectators. And as he built up a reputation for himself, he explored a multitude of subjects.
He published a dictionary of chemistry, studied geology, became the director of the Garnethill Observatory, and helped found the Pharmaceutical Society. But his most infamous field of study was publicized in 1818 — around the same time that Frankenstein was first published.
That December, Ure announced that he had been experimenting on the dead — specifically on a convicted murderer named Matthew Clydesdale, who had recently been executed. Ure sincerely believed that using electrical currents to stimulate his phrenic nerve could bring him back to life.
Wikimedia CommonsAn 1867 engraving of Andrew Ure experimenting on a dead convicted murderer.
The mad scientist was naturally mistaken, but he persisted with his work. With around 300 crimes in Britain carrying the death penalty at the time, Ure had no problem finding dead bodies to do his research.
Likewise, there was no shortage of overly enthusiastic audiences to watch him in his attempts, which practically revolved around Ure shocking disparate parts of the body to make them move. While Ure wasn’t actually able to bring a dead man back to life, he did leave quite an impression on the horrified audience who had come to see his experiment in person.
“When the supraorbital nerve was excited every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer’s face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean,” Ure wrote. “At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.”
Ultimately, Christianity had such a grip on polite society during this time that local churches demanded Ure cease his activities at once. Ure reluctantly agreed. But in the end, he didn’t mind much. He spent most of his later years focusing on other fields of study, like revolutionizing the way volumes were measured and developing a working thermostat.
