21x20 Media presents
Skeleton in the Closet
The earliest print we can point to is an 1816 medical review, not a doctor hiding specimens.
The skeleton was a secret from page one.
The familiar story about nineteenth-century doctors hiding anatomical specimens has no evidence behind it. The earliest print we can point to is an English medical review from November 1816. It says families concealed hereditary illness and called the fear “a skeleton in the closet,” already a metaphor for a private shame that might be discovered. William Makepeace Thackeray helped spread the image in The Newcomes in 1855, writing that a respectable family had “a skeleton or two in their closets.” Britain later favored cupboard while America kept closet. Either way, no real corpse started it. The film’s skeleton would also like the missing Halloween candy entered into evidence.
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