June Down.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

It's more the fact she gassed the bunnies that grosses me out. Usually at school, they give you a pre-killed animal (we did hearts and eyes).

Her teacher gassed it I think. Plus, schools were different in the 1740's when Brown was there.

[Blue Jam]

It's more the fact she gassed the bunnies that grosses me out. Usually at school, they give you a pre-killed animal (we did hearts and eyes).

It looks like the teacher gassed the bunny, not the pupils. Also as she says, it was a different time- hey, children were still routinely dissecting recently-deceased frogs when E.T. came out in 1981.

(we never did cows' eyes at my school because it was in the time of Mad Cow Disease and the powers that be were concerned about the nervous tissue content)

[Blue Jam]

Isn't the whole job description of being an obituary writer glossing over how the person in question was a massive cunt that no one liked?

Must have got the fucking work experience kid to write it.

Should have got Limmy, he makes the whole process look like a piece of piss.

[Captain Z]

If she's buried then the rabbits are going to have the last laugh. Unless she has a special coffin rigged with gas.

[jobotic]

Just as I was considering becoming a vegetarian we dissected a rat at school. The lovely thing was our one was pregnant. We also had to buy pig's (?) hearts at the butchers to take to school to dissect - after school Hedgecock took them all home on the bus in a carrier bag to feed to his ferrets and the bag split and they rolled down the aisle of the bus.

There was also a puppy in a pickle jar in the senior science block but we never gassed anything.

[Kankurette]

Now I get it, the article just made it sound like she murdered bunnies for funsies.

I loved dissecting hearts. I'd put my fingers in the tubes and wiggle them around. I did some of the other kids' hearts as well because they were squeamish. I was a morbid little fucker.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Just as I was considering becoming a vegetarian we dissected a rat at school. The lovely thing was our one was pregnant. We also had to buy pig's (?) hearts at the butchers to take to school to dissect - after school Hedgecock took them all home on the bus in a carrier bag to feed to his ferrets and the bag split and they rolled down the aisle of the bus.

There was also a puppy in a pickle jar in the senior science block but we never gassed anything.

Hedgecock? How unfortunate.

[jobotic]

Hedgecock? How unfortunate.

I swear, I swear this is all true [comedian style]

I loved dissecting hearts. I'd put my fingers in the tubes and wiggle them around. I did some of the other kids' hearts as well because they were squeamish. I was a morbid little fucker.

Ew. I couldn't do it, just watched someone else do it. Still squeamish now.

[Blue Jam]

We also had to buy pig's (?) hearts at the butchers to take to school to dissect - after school Hedgecock took them all home on the bus in a carrier bag to feed to his ferrets and the bag split and they rolled down the aisle of the bus.

Sorry but I just had to laugh at this image...

I loved dissecting hearts. I'd put my fingers in the tubes and wiggle them around. I did some of the other kids' hearts as well because they were squeamish. I was a morbid little fucker.

I loved the "heart strings" on the valves, beautiful they are. I once inflated a pig lung as well, you had to be careful to breathe into the tube and then not breathe back in. Also when a quick-thinking pupil had a bat fly into her bath and drown and she  decided to put it in the freezer and bring it to school- was nice to pass that round and get a close look  and examine the wings before the teacher put it in a jar of formaldehyde. I remember someone saying "Awww, I didn't know rats had tails" before the teacher responded that it was in fact a boy bat.

We also had a baby octopus in a jar. And a few tapeworms and other parasites. I still love all that stuff. Went to the Museum of Parasitology in Tokyo and was gutted that I didn't have the opportunity to get to the Vrolik Museum during my recent trip to Amsterdam.

[imitationleather]

Christ. I can't wait to read the obituaries for you lot.

[Blue Jam]

I get to look at autopsy tissue and surgery leftovers in my current job. I also once held a human brain and can confirm that it is impossible to hold a human brain and not feel like you're auditioning to play Hamlet.

[Blumf]

Isn't the whole job description of being an obituary writer glossing over how the person in question was a massive cunt that no one liked?

Just think what they must have left out.

[non capisco]

Christ. I can't wait to read the obituaries for you lot.

I need to do something noteworthy before I die so it isn't just lightly amusing anecdotes about farting.

June Brown gassed a rabbit, non capisco, what have you done with YOUR life?!!!

[wrec]

Wonder who they'll cast as Dot Cotton now. Hope they don't wokify the character and remove her trademark gassings. 

[paruses]

By the time I worked at the BBC in the late 80s the rabbit gassing was already an open secret and we were always told to make sure she was never alone with a rabbit and a biscuit tin.

[Head Gardener]

JB did have a small (uncredited) part in Peckinpah's Straw Dogs

[Icehaven]

I pretended to have a moral objection to dissection so I didn't have to cut up a cow's eyeball in Biology, but really I just didn't want to do it because I'm squeamish. I had to go and stand outside the classroom with a few other conscientious objectors, one of whom theatrically burst into tears at the mere thought of the bloodbath taking place on the other side of the door. I just spent the time trying not to imagine a scalpel going through my own eyeball. 

That Dot obit is fucking weird though.

[kalowski]

From an early age, June Brown manifested an interest in dead animals. Her fascination with dead animals may have begun when, at the age of four, she saw her father removing animal bones from beneath the family home. According to her father, Brown was "oddly thrilled" by the sound the bones made, and became preoccupied with animal bones, which she initially called her "fiddlesticks". She occasionally searched beneath and around the family home for additional bones, and explored the bodies of live animals to discover where their bones were located.

In 1968, the family moved to Walford, London. This address was their third in two years, and the Browns' sixth address since marriage.The flat stood in near the recently renovated Albert Square, with a laundromat being only a short walk from the house where Brown began collecting large insects such as dragonflies and moths and the skeletons of small animals such as chipmunks and squirrels. Some of these remains were preserved in jars of formaldehyde and stowed within the laundromat.

Two years later, during a chicken dinner, Brown asked laundromat owner Mr. Papadopolous what would happen if the chicken bones were placed in bleach. Mr. Papadopolous, pleased by what he believed to be Brown's scientific curiosity, demonstrated how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones. Brown incorporated these preserving techniques into her bone collecting, and also began collecting dead animals—including roadkill — which she would dissect and bury inside the washing machines in the laundromat, with the skulls occasionally placed atop makeshift crosses. According to Ethel, Brown explained to her that she was curious as to how animals "fitted together". In one instance in 1975, Brown decapitated the carcass of a dog called Wellard before nailing the body to a tree and impaling the skull upon a stick in the woodland behind her flat. As "a prank", she later invited a friend to view the display, claiming she had discovered the remains by chance.

[gilbertharding]

Remember her this way - sharing a joke on the set of Eastenders with Wendy Richards.

[gilbertharding]

According to wikipedia, the character Dot Cotton had an abortion aged 19 (so, in 1946, if she's the same age as the actor), and it was carried out by Dr Legg - who then punched Dot's husband out in the Queen Vic.

Th chronology must be a bit off, because Nick Cotton was supposed to have been conceived soon after, which would put him in his late 30s by the time Eastenders started.

Even so, how was it never a plot point that Dr Legg was a criminal?

[Kankurette]

I get to look at autopsy tissue and surgery leftovers in my current job. I also once held a human brain and can confirm that it is impossible to hold a human brain and not feel like you're auditioning to play Hamlet.

Do human brains uncoil like wet spaghetti?

I couldn't do your job because I have a nose like a dog. Even going into Lush makes me feel nauseous.

[Blue Jam]

Do human brains uncoil like wet spaghetti?

If they're fresh they're a bit like blancmange, but this one had been preserved in formalin so was nice and firm. 1.4 kg it was, heavy bastard.

I couldn't do your job because I have a nose like a dog. Even going into Lush makes me feel nauseous.

To be fair the autopsy tissue is either preserved in paraformaldehyde or in thin sections on microscope slides so it smells of nothing much.

Lush on the other hand... I feel sorry for the staff. It must be like working in a cloud of fragrant asbestos.

[TrenterPercenter]

@Blue Jam I worked in a path lab in a hospital for a bit and the stink was horrid, smelling a bit like some hospital wards I've been on and visited with very unwell people.  I always presumed this was some dead body parts somewhere rotting away (I was just there using the centrifuges and preparing samples).

It was a very unique smell though (this was in the 90s) dead blood?

[audiocreator]

I don't know. Is this the bit where you tell me that your dad fell into a wood chipper?

I left one running in town once by mistake.  I still open the post office, but no one comes.