The Human Skin Trade (Part 1)

Source: WunderKammer.com

"That's hardcore," says Ben White as he fawns over a photographed jar containing an embalmed 5 month old human fetus. He giddily studies the picture, examining the spaghetti looped umbilical cord like a boy leaning over a mud pile of worms. The fetus is illegal and its source is unknown. It does, however, exist somewhere in Australia where the laws of human tissue trade are highly regulated.

As the owner of WunderKammer, an occult shop in Melbourne specializing in miraculous treasures, White is very aware of the trade laws of deceased human remains. He lives for things like rare taxidermy, natural specimens, and antique scientific instruments. And like most products that are hard to come by, there’s a thriving black market just below the surface.

WunderKammer is just the first stop on our journey through the laws and illegal biddings of the skin trade market. Our next stops are The Evolution Store in NYC, an occultist shop with an abundance of human remains and skeletons, and Deyrolle in Paris, a 170-year old establishment known to be the oldest of its kind. 

The following interview details BenWhite of WunderKammer’s involvement with aberrant objects, how the laws of the human tissue trade in Australia affect his business, and a little about kangaroos.

 Illegal 5-month old fetus.

Source: Unknown

Ben: My name is Ben. I have a shop called WunderKammer, which is a scientific curiosity store where we do taxidermies as well. We have animal skeletons, and skulls, and fossils, and minerals, and all sorts of stuff.

RH: Would you tell me about doing taxidermy?

Ben: Well, we don’t do it ourselves. We frame a bit, so a bit of entomology and things like that. And the taxidermy that we get comes from local taxidermists.

RH: How did you get started doing this?

Ben: This was my dad’s shop originally. He bought the shop from another couple in 2006. He just recently decided to semi-retire, so I’ve taken over the store.

RH: What got you interested in a store like this?

Ben: Growing up around my dad, it was hard not to be. If you look around the store you can see a lot of him in it. It’s pretty weird and wonderful.

Javan toad skeleton.

RH: Was he the one who began collecting?

Ben: He bought the shop from a couple, so they sort of had the original idea, and my dad used to shop there. It was very small and boutique when they had it. He’s collected a lot, and really helped it grow and expand.

RH: How does he find items to collect?

Ben: That’s just sort of the case of going out and finding it. Adventuring. He’s in Paris at the moment, a lot of travel. We’re fairly well known now, so a lot of it can come to us through schools moving, throwing stuff away, old labs and things like that.

RH: Do you travel as well?

Ben: No, I wish. Maybe one day. My boy can take over, and it will continue on.

RH: You were saying that skin trading laws are different in Australia versus the United States.

Ben: What do you mean, “skin treating?”

RH: Skin trading.

Ben: Skin trading. Ah, yes. Yes. Your accent’s different. Yeah, well, there’s a Human Tissue Act in Australia.

RH: Is that what it’s called?

Ben: Yes, the Human Tissue Act. It prevents the buying and selling of anything that still has human tissue. So, skin, bones, any sort of organs or anything like that in ethanol or formaldehyde that’s been stored or pickled. It’s illegal to buy and trade stuff like that. So that law came in the late 1970s. Stuff that was done prior to that can still be done, so there’re a lot of old skeletons around that can still be traded.

RH: So deceased human parts after 1970 are totally off the market?

Ben: You can get licenses and laws that enable you to trade them. But I suppose they’re just trying to prevent it from getting out of hand. The thing is, all the skeletons used to come from India. It was big business in India. And people were starting to worry about how the skeletons were being obtained. That’s sort of how it got rolling. So, the ones that were done previously, people sort of understood where they were coming from and they were all done for medical situations, for doctors and med schools and things like that. 

They all had the skulls sawn open so you can look inside. When skeletons started to appear and the skulls weren’t sawn open, how they were procured and obtained started to become more of an issue. That’s when things started to change.

RH: Do you have any specific examples of this being a problem?

Ben: No, I don’t. I do have some customers who have come in and they buy a lot of skulls and things like that from overseas. They tell me it’s still very hit and miss as to whether you can get stuff or not, and whether it comes through customs or it doesn’t. It’s luck of the draw, really.

RH: Sounds like a bitch to deal with.

Ben: Yeah, well, it’s funny cause if it’s under 1000 bucks of value, sometimes they just waive it through.

RH: How do customs determine the value?

Ben: Well, it’s just whatever you paid for it. But, you could pay 1500 bucks, and the seller would usually write 900 on it for customs.

RH: What you sell, is it all pre-1970s?

Ben: We don’t have any human skeletons at the moment. My dad did have a couple of real ones. Really nice ones that he actually bought from the old WunderKammer. And they were old. The good thing about bones is they last forever. It doesn’t really matter when they were done if they’re kept in good condition. It doesn’t matter if they were done yesterday or a hundred years ago.

 Snake skeleton.

RH: Do the laws pertain to animals as well?

Ben: Well, they can. Being in Australia, you can’t sell koalas, platypus skulls, or things like that. Kangaroo is an interesting one, because they are a pest. There’re thousands of bloody kangaroos. They ruin crops.

RH: Like fruit flies?

Ben: Yeah, well they have culling season up in the north where the farmers are allowed to go out and legally kill as many as they possibly can. Just because there are so many kangaroos. But you can’t legally taxidermy one, even though they’re a pest, because they’re a native animal. You can get taxidermy licenses that enable you to buy and sell native Australian animals. My dad had one kangaroo in six years, so they’re not very common. But the laws go further again on things like koalas, platypus and things like that that are endangered or protected.

Kangaroos. They’re just a cute little fury animal, but they’re bloody annoying.

RH: I saw a kangaroo for my first time yesterday.

Ben: Did you pet it?

RH: Yeah, one was lying on the floor and I didn’t know if I should touch it, but I did. It was nice. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Lady tools.

RH: So how are skin trading laws different in the States?

Ben: I do know that laws in America are a lot more lenient. There was a guy in here recently. He’s opening a similar store in San Francisco. He was telling me that taxidermy in America can be really easy for animals and humans that are already in North America. Shops like Evolution [in New York City] have a lot of skeletons and skulls and things like that.

But I don’t know how they obtained them. They’re not new, so I’m sure there are similar laws as to when they were made and things like that.

RH: Do you have a license to buy any sort of human tissue at all?

Ben: We have a second-hand dealer license, so we can buy from other dealers. But again, anything that involves human tissue is a sensitive area here. There’re old medical kits that hold half a human skeleton. So it’s the left side or the right side of the human skeleton which used to be for medical students. They come in this really generic box that has half a skeleton just sort of dumped in there. People buy and sell those all the time. You’re not supposed to, but med students sell them to other med students all the time.

RH: Sounds like trading text books.

Ben: Exactly. And they have like little drawings on the bone, all the vertebrae are numbered, things like that. It’s all just sort of a grey area.

 Siberian Wooly Mammoth Hair.

Ed’s Note: Due to Rogue Hustler’s involvement with articles, travel, and finding titillating topics for your weekly mental stimulation, interviews are not currently on a posting schedule. More are to be expected, but for now they are posted only when relevant and interesting.