THE death masks of hanged criminals form the grisly welcoming committee to one of the nation's most macabre medical museums.

The rogue's gallery of disembodied heads is the first thing you see when you enter the lurid world of the George Marshall Medical Museum at the Charles Hastings Education Centre, Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

The heads are like something from a Dickensian nightmare, with their old-fashioned bushy sideburns and haircuts.

They have even been put on a high shelf so they do not terrify small children and the eerie uplighting gives them a horrifying and hypnotic power.

The early 19th century masks were discovered in the 1950s in a gloomy room next to an underground tunnel leading between Worcester County Gaol in Love's Grove and the infirmary in Castle Street.

The tunnel, now blocked up, was once a bustling thoroughfare for the corpses of executed murderers, rapists and cattle rustlers.

Their bodies were considered fair game by doctors eager to learn more about human anatomy between the 1820s and 1840s.

Some doctors believed that the shape of a person's head revealed their personality - dangerous or so-called criminal types' could be identified simply by looking at them if an observer was trained in physiognomy.

One of the saddest sights in the museum is the death mask of a microcephalic man, the medical term for someone born with an abnormally small head.

The man, who would have been of low intelligence, was believed to have been a farm labourer hanged in Worcester Gaol for sheep stealing in the mid 19th century.

Catriona Smellie, aged 23, has been the curator of the museum since last September after achieving her masters degree in museum studies at the University of Durham.

Catriona, who offers both outreach and in-house education for schools, said the 10 heads were by far her favourite exhibits.

She said: "I think people should come here because a medical museum is of relevance to everyone. It's great and gory and gruesome - and that kind of museum is always brilliant."

The most grisly section of the museum is probably the operating table showing a life-size model of a leg amputation, which never fails to draw gasps from school parties.

The display shows the spit and sawdust world of medicine in the 1860s with a metal bucket placed under the bed to catch the blood.

Although general anaesthetic was in use at this time, surgeons had no knowledge of germs and rarely washed their hands or the implements they used, meaning many patients died of infection.

One of the exhibits holds a particular fascination for Catriona - the ironically-named English lock forceps on display were designed by a distant relative of hers, Scotsman William Smellie.

There is also a wealth of military exhibits, including the uniform and surgical implements of a medical officer who fought in the Boer War and the First World War, donated by Richard Goddard, who lives near Malvern.

Catriona said: "War is what has driven medicine forward. The authorities had to keep as many people active for as long as possible to win the war they were fighting."

Other exhibits include kit for self-admistered enemas and the Waterloo teeth', gathered from the corpses of dead soldiers to make a new set of gnashers for toothless, trend-setting rich people.

A double-ended baby feeder is also on display which could be cleaned at both ends so deadly germs could not breed in the bottom.

It may not look very interesting, but it's saved hundreds of lives in a time when people were only beginning to believe in the existence of germs.

The surgery chair from the Worcester Infirmary still has the power to make visitors flinch.

Before anaesthetic was introduced in the 1840s, people were strapped tightly to the high-backed wooden chair during amputations to stop them squirming about.

One surgeon, Robert Liston, who became professor of clinical surgery at University College London in 1835, prided himself on sawing off legs and arms more quickly than anyone else. According to the stories, he amputated a man's testicles by mistake, cut the fingers off his assistant and the coat tails off the man behind him - all three men died, one from blood loss, one from infection and the other from a heart attack.

By 1848, James Young Simpson had discovered the effects of chloroform, and this along with ether, another anaesthetic, was used to put patients to sleep during operations.

GEORGE MARSHALL MEDICAL MUSEUM: THE FACTSThe museum is free and open between 10am and 4pm, Monday to Friday but can be opened at other times on request.

The museum illustrates the way that medicine and health care has developed over the past 250 years from the invention of anaesthetic to the discovery of X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging.

Although some of the objects have been donated by local people, the vast majority donated by Dr George Marshall, a city GP for many years.

The museum was opened in 2002 and has received funding support from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund.

There are 600 objects on display out of more than 7,500. Some of the objects in storage may be displayed at Castle Street site although plans have yet to be finalised.

For more information about the museum visit www.medicalmuseum.org.uk or call 01905 260738.