BEAGLE was a programme that was set up by the British government to predict how humans might evolve in the future. It was named after Charles Darwin's ship HMS Beagle. The programme was led by Professor Julius Quilter and was Dennis Lancaster's first assignment. Brian Rutherford also had some involvement. It was speculated by the newspapers that the Jacobi Building was a free love commune or the site of Nazi experiments.
Professor Quilter succeeded in synthetically cultivating new specimens from cultures and, going against the original purpose of the programme, grew three creatures, named for Alfred Russel Wallace. The first two were Russel and Wallace, who had superior intelligence and agility but were unstable from conception. Their genetic structures were accelerated through drugs and they died.
The third, Alfred, benefited from the past mistakes and survived, but after some time, in 1975, his heart began to fail. Unable to bear losing a third subject, Professor Quilter tried to save him to no avail. One night, Alfred killed the boy standing watch over him and harvested his heart, allowing him to recover. The government ordered BEAGLE to be shut down and Alfred destroyed. However, Professor Quilter could not do it and allowed him to live at his house as his assistant under the name Emerson. His survival went undiscovered until Liz Shaw and Ackroyd worked it out in 1995. (HOMEVID: Unnatural Selection)