Medical students in the late-18th and early-19th centuries had only one legal source of corpses
for dissection: the bodies of executed murderers.
There was no problem with this policy until the number of university medical colleges and private anatomy schools in Britain began to increase, resulting in competition for the available cadavers. Dissection was essential for students to learn about the anatomy of the human body and to develop their surgical skills.
With an insufficient number of legal corpses, the anatomy schools turned to so-called resurrectionists to meet the shortfall. Variously known as ‘bodysnatchers’, ‘resurrection men’, ‘grave-robbers’ and ‘sack-’em-up men’, they were prepared to go to great lengths to steal a cadaver for an agreed fee.
Surgeons paid the bodysnatchers and, as time went on, the cost of a ‘subject’ increased considerably. The market forces of supply and demand were firmly in the resurrectionists’ favour. For example, during 1831, there were only an estimated 10 or 12 legally available bodies for dissection but between 1,100 and 1,200 were actually needed; around 900 were obtained. With fewer capital sentences, there were fewer executions. The lack of corpses was acutely felt in London but was worse in Scotland, which had universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Sir Astley Cooper was an eminent surgeon and anatomist who obtained cadavers through resurrectionists. In 1828, he told the Anatomy Committee that when he first entered the profession 30 years earlier, a body could be purchased for just two guineas; now the price was eight guineas but it could be as high as 14. The higher cost of bodies could not be passed on to the medical students for fear of being undercut by other anatomy schools, although the money could be made up through increased lecture fees.
Bodysnatching was not limited to the graveyards closest to universities offering medical degrees. There was a brisk trade in smuggling corpses from English and Irish ports such as Liverpool and Dublin, destined for Scottish medical schools and also for London. In October 1826, a gruesome discovery of 33 bodies in casks was made at George’s Dock, Liverpool, after a “horrible stench” was detected; the shipment was bound for Leith in Scotland and from there to Edinburgh. Some of the bodies were “so putrid it was extremely dangerous to handle them”.
At first, the activities of the bodysnatchers did not attract much attention. Such was their skill and tenacity that exhumations often went unnoticed. Writing in 1821 about a graveyard near Edinburgh, Reverend William Fleming of West Calder commented: “Till within three years ago, when the inhabitants began to watch the graves, the persons interred did not remain in their graves above a night, and… these depredations were successfully carried on for nine successive winters.” The anatomical sessions always took place from October to May as the rate of decomposition was slower during colder, winter weather.
It was only when rival gangs of bodysnatchers started supplying the medical schools that the public was alerted to their actions. In 1828, according to the police: “The number of persons who, in London, regularly live by raising bodies [does not] exceed 10; but the number of persons, occasionally employed in the same occupation, is stated… to be nearly 200.” These men were “thieves of the lowest grade, and the most desperate and abandoned class of the community”.
Working in gangs, they would “do anything to spoil the success of their opponents in the business. If a body were bought by one of the teachers from an outside source, the regular men would sometimes break into the dissecting-room and cut the body in such a manner as to make it useless for anatomical purposes. If this could not be done, they would give information to the police that a stolen body was lying in a certain dissecting-room.”
“Men would sometimes break into the dissecting-room and cut the body”
Joshua Brookes, the proprietor of another anatomy school, described resurrection men as “the most iniquitous set of villains that ever lived”. He stated that at the beginning of each session he was offered a regular supply of bodies at a fixed price “on the condition that a douceur [a bribe] was paid down at once”. If the proprietor did not accept the terms, he risked losing his students because he would have insufficient cadavers for dissection. At the end of each season, the resurrection men also demanded “finishing money”.
The costs did not end there. If a bodysnatcher was caught and imprisoned for any length of time, the surgeon was obliged to partly pay for the maintenance of his wife and family. Richard Dugard Grainger, teacher of anatomy at the Webb Street School in London told the Anatomy Committee: “For one resurrection man alone, I incurred an expense of 50 [pounds] in consequence of allowing him a certain sum per week for two years while he was in prison. During the present season I have expended several guineas in supporting another man’s family while he was in prison… if bodies are to be obtained, we must promise to take care of these men when they are in trouble.” At that time, there were 11 anatomy schools in the capital with between 500 and 700 students who needed bodies for dissection.
The issue of obtaining sufficient bodies for dissection was a problem at medical schools across Britain. In 1828, there was one anatomical lecturer in Birmingham with 25 students attending his lectures. Eight bodies were dissected during the course. They were procured “in the usual manner, by exhumation; and the discovery of this practice… caused considerable commotion and distress to the inhabitants
of some of the neighbouring villages”.
When giving evidence to the Anatomy Committee in 1828, Sir Astley Cooper made the point that some medical students who did not have access to bodies for dissection “were unaware even of the existence of some parts of the body, and that they were obliged to be rejected at the College of Surgeons, from their ignorance of anatomy: which is not to be imputed to their want of zeal, but entirely to the want of proper instructions, and of opportunity to learn their profession”. It was feared that medical students would have to go to Paris for their anatomy training, as Parisian anatomy schools had to be licensed and cadavers were regularly supplied to these premises.
The public had a real revulsion for dissection. There was a stigma associated with it because it was carried out on murderers, but they also believed their bodies needed to be intact after death to be granted eternal life in heaven. Their view of dissection was matched only by their disgust at the actions of the bodysnatchers. Despite this, relatively few criminal cases were pursued. In instances where it was proved that corpses found in dissecting rooms had been exhumed, it was the surgeon or medical student, not the bodysnatcher, who was charged with possession of a stolen body.
It was believed that bodies needed to be intact after death to be granted eternal life in heaven
Without bribing the graveyard’s sexton, resurrectionists would never have been successful. They used tried-and-tested methods to exhume bodies. First, a hole was dug down to the part of the coffin where the head lay, using dagger-shaped wooden implements, which made less noise than iron tools. Two iron hooks were placed under the coffin lid and part of it was forcibly removed. The body was then
pulled up by a rope fixed under the armpits or neck, stripped of its grave-clothes and placed in a sack. The grave-clothes were reburied and the soil on the surface was restored to its original condition.
Other bodysnatchers were known to steal cadavers that had not yet been buried. One favourite way was to claim a pauper’s body at a workhouse by pretending to be a family member. Some resurrection men brazenly stole corpses awaiting a coroner’s inquest, even from private houses where bodies lay before burial.
This extract from a Diary of a Resurrectionist shows how organised the gangs were; how the rate of pay depended on the size of the corpses; and the fact that they also sold teeth (canines) if the bodies were too putrid: “Wednesday 2nd September 1812. Went to the London [Hospital]. Hollis got Canines £8 8 0. Bill got paid for one large M [male] £4 4 0. I recd £4 4 0 for one large size small. Bill recd £1 0 0 for the F [female] that come from St George. One small came Wiegate [Wygate] went to Wilson. Recd. £2 0 0 for one large, small came from Wiegate, went to St Thomas’ [Hospital] not sold being putrid: at night the party met & divided, me & Hollis went to Harp’s [probably the name of a burial ground keeper] workplace. The thing [body], proved to be bad, Jack Bill & Toms Light went to Westminster.”
It was extremely distressing for a family when the body of a loved one was stolen. Relatives often took turns to watch over a grave for the first three or four days after burial; natural decomposition meant that corpses were unsuitable for dissection after this. Watchhouses or watchtowers were also built in cemeteries and churchyards, especially in Scotland, for those who were paid to watch over newly interred graves. Unfortunately, it was all too easy for the resurrectionists to buy the watchman’s silence.
Other methods of protecting graves included a mort-stone placed on top of the coffin, which one or two men could not lift alone, and mort safes, which were iron cages that enclosed coffins. Some graveyards had a mort-house – a huge vault in which bodies were stored until they had decomposed, after which they were buried.
The high prices the bodysnatchers could command for corpses naturally led to murder. In November 1827 in Edinburgh, William Hare was owed money by one of his lodgers who subsequently died of an illness. To recoup the debt, Hare and his friend William Burke sold the body to some assistants working at Dr Robert Knox’s medical school. They were paid £7 10s. Dr Knox had more than 300 students and Burke and Hare quickly realised they could make easy money by supplying bodies for dissection.
They turned to murder instead of digging up graves and looked specifically for victims among the poor with no family to miss them. Burke and Hare regularly received as much as £10 per cadaver with no questions asked. Using the same method of suffocation (afterwards known as ‘burking’), the pair killed 16 people in nine months before suspicions were aroused and they were arrested in early November 1828. Hare turned ‘king’s evidence’ and testified against Burke, who was tried and found guilty of the murder of his last victim. He was executed on 28 January 1829 and his body was dissected.
The London Burkers was a gang of resurrection men apparently inspired by Burke and Hare. The group included John Bishop, Thomas Williams, Michael Shields and James May. In 1831, after trying to sell a “suspiciously fresh” body of a 14-year-old boy to the King’s College School of Anatomy, they were arrested. Bishop and Williams confessed to the murder of the so-called “Italian Boy”, who they said was from Lincolnshire, as well as two other victims; the three had all been drugged and then drowned in a well. The rest of the gang were exonerated. Bishop claimed he had been a bodysnatcher for 12 years and had obtained and sold between 500 and 1,000 bodies over that time. He and Williams were executed in December 1831.
The murders in Edinburgh and London led to the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act, which stamped out bodysnatching. Anatomy teachers were now licensed and it was legal to dissect unclaimed bodies, particularly from prisons and workhouses. The rule that murderers’ bodies could be dissected was abolished to assuage the public. Instead, the new law simply created a fear of the workhouse for generations to come.