RISE OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
The cemetery is as quiet as the grave, except for a lone figure silently shovelling earth, digging deep for the casket buried below. As his spade strikes the coffin lid, he grins malevolently – he’ll be paid handsomely tonight. Grave robbers have become something of a gothic cliché, a trope of horror films and stories, yet during the 18th and 19th centuries body snatching was not only very real but incredibly common. “There were two ‘peaks’ to the body snatching trade: the last decades of the 18th century and the first of the 19th, and then again around 1826-28, just before Burke and Hare were caught for the murders they committed in Edinburgh,” explains Suzie Lennox, author of Bodysnatchers: Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain’s Resurrection Men. During these two periods the so-called ‘resurrection men’ could be found prowling Britain’s graveyards in search of fresh cadavers. But why was there such a demand for dead bodies, and who was buying them?
During the 18th century, the medical world found itself handcuffed by antiquated laws. Scientific research methods had improved and there was a new emphasis on a student’s practical knowledge of the body. Yet here lay the problem as, until the Anatomy Act of 1832, dissection could only be carried out on a small number of legally granted cadavers. In 1505 James IV granted the use of criminals’ bodies for dissection to
