ByBraden Phillips
Published October 26, 2023
• 10 min read
When a poor person’s body was laid to rest in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a good chance it had no rest at all. Rather than settling into an eternal sleep beneath the earth, their bodies were dug up and carried away to the operating theaters of medical schools and colleges. There they were dissected by surgical students learning anatomy and practicing operations they would later perform on living patients.
Digging up the dead could ruin a reputation, but there were trades people who specialized in providing cadavers for doctors in training. They went by many names: body snatchers, grave robbers, resurrectionists. Although their efforts may have advanced the understanding of the human body, their work largely targeted the indigent, whose mortal remains were violated when the market demanded it.
(See how this woman’s body became a digital cadaver.)
Changing times
While industrialization transformed the burgeoning populations of Britain’s major cities, medical science was undergoing a metamorphosis of its own. In the 1790s there were some 300 medical students in Edinburgh and London, the centers of medical study in Britain. By the 1820s numbers had increased to over 400 in Edinburgh and nearly a thousand in London.
Students expected to dissect as many as three cadavers, which continually increased the demand for “fresh” bodies for anatomy classes. Parisian schools at the time had an effective system in place to ensure enough cadavers for each student. In 1828 enrollment in London schools dropped by 20 percent in favor of Parisian schools because of this guaranteed access.
In Britain, however, the only legally sanctioned method for acquiring a corpse was under the Murder Act of 1752. This allowed for the corpses of executed murderers to be used by surgeons for dissection. This rule only brought in an average of 10 to 12 corpses a year, well below the needed amount.
Traditionally, apprentice surgeons might go themselves to cemeteries to dig up corpses. If discovered, however, they faced reprisals from relatives and reputational loss. The solution was to find a middleman to provide corpses discreetly. Body snatchers or resurrectionists would trade in “stiff‘uns,” as they called them, for huge financial rewards.
For comparison, in 1829, when London’s Metropolitan Police Service was created, the starting weekly wage for constables was 21 shillings. A skilled weaver in the East End’s silk industry might earn as little as five shillings a week working 12 hours a day, six days a week. A disinterred body could bring in four to 12 guineas; a guinea was worth 21 shillings. Even if divided among a gang of four people, the typical arrangement, everyone still made out well.
Prices often depended on a corpse’s freshness, or whether it had interesting medical conditions. Unusual deformities, for example, could fetch top prices. A recently-deceased, well-developed limb could be worth more than a whole body on the verge of putrefaction. Male corpses were considered more valuable for the study of musculature. Selling hair and teeth could be profitable sidelines.
(We thought we knew the secrets of Europe’s bog bodies. We didn’t.)
Thieves in the graveyard
Since a corpse wasn’t considered “property” in the eyes of the law, grave robbing was only a misdemeanor, punishable by fines or up to six months in prison. But resurrectionists risked long prison sentences if they made off with other contents of a burial, such as a shroud, coffin handles, or the deceased’s clothing. Consequently, the body was stripped naked before being placed in a basket or chest, which was then loaded onto a horse-drawn cart.
Resurrectionists traditionally used four tools: a wooden shovel (quieter than a metal one), a lantern, large metal hooks, and ropes. After digging down to the coffin, they attached the hooks to the lid to open it, revealing the body inside. They tied a rope to the corpse, which was hoisted out of the grave. The work required enormous upper body strength. Top professionals might disinter as many as six bodies in one night, and they often had to lift them over cemetery walls.
(Rest in … compost? These ‘green funerals’ offer an eco-friendly afterlife.)
Safe spaces
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A mortsafe over a grave in Greyfriars Kirkland Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland
Kumar Sriskandan/Alamy Stock Photo
To protect the dead from body snatchers, British families could buy a mortsafe, which was an iron grille or cage placed over the tomb. Mortsafes became popular options in the 19th century and generally served their purpose. Watchtowers built in some cemeteries also provided more security for the deceased, with the wealthy taking the most visible plots.
Body snatchers faced minimal legal repercussions, but they were so despised by the public that they had to maintain the strictest secrecy. In the late 1820s, at the trade’s peak, full-time body snatchers were an exclusive group. “They wanted no part-timers or casual workers entering the business, bringing down prices and being indiscreet” said historian Sarah Wise. “They were right. Newcomers would be the very thing that spoiled the trade.”
Murderous plots
That’s what happened in 1827, when William Burke and William Hare, Irish immigrants living in Edinburgh with their wives, became resurrectionists. Both men worked as laborers, and Hare’s wife ran a boarding house. One of their tenants, a pensioner who owed back rent, suddenly died; his body could pay the debt. With no family to claim the deceased, Burke and Hare sold the body to Robert Knox, the leading anatomist in the city and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, where he promised to teach “in the Parisian style,” guaranteeing one cadaver per student.
After Knox paid seven pounds and 10 shillings for the body, Burke and Hare saw an opportunity. Impressed by the fee, they took a more direct route to acquiring cadavers: murdering vulnerable strangers. Over a 10-month period, the pair killed as many as 16 people and sold their remains to Knox. After their arrest, Hare testified against Burke in exchange for immunity. Burke was convicted and hanged in January 1829. His remains were publicly dissected, and his skeleton was displayed at the Anatomical Museum at Edinburgh Medical School. How much Knox knew of their crimes is unclear, but his reputation suffered enough that he left town and moved to London.
(Take a grisly tour of Edinburgh in the footsteps of its two famous body snatchers.)
Salacious slang
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“Burking poor old Mrs. Constitution,” an 1829 political cartoon, depicts the Duke of Wellington and Home Secretary Robert Peel as Burke and Hare murdering a woman.
Alamy/ACI
The Burke and Hare murders were notorious enough to give rise to a new word in the 1820s: burking. The term appeared during media coverage of Burke’s trial and became the word of choice to describe murdering someone to sell their dead body. The original meaning was to kill in the way Burke and Hare had: restraining a victim while an accomplice covered the nose and mouth to suffocate them. Burking became common enough that it even appeared in political cartoons of the day. The meaning broadened to include any kind of attack carried out with the intention of selling a corpse. It’s unclear how dire a concern burking actually was, but the British press was happy to use it in sensational headlines that sold newspapers.
Three years later resurrectionists in Bethnal Green were given the moniker the London Burkers for using rum and laudanum to incapacitate victims before killing them and selling their bodies. John Bishop and Thomas Williams were caught when they tried to sell a suspiciously fresh corpse, a 14-year-old boy, to King’s College School of Anatomy. After an investigation, they confessed to murdering “the Italian boy,” as young Charles Ferrari had come to be known. They were hanged in December 1831. The London Burkers’ crimes finally forced Parliament to change the law. The Anatomy Act of 1832 made unclaimed bodies of paupers legally available for dissection, which cut into the resurrectionists’ trade.
(See the secret lives of today’s cadavers.)
Cadavers’ fate
The final resting places of the poor and destitute used in Britain’s medical schools are largely mysteries. About a decade ago, some of their graves were found on the grounds of the Royal London Hospital (formerly known as the London Hospital) founded in 1740. Archaeological excavations ahead of an expansion project at the hospital revealed a long-forgotten burial ground. Inside some coffins were complete bodies, while others contained mismatched parts or multiples of the same body part.
The bodies bore signs of violent lives (many had broken noses), tobacco use, or chronic illness. Many of the bones featured marks a doctor would have made post mortem: saw cuts, knife marks, and drill holes. All dated to between 1825 and 1841. Taking the evidence together, archaeologists determined these people were the vestiges of medical school cadavers, whose remains had educated the physicians of Britain.
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