No Job Too Small. No Body Too Big. No Questions Asked.
Were the Resurrectionists (body-snatchers) a cause or influence for today's obsession with ghosts?
Back in the 1830's (late Georgian period) body-snatching was all the rage in England. Dispensing a freshly dug up cadaver to the local doc could earn a bloke 'a few bob'. Corpses of executed criminals were hard to come by, maybe only one or two were distributed for medical work per year and the Resurrectionists would get out their shovels and get to work and when the dead ran out they would murder the living.
One grieving mother of a dearly departed, sat in vigil at the graveside, guarding the site because she had heard that the Resurrection men were in the village. One night a local lad saw a shadowy figure prowling around the graves and announced that "a ghost is haunting the cemetery!" large crowds then gathered around to find the ghost but all they found was a poor Irish woman called Anne McCarthy. Around this era, rumours of ghosts spread, railings were erected to keep out both body-snatchers and ghost hunters alike. Two young men did manage to infiltrate a cemetery and were subsequently arrested and tried for being in the churchyard 'for an unlawful purpose', they claimed that they were only looking for 'the ghost' and were discharged.
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| 'Sack em up men' |
What do you think?
If you found yourself living rough in the sleazy part of Edinburgh in the 1700's then it wasn't a pleasant time for you, you didn't lay down to sleep without keeping one eye open because a body snatcher might be lurking round the next corner. Body snatching was rife in the area and you could have been their next victim! Body snatching and grave robbing was so bad graveyards had large walls and railings built around them, doctors would pay good money for a good supply of cadavers, they also used executed criminals for anatomical experimentation. But criminals found their own sinister methods of profiteering the business by supplying medical students with fresh bodies, so fresh in-fact they were just barely alive! Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers of the era, they had their own form of strangulation by restricting their victims breathing by covering the nose and mouth so as not to damage the body, the method was known as 'Burking'. Dr Knox paid up to seven pounds seven shillings for the bodies so he could carry out his 'no questions asked' work, easy money for the pair. When they did the grave robbing they would remove the body and replace it with tanning bark. After many years the pair were found out through rumour and Burke was sentence to hang. On January 28th 1829 Burke was hanged, over 25,000 people attended the execution, the crowded cheered 'Burke him, Burke him!!" Ironically HIS body also ended up being dissected by medical students who removed sections of his skin and bound a book with it, it is stamped on the front in gold lettering 'Burke's Skin 1829' but before dissection, Burke's corpse was put on a slab in town, a public exhibition for thousands to see and walk past at a rate of sixty people a minute. His skeleton can still be seen at Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh along with his death mask and the life mask of is cohort Hare, but did you know, Hare got off Scot free!!
If you found yourself living rough in the sleazy part of Edinburgh in the 1700's then it wasn't a pleasant time for you, you didn't lay down to sleep without keeping one eye open because a body snatcher might be lurking round the next corner. Body snatching was rife in the area and you could have been their next victim! Body snatching and grave robbing was so bad graveyards had large walls and railings built around them, doctors would pay good money for a good supply of cadavers, they also used executed criminals for anatomical experimentation. But criminals found their own sinister methods of profiteering the business by supplying medical students with fresh bodies, so fresh in-fact they were just barely alive! Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers of the era, they had their own form of strangulation by restricting their victims breathing by covering the nose and mouth so as not to damage the body, the method was known as 'Burking'. Dr Knox paid up to seven pounds seven shillings for the bodies so he could carry out his 'no questions asked' work, easy money for the pair. When they did the grave robbing they would remove the body and replace it with tanning bark. After many years the pair were found out through rumour and Burke was sentence to hang. On January 28th 1829 Burke was hanged, over 25,000 people attended the execution, the crowded cheered 'Burke him, Burke him!!" Ironically HIS body also ended up being dissected by medical students who removed sections of his skin and bound a book with it, it is stamped on the front in gold lettering 'Burke's Skin 1829' but before dissection, Burke's corpse was put on a slab in town, a public exhibition for thousands to see and walk past at a rate of sixty people a minute. His skeleton can still be seen at Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh along with his death mask and the life mask of is cohort Hare, but did you know, Hare got off Scot free!!
Researched and written by Jules
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