Corpse - Body Snatching

Body Snatching

Anatomy schools began to steal bodies from graves. While "Grave robbers" were technically people who stole jewelry from the deceased, some respected anatomy instructors dug up bodies themselves. The anatomist Thomas Sewell, who later became the personal physician for three U.S. presidents, was convicted in 1818 of digging up a corpse for dissection.

Anatomists would even dissect members of their own family. William Harvey, the man famous for discovering the circulatory system, was so dedicated he dissected his father and sister. From 1827 to 1828 in Scotland, murders were carried out, so that the bodies could be sold to medical schools for cash. These were known as the West Port murders. The Anatomy Act of 1832 was formed and passed because of the murders.

By 1828 anatomists were paying others to do the digging. At that time, London anatomy schools employed ten full-time body snatchers and about two hundred part-time workers during the dissection season. This period ran from October to May, when the winter cold slowed down the decomposition of the bodies. A crew of six or seven could dig up about 312 bodies.

The poor were most vulnerable, because they could not afford coffins to keep the body snatchers out.

Disposing of the dissected body was difficult, and rumors have appeared about how anatomists might have managed. One possibility was secretly burying the remains behind their school. Another rumored possibility was that they gave the bodies to zoo keepers, as feed for carnivorous animals or burial beneath elephant grazing pens, or fed the bodies to vultures kept specifically for this purpose.

Stories appeared of people murdering for the money they could make off cadaver sales. Two of the most famous are that of Burke and Hare, and that of Bishop, May, and Williams.

• Burke and Hare — Burke and Hare ran a boardinghouse. When one of their tenants died, they brought him to Robert Knox’s anatomy classroom in Edinburgh where they were paid seven pounds for the body. Realizing the possible profit, they murdered sixteen people by asphyxiation over the next year and sold their bodies to Knox. They were eventually caught when a tenant returned to her bed only to encounter a corpse. Hare testified against Burke in exchange for amnesty and Burke was found guilty, hanged, and publicly dissected.
• London Burkers, Bishop, May and Williams — These body snatchers also killed three boys, ages ten, eleven and fourteen years old. The anatomist that they sold the cadavers to was suspicious. To delay their departure the anatomist said he needed to break a fifty pound note. He sent for the police who arrested the men. In Bishop's confession he stated, “I have followed the course of obtaining a livelihood as a body snatcher for twelve years, and have obtained and sold, I think from 500 to 1,000 bodies”