Graverobbing
In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, there was an increase in demand for bodies for use in dissection by a growing number of anatomy students at medical schools. With bodies in high demand, the price of a fresh cadaver was also high (by the 1820s about £10). ‘Body snatchers’ or ‘resurrectionists’ would dig up the graves of freshly buried people and then sell the corpses to anatomists (surgeons who performed public dissections, mostly in university medical schools). Once a body was stolen, the grave was left almost as it had been found, so there would be no reason to suspect that the body had been taken. Even if a body was discovered as having been ‘stolen’, the bodysnatchers could not be charged with any crime as a body was not property.
In places near university medical schools, especially around Edinburgh, preventative measures were taken. Watch houses were erected at the edges of graveyards and watchmen employed by parish authorities or by societies set up for the purpose. Another method to prevent incidents of grave robbing was to place a mortsafe over the grave. There are illustrations of many types of gravestones and mortsafes on the website of Historic Environment Scotland.<https://canmore.org.uk/> [accessed 20 May 2021].
After many incidents of body snatching and the scandal of Burke and Hare (who murdered 16 people to supply the Anatomists with bodies for dissection but who did not rob graves), the Anatomy Act of 1832 was passed.[1] This required anyone intending to practice anatomy to apply for a licence from the Home Secretary and established HM Inspectors of Anatomy who check licences and premises for compliance with the 1832 Act, as amended by subsequent legislation.[2] The 1832 Anatomy Act allowed ‘unclaimed’ bodies to be donated to the medical schools in the name of furthering medical science. Ultimately this led to the demise of grave robbing as a viable business.
Compilers: SCAN contributors (2000).
Related Knowledge Base entries
Death and disposal of the dead
Bibliography
Adams, Norman, Dead and Buried: The Horrible History of Body Snatching (Aberdeen University Press, 1972)
Bailey, James Blake, The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812 (London, 1896)
Love, Dane, Scottish Kirkyards (Robert Hale Ltd, 1989)
Ross, Ian and Carol Urquhart, ‘Body Snatching in Nineteenth Century Britain: from exhumation to murder’ British Journal of Law and Society, 6(1) (1979), pp. 108-18
References
[1] Anatomy Act, 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV c. 75).
[2] Anatomy Act 1984 (c.14); Human Tissue (Scotland ) Act 2006 (2006 asp.4).