THE RESURRECTION MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 550, 14 October 1871, Page 2

THE RESURRECTION MEN.

Everyone familiar with the churches of central and southern Scotland must have observed, a small square building of great strength, and entirely destitute 0 f window?., erected against the wall, and generally very near tiie gate of the churchyard. Such buildings are by no means universal, indeed iv some districts they ar« altogether unknown, but occasionally I it is difficult to find a graveyard without them. In those portions of Fife and Edinburgh shires adjoining the Frith of Forth they ar? especially common. There the dwellings of the dead are usually placed (dose to the sea, and at a considerahle distance from the habitations of the iiring The manse.it is true, sometimes orerlooks the burial ground, but beyond this no other house occurs for two or three hundred yards—the peculiar abhorrence villi which the "quick" too often regard flic dead, preventing anyone from buildioff in the immediate vicinity of" God's-acre.7 It is quite possible, however, that a stranger, ignorant of the customs and folk-lore of the country, might visit all the Fife graveyards and omit to notice the buildings in question uniess his attention was specially directed to them. But, if this were done, and if he were further informed of tho ghastly purposes to which j they at one time had but been put, it is unlikely that their recollection would pass easily from his memory. Built during the old " body-snatching" period, these erections were simply charnel houses*.,, their great strength being intended as a I safeguard against the attacks of the resurrection men —those ghouls of science who desecrated the abodes of dead in the interests of living humanity. At that time it was the almost universal custom, prior to depositing a dead body in the -1 grave, to interne the coffin containing it in one of these houses for several weeks, and thus render the deceased quite; valueless as an anatomical '•subject.'" A'ui this, for all those at least who were averse that their friends should be "cutout by tho doctors," was by no means an unnecessary precaution, Before the pass- - ing of the*lnsurrectionist and Anatomy Act in 183 i, body-snatching was pursued -, with wonderful avidity throughout the entire country, but particularly on the sea coist near Edinburgh. Indeed for a time it became a thriving and even a lucrative | profession. The study of anatomy add . surgery, which was then being pursued in | the great medical schools of Edinburgh with surpassihg zeal, necessitated a constant supply of fresh "subjects," and the demand ultimately became so great that three, four, five, and even in certain cases, as high a3 eight and ten guineas, was paid for a single body. The resurrectionists had their prices very often at their I own matting, and we accordingly read in 1 the memoirs of Sir Astley Cooper, the famous English surgeon, that at the open-1 ing or" a large medical school in London, a " snatcher" received no smaller a sum than £144 on a single evening for a dozen subjects with which he had supplied his M employers. This ghastly traffic naturally became the occasion of many curious adventures. M The robbing of churchyards was resented 9 by every class of the population with a . degree of passion which can only be understood when we recollect the feelings, not merely of abstract veneration, but of M deep lore and longing tenderness with which all civilised peoples' regard their I dead kindred.thosewhosejoys andsorrons hare been aforetime a; part of their very nature. But in spite of"the danger to I I which they exposed themselves, the greed ;of i gain was so strong on the part, of the' 'thieves that the nefarious calling was j pursued under all kinds of difficulties, A [and in the face of an opposition of almost funheard-ol virulence. "In his recent i" Life of Knox, the" Anatomist," Dr. iiiOndsdaie supplies the following interest-' | jing sketch of these worthies:-—"The'.'-»res urreehonists personified drysalters* ■• \ jjpork-curerSj purveyors of animals for . I Imuseums, even apple-dealers and blacking* § .makers. Nothing was too base for them Itodo. Their countenances betrayedasinis-, j iter expression and their dress, ahvays 1 shabby, neither resembled the artisan nor I the lowest class of tradesman; they were 'nondescripts in person as they were in character." The .usual mode" of their.procedure on arriving at a graveyard w&*' L to ascertain whether they might cayry o^'j their operations iv perfect safety. This point settled, they then approached^6 grave—always a newly made one—and the position of which had been carefully surveyed beforehand—and cleared a^B? tire earth from the head of the coffin. As soqu as a foot of the upp^r end of the, !vi had been laid bare, a strong crowbar >• is inserted beneath it, and it reewveda rillent wrench upwards. This uhally ciuiMHl the wood which, was held dova.by t':-' earth pressing on the rest'of itf furla. - .osuap asunder, and the broken piece Miffs thenipulled out, the head and,Uoulders A the corpse were exposed Wx^^jO These w_re at once seized, the. befeyf** drawn from its resting-place stripped ot | its swathing clothes—which were thrown "*' back into tlie empty coffin—and placed ro a sack. The grave was next filled; witlr m the soil, aud the " snatchers," carrying on . ? their plunder completed the job. Soex* • pert did re.ssurectionsts become with Jong . practice that it has been estimated that in the hands of a couple of adroit workmen,a gtiave might easily be rifled of its occupant in fifteen or twenty minutes. , j j Among (he more grotesque stories tow of the period is one which has torus scene the Fife coast of the Frith of fror^ In the winter of 1823-4 a small smacs.

went down near Cighorn during a heavy gale, and its entire crew, consisting, it was believed, of three men. and a boy, were drowned. The vessel was a stranger, and consequently when she broke in pieces, a couple of days afterwards, the people or the district set themselves to collect what spoil they could from the salvage thrown up by the tide. But her cargo, as it seemed, was of wonderfully little value. Old deal, and quantities of agricultural produce werej&e chief articles which came to land, and U the latter was greatly injured by the action of the water, the search for wreckage began to slacken after the first i'e\y days, and then ceased. All at once, however, a rumour spread over the district that salvage of a very valuable cbaraster had been recovered from the wreck. A farmer of the neighborhood, it was asserted, had been seen conveying home a tea-chest of great weight, which he had picked up on the sea-shore. This story, we may be sure, at once set numerous greedy eyes on the outlook for similar plunder. Nothing was found for a day or two, but at last a pair of idle fishermen, while strolling among a cluster of rocks within high" water mark, discovered a square box, which, from its frayed --ides, ha<l evidently beern tossed about among the waves for a number of days, i'hey immediately pounced upon their prize, and notwithstanding that it was exceedingly heavy, carried it home. _Tie news of their good luck spread like wildfire, and the n'-ighbors having turned out in a body to learn what been found, the small " but" of their house was soon filled. But the opening of the. box was no easy matter. Besides being firmly nailed together, it was clamped on the edge with iron in a manner which defied for a considerable time all the efforts os the finders. At length the lid was loosened by the removal oi two of the clamps and then, to the horror of the beholders, it sprung open with great force and a dead body, entirely naked, leaped up with a jerk. Of course the women shrieked, and even the rough seamen fell back in astonishment at the ghastly nature of their prize. After the first shock of surprise an investigation of the affair was made, and it was found that the corpse had been rifled from a churchyard bent in two, placed in a box, and shippedonboard the unfortunate smack for Leith, thence to be conveyed to one or other of the Edinburgh medical schools. Several other boxes, of a like size and shape are said to have come ashore later, but, warned by experience, the fishermen buried them unopened on the spots where they were found.

Then tho exploit of tin* Edinburgh professor, in securing in broad daylight, a hydrocephalic " subject" fromßruutisland churchyard, is well known. Attended by a professional " snatchor," he drove upiu a gift to one of the JJruntisland bosteleries on a summer afternoon, and requested that the horse might be baited for an hour. Theorderwas taken at once, and two gentleman, both of whom were well dressed, walked off, one of them, as he did so mentioning that he expected a servant, who would be in lively, to call with a parcel which would be deposited in the gig. This expectation was carried out to the letter. In a short time a man in livery appeared carrying a somewhat bulky bag, which he placed under the ?eat of the gig. It was remarked that this individual was wonderfully taciturn, or was perhaps alittle hard of hearing*. At all events the inn people could niHke nothing of him, and when the two gentlemen returned at the end of the hour the secret of t'jeir business was yet intact. They at once drove off, but, as it seemed, not a moment too soon. The newest grave in the churchyard had been descrated. and the body carried off in broad daylight, and the perpetrators of the outrage were easily identified as the genetlemen in the gig.

But it was not only the general public that the resurrectionist warred against. When the system of watching the graves became general, and the small, stronglybuilt charnel-house"!, already described, were ercc.ed in the better known or more easily accessible churchyards, they then turned iheir attention against the doctors thernse.ves. We have one quotation from Lonsdale's " Life of Knox," and the following' anecdote from the same volume will probably be read with considerable interest: —

"Two noted hands called one night at Knox's rooms, and asked the assistant on duty if he would take an ' adult' which they had close by. He agreed to do so, and in ten minutes the body was brought in and paid for. Next morning Mr. Lizars' anatomical class was in great excitement on learning that a fresh 'subject' had been carried off during the night from the tables of their dissecting room. Lizars himself was in a terrible rage, a~ d interrogated Peter, the janitor, very closely. " ' You say you bolted and barred all the doors, and found them the same this mom ing ? '

" ' > res. sir.'

" ' Then how the devil could the body be got away ? ' "' Wal,'quoth Peter, 'I dinno ken, unless it was the deil's am work, for there's neither a chink in the door nor a flaw in the window for an imp to creep in by.'

" But the burglary wa.i in every way outrageous. A body stolen from the grave is sold to Lizars, it is re-stolen from his dissecting room, and sold again, within the hour. The villains netted £25 for their work, and had no fear of indictment."

It was plain, however, that the system could not last for ever. On the one hand the interests of science demanded a constant supply of" subjects," and, besides, the amourpropre of the medical profession was engaged in keeping this constant!; np; while, on the other, the deepest feelings of all classes of society demanded that ).he bodies of the dead should be prefer^, *> sacred against the desecrating han^-. of men, even although these were laborers in that holiest of human causes, the alleviation of suffering and the possible preservation of life. We have said all classes of society, since, as there is ample evidence to show, no station, however high, was proof against the forays of the " snatchers." When before a Committee of the House of Commons on the subject, Sir Astley Cooper, on being asked wether the st te of the law prevented the teachers of anatomy from obtaining the hody of any person they were desirous of procuring, replied — "The law does not prevent our obtaining the body of an individual if we think

proper, for there is no person, let his station iv life be what it may, whom, if I were disposed to dissect, I could not obtain."

After continuing in existence for upwards of thirty years, the profession of a resurrectionist" was therefore brought to a final close by the passing ot the Anatomy Act in 1832'

Now, as is -.veil known, ample provision is made for tho necessities of the medical profession by allowing the removal of the unclaimed dead from workhouses aud hospitals to the dissecting rooms of our accredited medical schools. It may be that, at long intervals, an isolated attempt is made by an enthusiastic student to obtain a body surreptitiously ; but these attempts are so few in number that, even if successful, they attract no public notice. At the same time, the story of the troubles which led to the Anatomy Act will always be a chapter in medical history possessing a wile and keen interest, not only for members of the profession, but also for the general public.