The Resurrection Men

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 July 1927, Page 25

The Resurrection Men

(Written for THE SUN by

"MALABAR.”)

THOUGH it seems almost impossible to believe it nowadays, the fact remains—duly authenticated by a wealth cf evidence—that a hundred years or so ago the crime of M body-snatcliing” was almost as common in the United Kingdom as the lesser one of theft. The gruesome business undoubtedly started because of the keen demand from anatomists, surgeons, and surgical and medical schools for “subjects” for dissection and demonstration. At the beginning of the 19th century there seems to have been no legal way of obtaining an adequate supply of subjects, so the doctors and surgeons hardened their hearts and lent their countenances and protection to what was undoubtedly a crime. One can sympathise with them to a certain extent, for, to a really keen surgeon or doctor, it must have been dreadful to realise that the progress of their profession was being held back. At this time, also, the surgical and medical professions appeared to be very popular, and there was a host of young men clamouring for instruction in the schools, but it was obviously impossible to teach them properly without the absolutely necessary demonstrations on the human body. Thus there arose an insistent call for the services, illegal and horrible as they were, of the “resurrection men,” and in spite of the frowns of the law and an ever-grow-ing wrath in the outraged public breast, that call was answered with energy, and what looks remarkably like enthusiasm. At the beginning of the eighteen hundreds there was certainly a very large number of desperate and artful men almost solely engaged in the business of body-snatching in and around London and in other towns, such as Edinburgh, where large schools of anatomy and medicine were established. Whatever one may think of their ghastly method of making a living, one has to admit that they exhibited very considerable resourcefulness, ingenuity, and even courage in their work, qualities, one w'ould think, sufficient to have as sured them a competence in some lawful occupation. It has been argued, with some show of reason, that the real delinquents were those who created the demand and fostered, paid and encouraged the resurrection men to go on with their horrible job. Many leading anatomists did much more than this, for when a body-snatcher was caught, which sometimes happened, his particular patron nearly always came forward, openly or secretly, and assisted the man, shielding him from prosecution, paying for his defence, allowing him so much a week while he was in gaol and providing for his family, if any! Sir Astley Cooper, the famous surgeon, is said to have expended hundreds of pounds for such purposes. Undoubtedly the main sources of supply were public and private burial grounds. The resurrection men usually managed to suborn the caretakers and watchmen and, when they could not do this, they terrified them out of their lives with awful threats, which they occasionally proved to be quite capable of carrying out. Not only were the cemeteries of cities and towns constantly violated, but often the body-snatchers would take a jaunt into the country and hold a diggingbee in the local church-vard On their return to headquarters their booty

was promptly sold to the anatomists. It may be taken as a proved fact that no class of grave was secure from their depredations, and sometimes, so it is said, surgeons would specially dispatch an expedition to a certain cemetery to obtain the body cf some person known to have been subjected to some unusual or important operation, the examination of which was thought to be of special interest to science! It is on record that the leading resurrection men seldom, if ever, failed to get what they were after. Sir Astley Cooper, in giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, definitely stated. “The law does not prevent our obtaining the body of any individual if we think proper; for there is not a person, let his situation in life be

what it may, whom, if I were disposed to dissect, I could not obtain . . . The law only enhances the price and does not prevent exhumation: nobody is secured by the law; it only adds to the price of the subject.” A frank enough statement surely! It is only too certain that thousands of graves must have been rifled throughout the length an£ breadth of the United Kingdom, and it is curious to speculate on how many tombs there must be, with a stone on top setting forth the virtues of the deceased, and nothing below but earth and the remains of a shattered coffin! A very curious and ghastly story is extant which states definitely that the body of Laurence Sterne, the great English humorist, author of “Tristram Shandy,” was among those “raised” by the body-snatchers. Shortly after his death and burial, a medical friend of his went to stay with a brother anatomist at Cambridge and was horrified to recognise Sterne’s body lying on the dissecting table. His friend, who did not know Sterne, said it had been bought from the resurrection men in the ordinary way! The rapacity and villainy of some of the body-snatchers was probably the chief factor in the stamping out of the gruesome traffic, aided by changes in the law which made it easier for anatomists and surgeons legally to obtain subjects. Not content with the violation of burial grounds, some of the resurrection men took to mur < der to obtain their wares. Most people j have heard of the Burke and Hare case in Edinburgh, in 1828, which added the verb “to burke” to the English language. These two preckus ruffians are believed to have killed at least lo people with the object of selling their bodies to the anatomists The case caused an enormous sensation all over the kingdom and the peoples’ agitation was just dying down in 1831 when the case of “the murder of the Italian boy,” in London, re-electrified the public, and no doubt caused a great deal of annoyance to < those orthodox body-snatchers who were merely violating graveyards They became so unpopular that it was as much as their lives were worth to be recognised!

Few people nowadays can havo heard of this strange and terrible affair, and it is worth mentioning an showing what the worst type of resurrection men were capable of. One evening in November, Mr Partridge, a professor of anatomy at King’s, was told that a subject had been offered for sale by Bishop and May, regular providers of such goods. After haggling about the price, Mr Partridge examined his purchase, but did not like the look of it at all, as the body, that of a boy, did not appear to have been buried. He accordingly asked Bishop and May, and two other men who had come with them, Williams and Shields, to w T ait while he got change for a T.-noi* Instead of bothering abo Mr Partridge called the I -

- j promptly arrested the quartet. May, i when arrested, said he had nothing to ? do with the matter, “the subject was - that gentleman’s”—pointing to Bishop. 7 i The police learned that the victim was probably a poor Italian boy named t j Carlo Ferrari, who gained a li* ' [ exhibiting trained white mic - : examining Bishop’s garden, ar ? | liams’s, which wa3 next door, j : and woman's bloodstained ga ? j were dug up and evidence v t ' ( tained that a reg'tfiar system c 1 j der had been carried out. - i woman’s clothes were prov i have belonged to a woman * I Frances Pigburn, who had I t ! iously disappeared, and w'hose oouy 2 : had been sold to th e surgeons. Wilf liams and Bishop were convicted, but > there seemed to be some doubt about May, who was reprieved. Before l : execution, both William'S and Bishop * 1 confessed, the latter saying that the . i boy was not Carlo Ferrari, but a Lan- * cashire youth, name unknown. Both - desperadoes admitted enticing the boy and woman to their house at different times, and after giving them a - | powerful drink of rum. richly laced with laudanum, they waited until they [, were unconscious and then attached 1 a rope to their feet and lowered them, : i head first, into a well in the garden. : In half an hour’s time the body was ! hauled up, stripped, packed in a box »' and taken round to the surgeons next j day for sale. The execution of these wretches ; was public, of coarse, and the enormous crowd which gathered to see them “turned off,” raised a deafening howl of execration on the appearance | of the doomed men—a cheerful sendoff indeed! This dreadful case, coming almost on top of the Burke and Hare business, seemed more or less to settle the profession of bodysnatching. More police were now available, the public was thoroughly roused, and shortly afterwards the position of anatomists was made easier by legal enactments. The profession of resurrection man must have been a trifle too exciting at this period for all but the very hardiest, and gradually its followers forsook it for healthier occupations. Ah! Those “good old days”! Woul# 1 we like to live in them now?