History of grave robbing

Excited about his new find, he enquires to find out more about the occupation of this “God send” vendor. “I am a grave digger he says”.

Grave robbery or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a tomb or crypt to steal the artifacts inside or disinterring a corpse to steal the body itself or its personal effects. Someone who engages in this act is a grave robber or tomb raider.

In China, grave robbing has a very long history, spanning more than 2000 years. In medieval and renaissance Europe, students of medicine and of art were reported to have stolen corpses from morgues, private houses, and cemeteries to assist in their study of anatomy.

Michelangelo, the Renaissance painter and sculptor, was known for stealing bodies from morgues in order to study human anatomy to perfect his artwork.

His was considered more of body snatching than grave robbery. Leonardo da Vinci before him was also known for this same practice.

Another type of grave robber, as in Brazil and other South American countries, is called “dentista da meia-noite” (midnight dentistry), specialised in breaking into mausoleums to steal gold teeth of the deceased.

In the 18th century in England, Scotland and the United States they called th emselves “Resurrectionists”. The laws of both England and the United States, absolutely prohibited dissection even for medical purposes.

Only corpses of executed criminals, were given to surgeons, who had no other subjects for their anatomical investigations for dissections. Society forbade dissections, on one hand and yet expected the physicians to know where the appendix was.

Convinced of the immense importance of dissection to the pursuit of medical science, the surgeons availed themselves of the services of the Resurrectionists to violate the cemeteries and bring them bodies from the graves.

It is easy to imagine the horrible circumstances attending these nocturnal expeditions, the seeking out of recent graves, the exhumation of the bodies, and clandestinely carrying them to the anatomy departments in the middle of night.

The Resurrectionists customarily delivered the stolen cadavers to the medical schools naked. According to the law, the stealing of the corpse was a matter of little importance but the taking of the minutest article attached to it involved the severest of penalty.

The cleverest of the Resurrectionists boasted that they could exhume the corpse sometimes in 20 minutes, counting from the moment when they climbed over the cemetery wall, down to the moment when they got over it again carrying the body, having left the grave in such a condition that it looked untouched.

The Resurrectionists had to be resourceful in the operation theatres of their medical clients. They would hide it between heaps of vegetables or bundles of wood piled up high on market carts of the like.

Once the body was safe in his/her laboratory, the doctor had nothing to fear, as the police were not allowed entrance to it. The prices paid for bodies varied greatly, from four to eight pounds in England, to US$2 to US$35 in the USA.

The famous surgeon John Hunter, who initiated the anatomical museum at the College of Surgeons in London, paid £500 for the body of the Irish giant, Bryne. Bryne was over eight feet tall.

He earned a good livelihood by exhibiting himself in London, but he had a bad constitution and a bad liver. It was manifest that he would not live to old age. In any case, Hunter yearned for those bones for his collection.

He approached Bryne and offered him £800 on the understanding that he would have Bryne’s body on his death. The giant was seized with a feeling of indescribable horror and refused.

The surgeon persisted and tormented Bryne to the point that Bryne made four trusted friends promise him under oath that when he died they would drop his body, weighted with lead into the sea, well out from land. So afraid was he, that if buried in the ordinary way, his remains would be disinterred by body snatchers on the payroll of his fanatical persecutor.

When the giant died, Hunter enticed Bryne’s friends to accept the sum of £500 for the body. So much for giving over burial instructions to “trusty” friends!

The evil fame of the Resurrectionists spread all over the country and evoked a growing horror. This horror was the impetus for the invention of “grave safes” or the modern sealing burial vaults now common in Europe and Am-erica. Michael Ja-ckson was recently buried in a vault housed in a Mausoleum.

The inhabitants of London found it necessary to band themselves together in order to take steps to preserve their cemeteries from such profanation. Armed with loaded guns, the citizens would mount guard, shots being fired sometimes by mistake at inoffensive passers-by or at other men out on the same errand of defense. But, while finding their work more difficult, the Resurrectionists continued to ply their unique trade.

The school of surgery at Edinburgh was kept abundantly supplied with bodies for dissection, a certain Dr Knox, in particular never being at a loss in this respect. This surgeon depended chiefly for his supply of bodies on a boot-maker named William Burke, who had a confederate named John Hare.

Burke and Hare lived with their wives in one of the most miserable quarters of Edinburgh. At the beginning of 1828, mysterious disappearances began to occur in their neighbourhood. At first these were confined to members of the poorer classes, especially drunkards and beggars.

Later a boy and a girl who were widely known in the area vanished. The girl was famous for her great beauty, and the boy was a beggar. Months passed, other such disappearances took place, and the horror was becoming intensified when a workman notified the police that he had discovered a body of an old woman who had evidently been murdered, hidden under a pile of straw in the room of one of his neighbours.

This neighbour was Burke. His room was searched, and certain clues found on the premises put the police on the track of a big box, addressed to Dr Knox, in which another body was found. Both Burke and Hare were arrested. The latter turned Queen’s evidence and confessed to everything.

They had begun their work, he started, by selling the body of an old soldier who had died suddenly owing them money. They had taken it to Dr Knox, who had paid them eight pounds for it.

Encouraged by this success, they had perfected and simplified the system which they had practiced ever since.

Instead of going to cemeteries to disinter dead bodies with great difficulty, they had taken to “manufacturing” the corpses in which they dealt. “Much easier to do,” commented Hare! The Burke – Hare method (invented by Burke) was always the same.

On a foggy evening they would roam about the low quarters of the city and look out for some suitable victim, man or woman, by preference a drunkard.

They would get into a conversation with him/her and bring them home. On the table they would have whiskey and some glasses.

They would drink together, and as soon as their guest was drunk enough, Hare would pass behind him/her and suffocate the person shutting their mouth and nostrils with his hands while good old Burke sat on the victim’s chest.

Grave robbing for a time was called “Burking.” Burke was hanged in 1829 with Hare escaping hanging but ending up blind and a beggar on the streets of London.

– mavmat67@hotmail.com