Shady dealings

Nov 12 2010 By Chris Upton

'Resurrectionists' on the prowl for victims struck as much fear into society as serial killers, writes Chris Upton.

It’s a curious feature of our age that what used to terrify us eventually becomes a matter of light entertainment.

So have evolved the Phantom of the Opera, the Living Dead and the Barber of Fleet Street. And this motley crew have lately been joined by Messrs Burke and Hare, the subjects of a new comedy film.

The work of Burke and Hare, supplying the surgeons of Edinburgh with fresh bodies for their anatomy schools, ended on the gallows. But the dread that they inspired on the streets of Britain’s cities by no means disappeared with their execution. Not for some years, at least.

The obstacle that Burke and Hare addressed in their idiosyncratic manner was a “supply side” problem.

By the 1820s medical schools were thriving in the capital cities of England and Scotland, along with smaller ones in provincial towns like Birmingham.

But medical training meant anatomy classes, and the latter required bodies. Yet only the bodies of executed murderers were available for dissection, and then only if authorised by the assize judge. It was a neat way of punishing the criminal even beyond the scaffold.

There was, then, a lucrative trade to be exploited, and the unscrupulous body-snatchers waded in, shovel in one hand and address book in the other.

If a fresh grave could be found – ideally within about three days of interment – then it might yield up a body worth £10 or £20 on the open market. The perpetrators were, rather wittily, known as “resurrectionists”.

In the dark cemeteries shadowy figures moved back and forth, and if they performed their job well, and back-filled the grave, no one need be any wiser. It was, they would no doubt have argued, a victimless crime; they were doing a public service.

The church beadles, whose responsibilities included burial, might be expected to protect the sanctity of the graveyard. But some of them found the lure of cash-in-hand hard to resist. Indeed, the beadles of both St Bartholomew’s and St Mary’s churches in Birmingham were themselves convicted of selling teeth recovered from graves. Dentists would pay good money for these too.