Bills of the same period show that the charge for this species of inoculation "when a quantity was taken," as in the parish bills, was 2s. or 2s. 6d. each person. The advantage claimed for spreading the disease of small-pox out of the rates by means of inoculation was that if you had it as the result of inoculation only one person in 300 died, but if you had small-pox by infection, eight out of every hundred died. It may be of interest to add as a general fact upon health and diseases, that in 1792, out of 20,000 burials the following were the proportions of deaths from the leading diseases:—Consumption 5,255, convulsions 4,646, dropsy 3,018, fevers 2,203, small-pox 1,568, measles 450, "teeth" 419. The deaths under two years of age were 6,542, or one-third of the whole! The classification was not so exact in those days as it would be now, but the race has improved a little in regard to infantile mortality and consumption.
In coupling the doctor and the body-snatcher, at the head of this chapter, I did not really mean to convey more than the general association of human experience in the periods of sickness and the close of life. If there was a closer association of these two characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences of the times was reserved for the end of life; that the ordeal of the separation from friends by death was embittered, and intensified, beyond anything in more modern experience, yet it is certain that the revolting business of the "body-snatcher" did, for some years, between 1815 and 1830, brood over many a village in this district like a cruel night-mare!
The reception of bodies, or "subjects," from country or town burying grounds for the dissecting rooms of London and other hospitals, became almost a trade, not altogether beyond the commercial principle of supply and demand. Generally about two guineas was the price, and students would club together their five shillings each for a "subject." In the face of such facts it would be idle to suggest that the tradition of that mysterious cart, moving silently through the darkness of night on muffled wheels towards our village churchyards, was merely a creature of the imagination. The tradition of that phantom cart which lingered for years had a substantial origin as certain as the memory of many persons still living can make it! In many of the villages around Royston, as indeed in other districts, the terror of it became such that not a burial took place in the parish graveyards, but the grave had to be watched night after night till the state of the corpse was supposed to make it unlikely that it would then be disturbed! The watch was generally kept by two or three men taking it in turns, generally sitting in the church porch, through the silent hours of the night armed with a gun! The well-to-do were able to secure this protection by paying for it, but many a poor family had to trust to the human sympathy and help of neighbours. Under a stress of this kind probably some brave Antigone watched over the remains of a dead brother, and certainly it was not uncommon for husband and wife to face the ordeal of sitting out the night till the grey light of morning, in some lone church porch, or the vestry of some small meeting-house—watching lest the robbers of the dead should come for a lost son or daughter! Over the grave of some poor widow's son, or of that of a fellow workman, volunteers were generally forthcoming to perform this painful office.
Though the law was seldom invoked, there must have been numberless cases in which bodies were stolen, cases in which the modest mound of earth placed over the dead had mysteriously dropped in, and the outraged parents or relatives, not unnaturally perhaps, turned with bitter revengeful thoughts to the London and other hospitals of that day—whether justly or unjustly God knows! Around the parish churchyards of Bassingbourn, Melbourn, and especially Therfield and Kelshall, the memory of unpleasant associations lingered for many years after the supposed transactions had passed away; nor was it merely an experience peculiar to isolated village churchyards. On the contrary it was customary, even in the Royston church-yard, surrounded as it is and was then by houses—with the Vicarage house then actually in the church-yard, in fact—it was customary for relatives to sit in the Church porch at night and watch the graves of departed friends!
Of actual occurrences of robbing the graves there is the story of a woman living in one of the villages on the hills not far from Royston, when on her way home, accepting a ride with a neighbour, only to find to her horror that the driver had a dead body in his cart! As to the allegations that stolen bodies did find their way to hospitals for dissecting purposes, there is a well authenticated story of a case in which a Roystonian was recognised in the dissecting room of a London hospital! A doctor, whose name would, I daresay, be remembered by some if mentioned, and who was in the habit of visiting a family in Royston, and knew many Royston people, upon entering the dissecting room of one of the London hospitals, at once recognised a "subject" about to be operated upon, as a person he had frequently seen in Royston, a peculiar deformity leaving no possible doubt as to her identity!
Excepting when the natural dread of it came home to bereaved families, there was no very strong public opinion on the subject; the law, which came down with a fell swoop upon many classes of small offenders, was too big an affair for dealing with questions of sentiment, and as there were no little laws of local application readily available, the practice was too often connived at where examples might have been made. In some things our grandfathers may have had the advantage over this hurrying age, but the reverent regard for the dead, and the outward aspect of their resting place, is assuredly not one of them.