“Suicide and the Body Stolen.—Tuesday evening last a young woman of respectable and interesting appearance was observed for some time parading the banks of the Surrey Canal, Camberwell, in a melancholy mood, and at length she plunged into the water; on which a man rushed in after her and dived several times, but failed in recovering the body, which was not found till the following morning, when it was taken to the Albany Arms, near the Canal, for the Coroner’s inquest, which was to have taken place on Thursday. On the landlord proceeding to the shed on Wednesday morning, where the body had been deposited, he discovered, that in the course of the night, it had been broken open, and the corpse of the female stolen away. He instantly repaired to the Police Office, Union Street, and gave information of the circumstance to the Magistrates, who gave orders that immediate inquiry should be made at Mr. Brookes’s, where the body has since been discovered and given up. The poor woman was unclaimed, and the verdict of the Coroner’s Jury was ‘Found Drowned.’”
A favourite trick, in the carrying out of which a woman was generally necessary, was that of claiming the bodies of friendless persons who died in workhouses, or similar institutions. Immediately it was found out that such an one was dead a man and woman, decently clad in mourning, in great grief, and often in tears, called at the workhouse to take away the body of their dear departed relative. If the trick proved successful, as it often did, the body was taken straight off to one of the schools and sold. The parish authorities, probably, were not over particular about giving up the body, if the deceased were a stranger, as by this means they saved the cost of burial.
Subjects, too, were obtained from cheap undertakers, who kept the bodies of the poor until the time for burial. The coffin was weighted so as to conceal the fraud, and the mockery of reading the Burial Service over it was gone through in the presence of the unsuspecting relatives.
That some bodies were obtained by murder there can be no doubt. The exposure caused by the trials of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, and Bishop and Williams in London, proves this.
The facts previously stated, however, go very far to exonerate the anatomists from the false charge (freely made at the time) of their being privy to these murders. It has been frequently stated that signs of murder could be easily seen, and that the fact of the body being fresh, and there being no evidence of its having been interred, ought to have at once suggested foul play, and to have caused the teacher to communicate with the police. But it must be remembered that the murders were generally very artfully contrived by suffocation, so as to leave no outward signs of ill-treatment. It was also no uncommon thing, for the reasons just given, to receive at the schools bodies in quite a fresh state, which had evidently never received sepulture.
An account of the post mortem on the Italian boy, for whose murder Bishop and Williams were hanged,[11] has been preserved by Mr. Clarke.[12] The examination of the body was carried out by Mr. Wetherfield, of Southampton Street. There were also present Mr. Mayo, Lecturer on Anatomy at King’s College; Mr. Partridge, his demonstrator; Mr. Beaman, Parish Surgeon; and his Assistant, Mr. D. Edwards, and Mr. Clarke. The boy’s teeth had been removed and sold to a dentist, but beyond this there were no external marks of violence on any part of the body. The internal organs were carefully examined, but no trace of injury or poison could be found. Mr. Mayo, who had a peculiar way of standing very upright with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, said, with a kind of lisp he had, “By Jove! the boy died a nathral death.” Mr. Partridge and Mr. Beaman, however, suggested that the spine had not been examined, and after a consultation it was decided to do this. It was then found that one or more of the upper cervical vertebræ were fractured. “By Jove!” said Mr. Mayo, “this boy was murthered.” The conviction of Bishop and Williams was due, in a very great measure, to Mr. Partridge and Mr. Beaman.
At the present day it is well-nigh impossible to understand the relations between men of honour and education, such as the teachers of anatomy were, and the ruffians who carried on this ghastly trade. It must, however, be borne in mind that, until the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832, there was no provision for supplying the means by which the student might be taught this necessary part of his professional education; the only way in which teachers could get material for giving instruction was by dealing with the resurrection-men.
It would have been quite impossible for the resurrection-men to have obtained the number of bodies they frequently did, had they not been able to bribe the custodians of the different burial-grounds. Sometimes they met with a difficulty in the shape of a keeper newly appointed to replace one who had been dismissed for being privy to these depredations. In most instances this was soon overcome; if, at the outset, the custodian could not be bribed, he could generally be induced to drink, and then, whilst he was in a state of intoxication, the body which the resurrection-men wished to obtain could be easily removed. After this first step there was generally very little difficulty in the future.
Sometimes, too, the grave-diggers not only gave information to the Resurrectionists, but acted as principals themselves. In Benson’s Remarkable Trials is recorded the case of John Holmes, Peter Williams, and Esther Donaldson. Holmes was grave-digger at St. George’s, Bloomsbury; Williams was his assistant, and Donaldson was charged as an accomplice. They were prosecuted before Sir John Hawkins at the Guildhall, Westminster, in December, 1777, for stealing the body of Mrs. Jane Sainsbury, who died in the previous October, and was buried in the St. George’s burial-ground. Holmes and Williams were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and to be whipped on their bare backs from the end of Kingsgate Street, Holborn, to Dyot Street, St. Giles. The sentence, says Benson, was duly carried out amidst crowds of well-satisfied and approving spectators. The woman Donaldson was acquitted.
The ranks of the resurrection-men were largely recruited from the keepers of burial-grounds. When these men had lost their situations for connivance at the stealing of bodies, they naturally joined their old associates, and became part of the regular gang.