Anatomists, Body Snatchers, Inn Keepers, Oh My!
With a scary week coming up (both Halloween and the election), I figured I’d talk about body snatchers. Not zombies, as my boys would say zombies are cheugy. They fell off several seasons ago. I mean the grave diggers in England during the 1800s, also referred to as resurrection men, who exhumed bodies and sold them.
Gruesome, I know but hang in there.
My next book Relinquishing the Agent (releasing in March 2025) includes a spy investigating a body snatching ring, so I’ve researched the topic. If anyone saw my Google searches while writing this novel, I’d probably be on the FBI watch list.
Britain's Murder Act of 1752 allowed the bodies of those who were hung for murder to be used to study human anatomy. To become a surgeon, a burgeoning field in that day, each student must have dissected their own cadaver before performing surgery on a live person, making the demand for bodies high and the supply low. Body snatching became a lucrative business. Some professors and students became resurrectionists to meet their own needs. Body snatching wasn’t a punishable crime unless material items were taken. The British government didn’t see bodies as belonging to anyone. As long as the clothes and jewelry remained in the coffin no thieving occurred. Outraged family members hired watchmen to protect the dead.
Other acts were proposed to parliament for the bodies of the destitute who died in workhouses to be handed over for the benefit of science, but the act failed. The price of cadavers soared. One particularly awful body snatching duo, Burke and Hare, grew tired of waiting for people to die.
William Hare took in lodgers at his home. When one guest died, he called upon his friend William Burke and the pair sold the body to Robert Knox at the Edinburgh University for a handsome sum. Other lodgers started to mysteriously disappear, mostly vagrants, those who dipped too deep in their cups, lame individuals, or those considered easily overlooked or forgotten. Eventually Burke and Hare were arrested but there was little evidence to convict. Hare was offered immunity for a King’s evidence deal. Burke confessed and was convicted for sixteen total murders. He was hung for his crimes and ironically his body was dissected to further the study of science.
I have no doubt Robert Knox was aware of the method by which the cadavers were obtained, yet he continued to pay for them. No charges were brought against him. While Burke and Hare sacrificed to the idol of greed, Knox elevated science over human life.
When I lived in Boston for a year, the city was typically crowded. People swarmed sidewalks, subways, roadways, and restaurants. After a while, the people seemed like objects. Until one day I sat in a Dunkin Donuts window, watching the people on the street. I looked at each of their faces, and God reminded me that each passing person was someone’s daughter or son, each had their own story, struggles, and fears. Each of them was loved by God.
When hubris causes us to see people as objects or believe ourselves as more worthy, evil rises in the form of eugenics, apartheids, and other crimes against humanity.
Proverbs 22:2 says, “The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all.”
We are all God’s children. We are made in His image, and He cares for us and wants us all to come to repentance. It’s imperative that we see people as our brothers and sisters and not a means to an end. We are called to protect the vulnerable, those who can’t protect themselves. We’re to look upon others with love, no matter if they’re well-off, destitute, a variation of a spectrum of skin colors, sinner, or saint.
Or to put a fine point on it, even those who vote opposite of us.