Corpse abductors ( English resurrectionists , letters. “Resurrevers”; also body snatchers , letters. “Body abductors”) - persons who were engaged in the XVIII-XIX centuries in Great Britain to extract the bodies of the recently deceased from the graves and transfer them to scientists for anatomical studies. Between 1506 and 1752, only a small amount of cadaveric material was available to anatomists every year. The situation improved when, in an effort to strengthen the deterrent effect of the death penalty, the British Parliament passed . The new law allowed judges to replace the public display of the bodies of dead or dying executed criminals with preparation (traditionally regarded as a “terrible” posthumous fate), after which the number of corpses to which anatomists could access legally increased significantly. However, this was not enough to satisfy the needs of the many hospitals and training centers that opened in Great Britain in the 18th century. The corpses and their parts became a commodity - and although the activities of grave robbers aroused indignation among the general public, in the legal sense, the bodies of the dead were no one's property. Thus, the kidnappers of the corpses acted in the legal .
Nevertheless, the “resuscitators,” caught in their occupation, risked being physically attacked. Measures taken against the abductors included providing increased security in cemeteries. Burial sites were patrolled by night patrols; the rich buried their dead relatives in special "safe" coffins; the graves were protected from the invasion by additional obstacles like massive iron mortars- safes and heavy stone slabs. The abductors of corpses were not the only target for public ostracism: in the eyes of the public, the parliamentary act of 1752 made the anatomists themselves agents of the law, maliciously forcing the courts to impose death sentences. Riots at the places of executions, from where the anatomists collected the cadaveric material due to them, became commonplace.
The situation was heated to the limit after a series of "anatomical killings" committed in 1828 in Edinburgh by Irish immigrants William Burke and William Her. The parliament’s response was the establishment in the same year of the on Anatomy, which emphasized the importance of anatomical science and recommended the transfer to anatomists for opening the bodies of deceased beggars. After exposing in 1831 a gang of , acting on the example of Burke and Hare, parliament discussed a bill submitted by , author of the Special Committee report. Despite the fact that the bill still did not declare the abduction of bodies illegal, the parliamentary act adopted on its basis completely eliminated the prerequisites for the activities of corpse abductors, giving anatomists access to the bodies of deceased occupants of workhouses .
See also
- Exhumation
Literature
- Anon. Human Dissections // The Lancet, MDCCCXXVIII – IX, in two volumes / ed. by Thomas Wakley. - Mills, Jowett, and Mills, 1829. - Vol. one.
- Anon 2. A View of London and Westminster: or, the Town Spy, & c . - T. Warner, 1728.
- Anon 3. Destruction of a Theater of Anatomy, London, Saturday, December 31, 1831. // The Lancet . - Mills, Jowett, and Mills, 1832.
- Bailey, James Blake. The Diary of a Resurrectionist 1811–1812 . - Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1896.
- Cheung, Philip. Public Trust in Medical Research? - Radcliffe Publishing, 2007. - ISBN 978-1-84619-179-4 .
- Christison, Robert. The Life of Sir Robert Christison . - William Blackwood and Sons, 1885.
- Gordon, R. Michael. The Infamous Burke and Hare . - McFarland, 2009. - ISBN 978-0-7864-4403-8 .
- Grauer, Anne L. A Companion to Paleopathology . - John Wiley & Sons, 2011 .-- ISBN 978-1-4443-4592-6 .
- Haslam, Fiona. From Hogarth to Rowlandson . - Liverpool University Press, 1996. - ISBN 978-0-85323-630-6 .
- Lantos, John D. Controversial Bodies : Thoughts on the Public Display of Plastinated Corpses. - Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011 .-- ISBN 978-1-4214-0271-0 .
- Malchow, Howard L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain . - Stanford University Press, 1996. - ISBN 978-0-8047-2664-1 .
- McNally, David. Monsters of the Market . - Brill Publishers, 2011 .-- ISBN 978-90-04-20157-6 .
- Morris, Robert John. Cholera 1832 : The Social Response to an Epidemic. - Taylor & Francis, 1976. - ISBN 978-0-85664-377-4 .
- Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth : Art and Politics 1750-1764. - James Clarke & Co., 1993. - ISBN 978-0-7188-2875-2 .
- Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection, and the Destitute . - Taylor & Francis, 1987. - ISBN 978-0-7102-0919-1 .
- Ritchie, James. Relics of the Body-Snatchers. - Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. - 1921. - Vol. 55. - P. 221–229.
- Shultz, Suzanne M. Body Snatching . - McFarland, 2005. - ISBN 978-0-7864-2232-6 .
- Wise, Sarah. The Italian Boy. - Jonathan Cape, 2004 .-- ISBN 978-0-224-07176-5 .
- Woods, Gregory D. A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales . - Federation Press, 2002. - ISBN 978-1-86287-439-8 .
- Chaplin, Simon David John. John Hunter and the “museum oeconomy”, 1750–1800 : Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London. : [ eng. ] : [ arch. October 9, 2014 ]. - London: Department of History, King's College, 2009. - May. - 402 p. - [The dissertation for the degree of Ph.D].
see also
- Report from the Select Committee on Anatomy : [ eng. ] . - Oxford: The House of Commons, 1828 .-- 150 p. - [Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Anatomy].
- Dickey, Colin. Cranioklepty : Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius: [ eng. ] . - Unbridled Books, 2009 .-- 320 p. - [Book about abductions and dismemberments of celebrity bodies]. - ISBN 978-1-932961-86-7 .
- The Alarm, or the Kirkyard in Danger // Northern Looking Glass. - 1825. - Vol. 1. - [Caricature of the activities of carcasses in the Scottish satirical magazine Northern Looking Glass (1825-1826, the first four issues were called Glasgow ); link - review of 1825 issues].
Links
- Dublev, Vitaliy Vitalievich The bodies of the dead: Great Britain (inaccessible link) . Bitter magazine (September 10, 2015). Date of treatment July 2, 2019. Archived on September 27, 2016.
- Steshevich, Varvara Mortseifa from the “resurreters” . how in England they hunted for the dead . Warhead (July 1, 2019) . Date accessed July 2, 2019. Archived July 2, 2019.