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Body snatching is secretly taking or robbing graves.
In the 1800s, it was popular in the UK.
Church yards were the primary targets for body snatchers.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted
Body snatching was caused due to the increasing enrollment of medical students and their need to get experience with hands-on dissection which demanded more bodies than just the bodies of hanged murderers.
However, as Christians people believed that they would only go to heaven, if they were entirely buried. Dissection was considered a fate worse than death. There was also a popular belief was that there was some relation between the fate of the corpse and the soul.
Richardson, Ruth. “Body Snatchers.” Encyclopedia.com. Wed. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Body snatching would occur right after a body was buried. Professional body snatchers would take only 15 minutes to dig, pull the body out, remove the clothes, take in the body, and fill the pit. If there were rumors of body snatching, then entire communities dug up the graveyard, to make sure that the body is still present in the coffin. There was a lot of pain upon surviving relatives and friends, if the body was not found in the coffin.
Frank, Julia Bess. “Body Snatching: A Grave Medical Problem.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Web. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
People who were wealthy added watchmen with guns and dogs, however, people who could not afford a watchman, usually had their own ways to prevent body snatching such as delaying the burial, mixing straw with soil to make it harder for the body snatchers to dig. For security, double, triple, and lead coffins became popular. None of these could stop body snatchers as they almost always successful for their robbery.
The prices greatly varied depending on the corpse itself. The price for an average adult corpse was about sixty pounds. However, if the body was damaged then the price would be significantly lower. Bodies also lost value if they had not been rightly preserved using pickling, salting, and other forms of preservation. Collectors paid great sum of money. One such case was in 1780s, John Hunter paid £500 for the corpse of a person who was 2.31 meters, who is also better known as the ‘Irish Giant’.
In 1832, the parliament addressed this problem. They recognized that corpses were important to medical development, thus, the parliament changed the law, and the Anatomy act was put in place. It legalized the bodies of the poor to be used for dissection. Anyone who died in poor households, hospitals, anywhere, their bodies would be used for medical purposes.
Richardson, Ruth. “Body Snatchers.” Encyclopedia.com. Wed. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Frank, Julia Bess. “Body Snatching: A Grave Medical Problem.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Web. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly is about a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein who creates a creature. Since the book took place in the 1800s, it is very likely that Victor used bodies that were body snatched in order to create a creature.
Richardson, Ruth. “Body Snatchers.” Encyclopedia.com. Wed. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Frank, Julia Bess. “Body Snatching: A Grave Medical Problem.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Web. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.