MJ STEEL COLLINS reviews Scottish Bodysnatchers: A Gazetteer by Geoff Holder
Geoff Holder has produced a veritable cornucopia on the art of body lifting and lifts the lid on a part of Scottish history on which there seems to be so little.
For instance, I previously only associated bodysnatching with Edinburgh, although I was aware of the odd story around Glasgow, through working on my blog. I also believed Burke and Hare to have been bodysnatchers.
Now I stand corrected – as Holder explains, they were in fact mass murderers inspired by the bodysnatching craze and huge sums offered by anatomists for fresh bodies, which were in very short supply.
Prior to the 1832 Anatomy Act, only murderers hanged for their crimes could be dissected.
It appears that prior to the passing of the Act, it wasn’t guaranteed that your recently departed would rest in peace for long.
Resurrectionists would literally be at the cemetery gates with their spades as the funeral party left.
This led to a variety of measures being taken to prevent fresh corpses from being lifted – huge cages being constructed over lairs, mortsafes, the establishment of watches (with accompanying watch towers), and societies such as The Paisley Society for Protecting the Dead (entry fee 6d and then 1d per quarter).
Read Spooky Isles interview with Geoff Holder here
Bodysnatching was rife in Scotland, to the extent that you can still see many of the physical preventative measures against it in the cemeteries.
Greyfriars in Edinburgh is probably the best for these, but they can be spotted in several small graveyards up and down the country.
And Geoff Holder has documented as many as he can, as well as several tales of snatching.
The names of certain anatomists were notorious with bodysnatching; some would actively encourage their students in practice, leading bands of them to cemeteries late at night.
Robert Liston is one surgeon who gets several mentions in the book.
The stories are a mixture of amusing and tragic. There are several disturbing tales of children being murdered so that their bodies can be sold for a profit; in Paisley, one father murdered his three month old daughter.
At the lighter end of the scale, we have drunk watchmen firing at what they believed to be Resurrectionists, only to discover that it was the minister’s goat, or a pig minding its own business.
Sometimes the watchmen shot each other, or were so drunk that the snatchers were able to outwit them and spirit away a corpse or two.
Scottish Bodysnatchers: A Gazetteer by Geoff Holder is available from The History Press. You can buy it from Amazon here.
