Impolite Society: Exploring the Weird, Taboo & Macabre

Who Were the Resurrectionists?

• Impolite Society • Season 3 • Episode 2

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Creaking coffin lids. A foggy graveyard, empty of all but crooked headstones and a lone figure walking by candlelight. This image is a Halloween staple that induces dread, even today. But the events that inspired these scenes took place over 200 years ago. 

In 2024, body donation is a common practice. But the thought of your dead, naked body being flayed on a table wasn’t as well received in the 1700s. Today we’re talking body snatchers, the corpses that became their trade, and the images that we just can’t shake from our collective consciousness. 

That’s what you're in for today, on Impolite Society. 

Sources:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/body-snatchers/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/human-bodies-medical-research-cadavers

https://daily.jstor.org/public-dissection-gruesome-spectacle/

https://bodyworlds.com/about/history-of-anatomy/

Body snatching | History, Causes & Consequences | Britannica

https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/body-snatching-around-the-world/

John Scott Harrison - Newspapers.com™ 

Got your own thoughts? Text them to Impolite Society!

Text Rachel and Laura or email us at rude@impolitesocietypodcast.com. Visit our website for info about the show and your hosts.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

creaking coffin lids, a foggy graveyard, empty of all but crooked headstones and a lone figure walking by candlelight. This image is a Halloween staple that induces dread even today. But the events that inspired these scenes took place over 200 years ago. In 2024, body donation is commonplace. But the thought of your dead, naked body being flayed on a table was not as well received in the 1700s. Today, we're talking body snatchers, the corpses that became their trade, and the images that we just can't shake from our collective consciousness. That's what you're in for today on Impolite Society. Hello there, my spooky little socialites. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Impolite Society, the podcast that explores the weird, the taboo, and the macabre topics you are not allowed to talk about in Polite Society. I am Laura.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And I am, please leave my dead body alone, Rachel. And

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

impolite society is back. I am dusting off those cheap plastic Halloween store cobwebs of my research skills. And there really is nothing like that scene that I described at the top, that, that Scene that gets my Halloween spirit churning. Time period, right? And it's the graveyards and that ghastly nature of corpses and the smells. And the very taboo idea of digging someone up and maybe stitching them together into a horrible monster with an abnormal brain, ala Frankenstein. It's a classic for a reason, right?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I can picture what you're talking about very clearly in my mind. There's a guy, he's wearing a top hat, maybe hunched over, an overcoat. an ascot, creeping

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It's a very big part of the cultural zeitgeist, and it's just like, why are we so obsessed with the Victorian era, right? Like you said, quintessential Halloween, also quintessential Christmas. We love a Victorian Christmas.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

we do

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And all the ghosts we see are Victorian. We just can't let these people lay, right?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

can't let the Victorians lie, apparently, because

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

where humanity peaked.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

apparently that's, that seems to be what we think when it comes to all the throwbacks, because you're right. The time that we're talking about is the Victorian era. It's an absolute Halloween classic. And Body snatching or resurrectionist that we'll be talking about today. They really had their heyday in the 18th and 19th century. And just for clarification, that's the 17 and 18 hundreds, because no matter how many times I do this research and I talk about centuries, I'm always like, wait, what years is that? Like I have to like coach myself back. All the time.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

like, rationally, I know it's just add one, and that's the decade, right? Because the first one was hundreds, not thousands. Yeah. But still, every time I do this, I have to Google to double check.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yes. A

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

the little, it's the little things that make you feel like an idiot.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Ha ha ha ha. Math. Like you said, we're, we're creatives,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Plus one.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

ha ha ha. Too hard. Please Google. Plus one. There is, there's something about that time period that's fucking spooky. It's, it's image of Jack the Ripper that's creeping around the, what is it? White chapel, you know, in the 1880s, or is it the death portraits at the time, the pictures they took of dead people as they were dead because they didn't have any pictures of them or fucking hair wreaths. I'm sure you know what hair wreaths are.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

They were spooky people. Those Victorians.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yes,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Edwardians, whatever age that was.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

all of those creepy and weird things, they deserve their own episodes. I think though, it is the start of spiritualism, seances, Ouija boards, all that shit in the 1800s that really equates this time period with creepiness, ghoulishness, and Halloween.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And the oppression. Don't forget the oppression. Because NOTHING is scarier than imperialism! Womp

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Not if you're white like us.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

womp.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I'm just saying how it is.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

you're talking to, uh, children of an immigrant. I'm only, like, the fourth generation. And you're from the backwoods.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

German.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, I was stripped of my culture, Laura. My grandfather wanted to learn German and his parents said, no, you speak English. You're an American. So

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I don't really know how to move. I don't

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

nobody's making TikToks about that now, are they?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

cultural repression of German immigrants and what the 19,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

One day there'll be a

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

the 19 what's

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It was the 40s?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

yeah, yeah, I bet it was no, I'm just fucking around

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah. What, uh, white people had culture too. Mwah,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

once upon a

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And a big part of our culture was stealing people out of the ground.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Apparently. because this time period is the absolute heyday, uh, of grave robbing slash body snatching. What was it right? That really spurned on that image, this really epidemic of body snatching that happened. And what it was, it was. Our entry into modern medicine. So anatomy started to get a lot of attention in the Renaissance, a good while before the 1700s, the Renaissance. I think it's

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

1500s. Mmm,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. Like all

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

my Tudor knowledge is

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

you go.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Clutch. The Renaissance.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

helps you spell it. Cause I can never spell it.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

No, no. Anything that's vaguely French.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Artists of this time, they were using the human body as an inspiration for beauty and art. We all know it. Right. You've seen like pictures of the Sistine Chapel. It's just a lot of nudity and muscles, right? Mm hmm. Michelangelo, the statue of David, literally anything by Da Vinci. And those two, my favorite masters, they were really interested in the human body because If you think about it, it would be helpful in creating these super realistic, beautiful works of art. It would be useful to understand what is going on underneath the surface. The skin, you can paint it better. You can sculpt it better. If you understand the underlying structures. So both da Vinci and Michelangelo, they regularly attended dissections that were done by their medical buddies in the 1500s. But it was da Vinci that was truly known for this. He would bring bodies back to his studio for dissection and also for modeling. And I would just like to say, draw my corpse like one of your French girls, Leonardo.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Oh gosh, it's like those dead bodies were those OG little wooden puppet dudes that you buy at the

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

for modeling that I feel that every hipster in college had to make themselves look cool and artsy.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. The ones that have like the lumpy arms and that kind of thing. That's exactly, exactly it.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

why mess around with the little wooden puppet when you can get the real deal? Just some poor executed convict.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Well, this was before that. Okay. So according to some and some textbooks, the 1500s, that was the century of anatomy and doctors. They made a lot of discoveries. And the public, they were actually interested and there were public dissections that people would pay money to attend. Public dissections, crowded ones. I read that in some parts of Italy, people were wearing carnival masks, like, like it was a party. People were selling tickets. Blew my mind. Blew my mind.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I see. When you, I read that, I was like, that makes perfect sense to me. Why? I don't know. It's like something about it is dirty and secret, right? There's a naked body and they're doing something very intimate with it. They're dissecting it. They're splaying it open. It's gory. It's. It's definitely not something that you would want people knowing about you in polite company. So I guess the idea of the masquerade makes it like dark and edgy and underground.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. Definitely taboo. I mean, the thing in and of itself is taboo and then even you being there is taboo. Right.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

The Britsies always like to bump elbows with what's going on on the edge, the fringes. Makes them feel cool.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I, because this was like blowing my mind, I was like, why, why, why, why? Cause that, that's who I am. I always want to know why, but nothing really satisfied me. There were a couple of different theories presented, but the general impression I got were two things. One, people are weird and gross and into the taboo and the things you're not allowed to talk about and executions. Apparently we're not cutting it anymore.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

The Italians were real big on executions and torture.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Two, there was another aspect to it, which was science and God. So the scientific method was something that people were starting to hear about. You read articles about it in magazines and leaps and bounds were being made in medicine Learning about your own body kind of seemed like something normies could be a part of, right? They could kind of understand a little bit of what was going on and There seemed to be another part of this idea that to better understand God and divinity, you needed to understand yourself and the world around you. So that kind of spurned some scientific interest. That is definitely a perspective that I can get behind because that's kind of how I live my life. I don't know how that standed the test of time. I feel like we've kind of like buried that part, but I like it. The onus of that thought

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah. It's very pure in intention, but I think that the more people learn, then they technically deviate a little bit more from religion. Isn't that kind of what we find?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

that

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

to keep the masses stupid. Like they didn't, in England at the same time. Tutor knowledge coming out. They didn't even want the general public reading the Bible, right? Because then they could start getting their own ideas and not just what you told them.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

that's depressing.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, reading the Bible is always depressing. We're going to hell.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah, I mean knowledge is power, right? So if you want to keep people down you don't give them any knowledge But this this is an example of people being like no, I I want to know right they're trying to rise themselves up And they say that people in this time actually knew more about how their body worked than people do now in the 1500s. And I genuinely believe that. I mean, you can go to Instagram and find these fucking fitness influencers that will try to tell you about target fat burn and just literally open it and look at any fitness nonsense person. They will tell you the stupidest shit. Like eating dirt has minerals that you need and detoxing and all this different kind of stuff. People are just making shit up 24 7.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, it's like we haven't really progressed past those Magic rituals that we were doing hundreds of years ago, and you had me at the start of this because I was going to say, um, I think we do know more about the body today than we did then.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Well, you and I do.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Well, I'm not going to say the experts do right because I don't even

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Oh, the experts definitely do. I'm talking about lay people.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I mean, I don't, I don't know if I necessarily know more about the body than people back then, but yeah, because I was like, they don't have any concepts of genetics or microbiology. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe, yeah, the layperson, there's just, we're drowning in the torrential downpour of info. So, it's easy for things to get mixed up and we have that, uh, magic and rituals, the religion of health and wellness that we all subscribe to.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. I mean, it gets, it gets sticky, right? Because now we have, there's so much information. You could kind of shake it all up, right? And confuse people. It's easy to do, or it's easy for yourself to get confused,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

throw enough buzzwords in there and you're like, oh, that sounds legit. Humors. My humors are out of whack.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see it. Come back on this

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I need more mucus or less mucus, I don't

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

more bile too much.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

let's start it. Maybe that's how we become famous, become internet famous. And then once we have a cult of people balancing their humors, we'll say, by the way, listen to our podcast, Impolite Society. That's the best way to balance your humors.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

of us has to be super fucking fit, like, you know, so many visible abs. Uh, I

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

we'll just let AI do that for us.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Good call. Good call. See, this is why you're the brains of the organization. So, at the time, they had these books that were really popular, these anatomy books, that were called flap anatomies. And basically, what this is, is the most macabre, lift the flap children's book ever created. So, it's exactly what You imagined it would be multiple layers of paper, so you can lift it up and reveal these different layers of the body, just like you have for your kids, but basically for everyday reading coffee table books. So first the clothes of your pregnant woman, then the skin of the pregnant woman, then the muscles, then down to the organs, all the way down to the, skeleton. Every day people got to dissect bodies all in their own time.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I mean, that's kind of cute that they had the clothes on at first, too. So

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

It's like paper dolls,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

it's like that Shakira song, underneath your clothes. There's an endless story, but it also kind of reminds me of this video. I feel like it was years ago It was going around this woman made like a play doh c section Activity for her child and like had her child cut a fake baby out of like a C section Play Doh belly.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

That's some macabre shit.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

She was like a doctor. She's

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah, I mean like okay, that makes sense. Yeah, if she were a doctor and she was like trying to train her kid

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

yeah, no, it was, it was medically

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

older kid.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I don't know how old it was. It was a long time ago. But it was like medically correct. You had to like, Dip the skin and then separate the fat and then layers of muscles. I don't, she was like, this is what I went through to get you into this world. So like, maybe think about that before you start mouthing off, kid.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I love it. So for all these Public dissections and the, the models, right? So they had to learn from somewhere. Where do the models for these flap anatomies come from in the 15 and 16 hundreds? Well, it was people that nobody wanted, nobody cared for. Homeless people. Back in the day, That don't have any family, don't have anyone around to care for them. And it was under the cover of darkness because it was illegal to dissect anybody ever the belief in the literal resurrection after death. You know, once Jesus came back, you know, the resurrection was literal and that belief was high. And despite that godly spin that people were trying to put on it. Like I said before, about trying to understand God, understand the world, the church, as you mentioned, we're like, nah, nah, you don't need this knowledge. You don't need to know that you're not desecrating bodies on our watch.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

um, I probably wasn't paying enough attention in Sunday school. They thought that they were bodies are going to come out of the earth again and be reanimated.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

absolutely. Like that was, I don't, I don't know what the status of cremation is now in the Catholic church, but I know for a long time that it was. Don't do it because of a literal resurrection, a belief in

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Do they know that bodies decay? Do they need to listen

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

No, they did. But, you know, God magic, right? It's gonna come. It's come together whole. But for some reason God magic can't put together ash or can't put

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, They did Mm hmm.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

about it a hundred percent, but

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

The idea that God is the only thing that should be able to change things, that's going to come up in our next episode, too. I was starting my research today, so it just is a funny little connection there, how they're all connected. These three are pretty, like, in a, in a row connected. I love that.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

of did it on accident, but

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Go us! We're professionals now. Also, I learned something new about the religion I was raised in. I didn't know my body was coming back

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

for what is it like paradise? That's supposed to be like the good part or is there a war? I don't know. I don't, I.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

it's hard to say it's been a long time.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

if I'm 80 or 90 when I die, like I don't need that body back, man. Don't do that to

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Bring back the younger version.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Or just like, let a girl sleep, man.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Or just exist all floaty, right? Wouldn't that be better? Just

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Make me like a horse, like a super buff horse

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

girl comes back.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Always comes back to that. Yes.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

All right. But eventually the government got with the times and they recognized that there was a need for these bodies for dissections. More doctors were needed and coming out more science was coming out. There was more. Need to actually have hands on experience. If you're going to be touching people and operating on people, you need to fucking learn how to do it. So Britain passed the Murder Act of 1752. Many other Western countries quickly followed suit with their very own, very similar laws. And the Murder Act said that murderers bodies were not to be buried. Oh, no. Oh, no, let's do some crime prevention here. And we're going to tell people that they will be strung up and displayed if they're executed for murder, or they're going to be given to medical professionals to have their public and private dissections that people are buying fucking tickets to. So doctors got some bodies and some people were afraid of it. Win win.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

You know, I'm curious to see how that actually impacted the numbers, because my body is Personal suspicion is that maybe it would have gone up because all of a sudden, Joe needs a cadaver who's studying medicine at the Royal Academy is a going around accusing everybody of being a murderer, man. He's like, I think I kill a man yesterday. I saw that one kill two people this morning. Like get them on my table now.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Get them on the slab. I mean, I don't know if this actually deterred murder. They say about like, crime deterrent. I don't know that that actually did that. Probably not, but maybe because eventually executions were down pretty much everywhere. And that's probably. In my opinion, because humans actually got a little bit more humanity in them. When the industrial revolution comes along, not everyone is fighting to live every single minute of every single day gives you a little bit more grace, a little bit more ability to rationalize,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

There's a little bit stability, more stability,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

exactly.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

they're just too tired. They're working 75, 80 hour weeks, 100 hour weeks.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

But better than struggling to survive every single second, right? Like when you have like structure, right? You know what to expect. It gives you a little bit more time and not in my Opinion a little bit more grace, but but that's that's a digression here Executions were down across the globe But medical school enrollment was up because the medical field absolutely exploded in the late 1700s and the early 1800s, doctors, surgeons, they are needing bodies to study and practice on. There is not refrigeration or embalming, at least not on a, like a mass scale to keep bodies fresh. They need a constant supply. This whole thing is an economics lesson. We have demand. We have scarcity, time constraints, regulations, legislations, and thus we come to our necessary evil of body snatching.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

this body was more snatched. That's the

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

that's good.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Wordplay!

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

And the best part is this practice was legal or mostly legal, uh, maybe with just a fine because bodies are not considered property, at least not if they had been buried. I think they kind of saw them as abandoned goods because it was 100 percent legal to exhume and sell bodies. The public hated it, but there were not Laws on the books about abuse of a corpse or whatever they would charge you with today. Stealing items from graves was illegal. So jewels, even clothes, shoes, all that different kind of stuff. That's grave robbing. And that is illegal. And in some places, the actual dissection of the body was illegal, but taking them bodies and selling them was illegal. Was a loophole.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, because you know what those police officers and lawyers needed? Good doctors to fix them and keep them alive, and waking up every morning to collect their paychecks. We

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

So we have a bunch of lucrative in demand goods that are lying underground, getting less and less valuable by the minute. The only real constraint to this trade is a societal view of quote decency. I mean, come on, son, we're getting on our body digging clothes.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

work around that.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. And from the doctor's point of view. What is one desecrated corpse when you can save so many lives with the knowledge that you've gained, right? Thus, the resurrectionists were born and business was booming. And I've always liked that term, as opposed to body snatcher, right? It just sounds like a necromancer or

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, I definitely, when you told me we were doing Resurrectionist, I thought it was going to be, like you said, some kind of like reviving spirits or something.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Nope, they are just body snatchers. These less than scrupulous souls that quote, resurrected the dead, uh, from their graves only to be relocated to the anatomy table after a convenient back alley exchange of money. It

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

where like, theft could be alleviation of, Consumerism or murder can be heaven arrival coordinator, you know, like I hear heaven's great. Let me get you there. Those are kind of the

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

does. It doesn't put a different shine on it. Doesn't it?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Resurrectionist. Yeah. Sounds like it would be religious, but no, no, just people who are poor. And so these resurrectionists, they, they worked in groups. It's The minimal in pairs, but usually even more because they targeted the freshly dead, for several reasons. Freshly dug graves, super easy, easy to dig up, right? The, the

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It's loose. Hit

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

bodies were more valuable to the doctors and the students, that's had greater earning potential for our sellers. So they would send people into graveyards during funerals to espouse, to scope out who? Who was being buried where and they usually sent women into those? cemeteries to scope it out and blend in and Relay all the details back to the diggers.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

But man, you want to talk about snatched bodies. Digging's hard work. I mean, even if it's a fresh grave and it's loose gravel, I bet those dudes were ripped.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Oh, they absolutely were because they're also living on low calorie. Right? So they're like all Ryan Reynolds looking as shit just because

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

yeah,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

doing hard

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

lean muscle.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

lean muscle. Exactly. Hmm. Hmm. This took a weird turn. Okay. The, the public, as I mentioned, they despised this practice. they were absolutely terrified of it, did not take kindly to it. Do you know why cemeteries have fences and gates all around them?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

well, I sure think I do now.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yep, and if you notice, most newer cemeteries, they don't have gates. There's a reason for that. This is definitely something that occurred as a part of the time. And I think I've heard other things about like the gates, like, keep the

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

the goths

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

between the living and the dead and like ghosts and like all this kind of stuff, like some sort of like mystical reason. But like, this is the legitimate reason why they have

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I thought they didn't want goth kids drinking on the graveyards or the gravestones. Haha,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Also fair, but now they don't like modern cemeteries that have been built in the last, you know, 50 years, they don't have them. And I think it's again that the phasing out of tradition,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

yeah, well, people aren't. They're not trying to snatch anymore.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Nope. Nope. And not just these gates were added to deter our snatchers. there were also burial vaults that people are still using. and buying for some reason today, a funeral director will tell you that it will help not guarantee, they will get sued if they say that, as I mentioned in my previous episode, they, they help keep out the elements to keep your loved ones safe and snug, but they originally came about as a method for discouraging our body snatchers. It is way easier to chop your way through a wooden coffin lid with an axe than it is to punch through a layer of steel or concrete.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And you know what? I saw one of these cruising down King's Highway one day on my way to work. And I added a picture of it to

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I see it.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

the notes.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

That's definitely a burial vault. I wonder

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I mean, I don't know what else it would be.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

No, no, you're, uh, 100

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

The company?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Uh, no, I do not.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Nah,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

looks like just a hauling company, but

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

somebody got suckered into buying one.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

oh, a lot of people do

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

That's wild.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Other products that were being made. There was also the Mortsafe, which is this medieval torture looking device that is basically a coffin cage. And, and these were especially popular in Scotland because Edinburgh had the most prestigious medical school in the world at this time, the University of Edinburgh Medical School, very original name, Scotland. They were popping bodies left and right and near the medical schools, cemeteries would rent out these mort safes to the newly dead family members to protect those graves until they would be too rotted to be of use anymore. So then they would take it, they would use it for that grave. And then after a few weeks, okay, it's available. Inventory is now, uh, Unvaluable, we'll take that off and move it off to another grave.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

So it sat on top of the graves. It, I, doesn't look like it would be that hard to just take out. Of the ground and then just dig around it.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

They're bolted. The picture that I included, I think these are like, modern pictures, where they have like been

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Oh, that's what it looked like from the surface. I get you. I thought that was the whole apparatus.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

no, no. Like it's goes under and so it wraps around the

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Then how did they get it out?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I think they literally, I don't think that they were buried at all. And then they would basically, when the time period was up, once they were rotted enough, they would unlock the whole thing, take the coffin out, then bury it, then move it,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I feel like you could just do that inside somewhere, right? Like in a, in a closet or a

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

but nobody wants a rotting corpse in their closet!

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Well, I, I meant like in the cemetery, I feel like they would have to have a space for their shovels or something. If you're keeping them, above ground.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

you need a several of them. You need space.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

a bigger closet. I guess you can break into a closet pretty easy. The flaws are becoming evident in my plan.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

And there were a lot of other apparatus. There were iron coffins. I feel like I've seen them in some sort of movie or something, but they're, they're not made of wood. You know, they're iron and you like. The sides, close them up. that was another deterrent or, uh, large heavy slabs of stone concrete that were placed over the grave top to again, just make it really fucking hard to move and dig up. And I think it's one of these situations. It doesn't necessarily have to be impenetrable. You just had to make your dead loved one more trouble than they were worth versus the guy that was buried next to him. It's a crime of opportunity. And speaking of the poor, Resurrectionists, they loved the potter's field. They loved mass graves for the poor. Easy pickings when no one can afford to bury you in your own grave, let alone afford any of these fancy contraptions.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Man, ain't no rest for the wicked. Even in death, bodies are commodified. How can you produce value?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. I mean, throwback to human bone market, right? Like all this kind of shit. It's, it's a trade for a reason. And the rich could not only afford all these fancy contraptions, they could also afford watchmen or a cemetery that employed a watchman for the graves. So that. That old timey image, you know, of the graveyard night watchman with the lantern. Uh, yep. That is absolutely not only the body snatcher that's going through the grave, but the watchman that is also from grave robbers and body snatchers. And some of these people, the families to save money, they would keep watch themselves as kind of a, a visual self service

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

like the simplest option.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah, but I mean, this is a time, When. Money is scarce. You have to work really hard for your money. There might be an expectation of a routine and how things are supposed to go, but you're really working really hard. So every hour that you take that you're not working or you're not sleeping is essentially food being taken out of your mouth and. That's a really hard choice to make.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

And then I guess what was the hang up? Again, it's just that they didn't want their loved one to be. This is more like a yuck factor. It's not the religion playing as

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I think it's a little bit of both. Um, it's, it's the yuck factor. There's also the religion because Catholics are still telling people and probably, I don't know about Church of England. A lot of the history I'm focusing on here is in the England and the UK. I don't know what the Church of England had to say about it, but it's, it's a little bit of both. So it's like old timey taboos as well as the, the general yuck factor. Another low tech option available was the coffin collar. So, picture a horseshoe shaped iron band, that would go on around your neck, and the ends of the horseshoe were bolted into the floor of the coffin. You kind of picture what I'm thinking?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

So, I saw

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

just bolting you down by your neck.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah, uh huh. Yeah, and I saw it and I first thought I mean you could cut off the head, right? You can get around that real easy But I I was guessing that anatomist probably paid bottom dollar for headless corpses So maybe it really did discourage resurrection as who

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Ooh, that actually gives me an idea though, right? If I was alive at the time, I'd have Rachel's discount an internment prevention, right? And that is just where we pre chop up your loved one. So there's nothing left for the resurrectionists to dissect, right? Like you said, they don't want damaged goods. Right.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

But then I think you're violating the religious taboos though. So they don't want that either. Your business model is crumbling right before our

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

but our slogan is killer, Rachel's Discount Uninternment Prevention Services, let your loved one rest. In pieces,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

like it. I like it. So this was a very real concern to people and And going with my economics lesson, the market economy really stepped up to meet the demands of their customers. They had new innovations for grave safety, offering new products and services. But things went a step further because why wait for a dead body? That's unattended. You can just make one murder

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

the obvious conclusion to this and many of life's other problems.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

to a lot of people, apparently. And this probably happened more than history can properly account for. And there are several cases and stories of it, but the most famous case was the 1828 murderers, William Burke and William Hare that were located in. You guessed it, Scotland, the hotbed of, uh, body snatching. They killed 16 of their lodgers, which was a lot to me. Uh,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

a high number.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

right. I was like, you know, one, two, three, nope, 16, most likely by smothering them best as they can tell with the medical knowledge back then. And they sold them to a local anatomist for about. 10 pounds each, which, according to some online calculator I found relative to the time, was about a thousand pounds in today's dollars or about 1, 300 U. S. So 16, 000,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Wow. Yeah.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

yeah, I mean, I don't see murdering people. I'm not saying I can justify murdering people,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

if you're really fucking

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

it's worth the risk. I guess. Yeah. Maybe. They probably lived really high on the hog there

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

They did. Yeah.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It's a good business model too with the smothering, right? You're not doing damage, you're keeping the physical specimen together. Because I imagine those carcasses you haul from the pauper's graves were experiencing some trauma in their lives. Somebody who's all ground up by the big mechanisms that they're working on. That's not going to be super helpful.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. Or just like, you know, general disease. So their whole like livers are trashed or kidneys are trashed or

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Missing body parts, legs, fingers.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

And so this pair, uh, the Burke and Hare murders, William Hare. decided to go state's evidence on his partner and he was spared execution eventually released, but William Burke, he hung, hung in a public execution where by many accounts, there were more than 20, 000 people in attendance. Like I said, people really fucking hated this practice. So like, Anybody who, yeah, people love loved public executions anyway. Right. And this is like the person you can kind of like put all your ire on. Very popular. And there were also some very macabre souvenirs. created from his execution as well, supposedly, I couldn't find anything a hundred percent certain on this, but they say that there's a book that was made from his skin and a letter penned in his blood.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

They really need some more sunshine on that island. They gotta get that vitamin D, man.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

And Ironically, true to the regulations of the time and the place, Burke was a murderer, and he was dissected after his execution. And his skeleton is still on display in the Edinburgh Medical School.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

You live by the dissection, you die by the dissection. Man, that's the circle of life. What goes around, comes around.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

It does seem kind of like a cosmic retribution, right?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Poetic justice.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Uh huh. And at this point, And everyone could kind of agree that things had gotten out of hand. So there was a new piece of legislation that came into the mix. The anatomy act of 1832, again, originally passed by the UK, Western countries and the United States and all of their states followed not too long after. And this act basically said. I'm paraphrasing. Okay, doctors, you can have more bodies than executed murderers because clearly you feel you need them since we are sending out ghouls to steal bodies. You're panicking the entire public and they're fucking murdering people. Okay. All right. Concession. You can also have unclaimed bodies. So this meant that anybody that was left unclaimed for 48 hours after death in a hospital. A prison or a workhouse, so like poor people jail, basically, uh, was to be sold for medical study to benefit the state 48 hours in a time where cars and telephones have not been invented.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

yeah. It takes 48 hours to walk the d like, the distance of London, right?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

So as you can imagine, this was not popular with the less wealthy members of society. It just goes to show, right? The working man gets the shaft forever and always, but the act also made body snatching illegal. So yay, I guess.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Man, we are just wringing out every ounce of production from these poor people, even after they're dead. Provide, provide, do more, do more. Who knew this episode about Resurrectionist was going to become so ETHERIC! Do you hear the people singing the song of angry men? Sorry, I shouldn't have tried singing tonight.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

that a French revolution song?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

It's from Les Mis,

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Oh, well then yes. I mean, maybe. Okay, got it. I didn't know that, but I

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

You don't know Les Mis?

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

on it. I don't. All right, so lame is aside Body snatching it did continue for a while, but eventually this market Rided itself in the UK at least so supply went up Based on these new laws, the embalming of dead bodies became pretty commonplace by the 1850s, which means whatever bodies they did get for dissection, they could stay fresher for a lot longer, which means a lot more people could work on them and learn from them. So the demand for those bodies went down and ta da! The, the free market wins. That's our economic lesson.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Economics by dead bodies. And this is just what was going on in, like, one little island, right? When you take a global perspective, there's still, still going on today. And we talked about that. It's happening in India. People are being dragged off their funeral pyres for their skeletons. And you can learn more about that in our human bone market episode from last spooky season. 10.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

But it's all connected, And, based on not just being in the UK, right? This little grouping of islands, there is a story I want to share because I had never heard it. It blew my goddamn mind.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

1878, John Scott Harrison, son of U. S. President William Henry Harrison and the father of U. S. President Benjamin Harrison. He was the only man in U. S. history to have been both son and father of U. S. presidents. Also kind of a weird middle place, You're like, I come from greatness. I made greatness. Am I

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I was like, I just wanted to sit this one out. Skips a generation.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah, he was, um, resurrected body snatched. I don't, I don't know what you would even say, I guess just straight up stolen, His, his body was stolen from his grave as far as they can tell on the day that he was buried. They found him in an Ohio medical school, which was several states away, hanging from the fucking ceiling while they drained the blood out of him. What, what the fuck, So, so maybe the rich, it was, I was like, what? As I read this, just me, you know, as a 24 year old. 20th, 21st century person is, I

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

that one. What

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

was shocked by that. Can you imagine in 1878 reading that in your local paper? So maybe the rich aren't so protected after all, we're all equal in death in some ways. But his case was what led Ohio to pass its own version of the Anatomy Act in 1881. Ha

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

All I can say is, uh, that never would have happened if you were the president. You know, maybe you should have thought about that, doing something more with your life. You know, we, Samarica, come on. We love political family dynasties here. That's why we rebelled from royalty.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

ha! Question mark.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Kennedy, 2024. Anyway,

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Oh Jesus. I didn't even, I forgot about him because I don't think he's a serious person.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

So, uh, That's it. That's the story of how body snatching became this cultural touch point that everyone knows, but doesn't know that they know. It's the topic that inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, an absolute, Halloween classic, something that happened very briefly in terms of timeframe really left its mark on society because that image, foggy graveyard, the top hat, dragging a heavy man shaped bag, lantern on his arm, nothing interesting. More classically Halloween. I looked up chains because I was like maybe did they change the coffins and do the thing apparently the chains and ghosts Predate this I looked it up

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah. Marley and Marley. Ooh.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it's tied in there somewhere Somebody wrapped chains around a coffin to protect them from

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Or at least to keep them from coming back. Right? Because

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

The seances and the Ouija

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

the spookiest of seasons And that's it for this episode. We hope you are enjoying our spooky episodes for spooky season, but really this is just kind of what we talk about normally, right? Death, uh, to the season, but make sure to subscribe, share and rate, review, do all that fun stuff with these episodes. And more importantly, Send it to somebody you think wants to know about grave robbers because that's how we connect and grow is when You weirdos share our us weirdos with your weirdos

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Weirdos

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I don't know if I could say weirdos. I feel like that's political now

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Is it? Is that a thing?

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Yeah, it's like they're trying to call Trump a weirdo. So I don't want

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

You can't take weirdos! Weirdos is our word! You can't let it go! We're weirdos! Don't co

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Maybe maybe we need a new word man, but I guess that thank you for joining us and

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Thank you for joining us.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

You rock! Stay spooky this season! And always remember, never forget to stay curious and keep marching to the beat of your own drum.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

I finally got the tune like after what

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

Bump bump. Yeah. Bump bump. Oh wait, this means we've been back a year? I don't remember how many times we've left and come back.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Too many.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

This might be the longest stretch. Well, I don't think it is. I think we did. It's definitely the best content I think I think we're, I think we're getting the hang of it.

laura_2_09-20-2024_213136:

Boom, boom.

squadcaster-06gi_2_09-20-2024_213135:

I'm going to murder this cat. Okay. Rude. Get out of here. A little fucker hissed at me.