Until the end of the 19th century, due to government and church prohibitions, physicians around the world were in dire need of dead bodies that would serve as material for research and teaching aids. Demand has made the criminal profession of body snatchers profitable. In Europe and the New World, there were numerous grave-diggers who tore up graves and sold the dead to medical institutions. And some of them did not want to wait until a person dies a natural death …
Dead weddings
Crimes involving the abduction and sale of corpses have been known since time immemorial. For example, in ancient China there was a custom of "ghost marriages". Young people (especially those who were engaged in underground coal mining) often died before they could get married, and their relatives wanted to arrange their further posthumous fate. They bought the corpses of unmarried girls and arranged marriage ceremonies during the funeral. Accordingly, there were people who made selling dead brides their profession.
In Europe, the Church forbade doctors to open corpses, believing that on the day of the Last Judgment, a person should be resurrected as he died. So, in 1553 in Geneva, the Spanish scientist Miguel Servetus was burned by the inquisitors, who discovered a small circle of blood circulation - he was accused of experiments with dead bodies and attempts to penetrate "the works of God."
Nevertheless, many doctors tried to circumvent church laws. The Flemish doctor Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), who became the founder of scientific anatomy, was actively involved in the dissection of corpses - and so that no one would guess about it, he hid them in his bed. Vesalius proved that a man, like a woman, has 24 ribs (the church taught that there should be 23 of them, since God created a woman from the 24th).
German scientist Johann Konrad Dippel at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries lived in the Frankenstein castle, where he conducted experiments on the dead, trying to move the soul from one dead body to another. The eerie legends that accompanied his work inspired the writer Mary Shelley to create the novel "Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus", published in the 19th century and became a classic of horror literature.
The prohibition on opening corpses also existed in Russia. In 1820, by decision of the Board of Trustees, all the dissected bodies that were at Kazan University were funerals and buried, and from now on, future doctors were supposed to study anatomy only from drawings.
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Grave in a steel cage
By the beginning of the 19th century, autopsies of executed criminals had become practically legal in Europe - they were transferred to scientific and medical institutions. In England, the Murder Act was even passed in 1752. According to him, exposing the body of the executed to the public could be replaced by dissection. This was done to intimidate criminals - after all, at that time people believed that opening the body after death meant that such a person would no longer appear before the Creator and would not be forgiven by him.
But the corpses of the executed criminals were clearly not enough for the researchers - and this circumstance gave rise to a large number of professional grave diggers who specialized in the supply of the dead. The autopsy of graves became so widespread (according to documents, from only one Bullis Acre cemetery in Dublin, from one and a half to two thousand deceased were kidnapped per year) that the relatives of the dead placed their graves in special steel cages, and reinforced armed guards were posted at the cemeteries. This forced the defilers of ashes to look for other ways of obtaining dead bodies, much more terrible.
In the 1830s, a gang operated in London led by John Bishop. The perpetrators supplied dead bodies for King's College. Doctors suspected something was wrong when the corpse of a young man with a broken head was delivered to them, and they turned to the police. It was found that the gang killed street children and beggars. It was possible to prove four episodes (although John Bishop himself, in his dying speech, spoke of several hundred bodies sold to him), the criminals were hanged, and their corpses were handed over to scientists of the same college. This story inspired Charles Dickens to create a novel about street boys - "The Adventures of Oliver Twist".
Before the advent of Jack the Ripper, Edinburgh residents William Burke and William Hare were considered the bloodiest killers in Great Britain, who in 1827-1828 killed 16 people (three men, 12 women and a child) to sell their bodies. The activities of the criminals began with a random episode. William Hare and his wife were renting out rooms - and one of the tenants died suddenly. According to the English laws of that time, in the case when the deceased has neither money nor relatives, the owner of the house must organize his funeral. Hare told his friend Burke about these difficulties - and he offered to sell the corpse to the anatomical theater of the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Robert Knox, who worked there, paid £ 7 10 shillings for the body (just over £ 730 at current exchange rates).
The money inspired Har and Burke to commit numerous crimes. Together with Hare's wife and Burke's partner, they lured the victims to themselves, drank them, and then strangled them - and the bodies were sold to the same Dr. Knox. The criminals were caught by accident - a married couple living in Hare's rooms discovered a woman's corpse, which the killers had not yet had time to sell. Burke and Hare were arrested, but the latter immediately agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for release from prosecution. Later, he and his wife, as well as Burke's partner, left Scotland. Thus, only William Burke was convicted, who was hanged. His corpse was publicly dissected, and Burke's skeleton and death mask are still kept in the anatomical museum at the University of Edinburgh.
Saved from burial alive
In 1824, a certain John Mac Intyre was buried in England. As it turned out later, he was buried alive. The man came to himself already in a closed coffin and heard clods of earth falling on the lid. He desperately prepared himself to die from suffocation. But literally a few minutes after the burial, the body snatchers dug him up. He woke up on an anatomical table.
In the 1850s, Grandison Harris worked as a janitor at Georgia Medical College. He was a slave and the property of the institution - it was this circumstance that helped the janitor to steal corpses, since a slave could not be held accountable by law. Harris was taught to read by college staff so that he could read newspaper obituaries. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), Grandison became a free man, and his reading skills helped him take the position of a judge in one of the small towns of the state. But the skills gained were not in vain - Judge Harris concluded contracts with medical institutions for the supply of corpses from prison hospitals. He died in 1911 and was buried in the same cemetery from where he had once stolen the bodies. So that no one defiles Harris' grave,relatives put a monument on it without an inscription.
In the 1870s, there was a gang in Chicago led by Jim Kennally. Soon one of the members of the criminal community was sentenced to 10 years. Kennally made a decision: to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln and exchange it for his man, plus 200 thousand dollars. But the bandits themselves did not want to engage in grave digging and hired two workers for this purpose. Those, in turn, felt that they needed help, and turned to another person, who turned out to be an informant for the special services. The criminals were detained in the cemetery when they cut the lock on the front door of the crypt where Lincoln is buried.
400 thousand for Chaplin's body
Even in the late XX - early XXI centuries, from time to time there were attempts to kidnap bodies. In 1977, several fans wished to dig up Elvis Presley's corpse. True, the newspapermen considered that such an action was organized by the singer's father, who dreamed that his son's body would rest in the Graceland family estate, but the authorities did not give permission for this. After attempting to kidnap the rock idol, they reburied where his father wanted.
In 1978, Charlie Chaplin's grave was opened in Switzerland. His widow received a call and demanded a ransom of £ 400,000 for the body. The woman replied calmly:
“Charlie would find that laughable.
A few days later, the police arrested the kidnappers.
In December 2009, the body of former Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, who had died a year earlier, was stolen from the grave. According to the police, the kidnapping was ordered by a gangster serving a life sentence, who wanted to exchange the deceased for freedom. But the public outrage was so strong that the plan did not work. As a result, the body of the politician was thrown into one of the cemeteries in Nicosia, and the family of the deceased was informed about this during an anonymous phone call.
However, can we say with certainty that this was the last case of the abduction of a dead body? …
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century № 17, Margarita Kapskaya