Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre

Tales of a Body Snatcher: Resurrectionists of the 19th Century

April 11, 2022 Matthew & Marissa Season 1 Episode 35
Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre
Tales of a Body Snatcher: Resurrectionists of the 19th Century
Show Notes Transcript

You may have heard of bodysnatchers Burke and Hare, but they were far from the only ones who engaged in selling dead bodies for coin. We talk about them but also the Ghoul of Richmond, Ben Crouch, resurrectionists in the United Kingdom, and more. Join us as we add this entry into our Macabrepedia.

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Marissa:

Macabrepedia makes light of dark subject matter and may not be suitable for all audiences listener discretion is advised.

Matthew:

In the 18th and 19th centuries, many medical professionals would have completed their medical schooling without so much as seeing an ill patient or having any hands on experience before being expected to take on the role of a surgeon. In the 1840s. A student could enter medical school in the fall and graduate by the following spring. With nearly all of their education coming in the form of for two hour lectures five days a week, some lucky students would be able to crowd into dirty candlelit operating theaters to watch instructors perform surgical procedures. This being a time without reliable anesthesia and antiseptics. The surgeon often performed with an emphasis on speed over anything else. Occasionally, future anatomists would be treated to working with the corpse of a recently executed criminal. Due to some legal restrictions and poor preservation techniques. cadavers were hard to come by well, they were hard to come by that as if you were worried about such things as laws. Join us as we add another entry into this our Macabrepedia.

Marissa:

Hello, and welcome to Macabrepedia a marriage of true crime in the truly bizarre we are your hosts as always, Marissa and Matthew and Matthew, what did you spend this week coming in expert on

Matthew:

more than a week? Really? I will the hardly an expert but this this episode had kind of changed quite a little bit in the in from what my initial studies were going to be upon. And it ended up changing to being on body snatching and Resurrection lists.

Marissa:

Oh, that happens. Sounds interesting though.

Matthew:

Body snatching? Oh, yeah. Yeah, well,

Marissa:

no, I mean, often when you start researching something, and it just kind of evolved.

Matthew:

There's just there's so many good stories that I was stumbling upon. That I was just like, oh, that's a good one, too, is a good one too. And there's just like a lot of little anecdotes and just it was it was so cool that were originally the body snatching portion of this was going to be just a lead in to other aspects of medical history in a way. But then it just kind of there was just so many so many interesting little, little things defined. And what Harold Berg hair and Burke hair and the the the Scottish murderers. They might make an appearance. They are the most popular, but they're not bodysnatchers, They're murderers. Okay, that's even worse. It is but it's different. And maybe the way that I structured this that'll come up naturally and organically through the parts that I have scripted. Oh, okay. Well, maybe just you know.

Marissa:

Let me talk. Okay, just let me just interject a little bit. This is

Matthew:

your whatever show. Go ahead. herrenberg. Tell us all about No, go ahead. I mean, it's as good a place to start as any really herrenberg our resurrection lists. Okay. Now, let's, let's clarify some terminology here. You've got a body snatcher. Or sometimes referred to as a grave robber. grave robber, versus we're resurrection earnest or body snatcher is a grave robber robs the grave of valuables. A body snatcher or a resurrection, earnest leaves all of the stuff in the grave and takes just the body because certain laws would say that a person's body is not a piece of property. Easy to agree, right? loophole philosophically, right? You can't steal a body because it's it's not property. But if it has something on it some type of material, like a death shroud or some kind of you know, you know, whatever you do, to put into the coffin, if you take any of that stuff, now you're stealing Wow. So that is a little bit of a loophole. So that's the difference between like when I say I don't really use the word grave robber and if I do it's it you assume that they're leaving the valuables or leaving not only the valuables like anything that can be like you stole this guy's so such and such right just to me Just the meat guy just just you're just snatching some meats. So that's kind of the difference there are resurrection. Just as kind of a catch all they were called resurrection nests, ghouls resurrect men, Body Snatchers. These are people who would take bodies out of graves, and then sell them to the medical field for dissection. And the reason that they would do this is obviously if you're going to be a surgeon, or you're going to get into the medical field at all, having a, you know, a little hands on time with a with a with a body with a cadaver is generally beneficial. Yeah. So the, but there's also obviously a lot of taboos that come come around with having in transporting bodies. Oh, yeah, for sure. So let's start with So kind of going on this. Burke and Hare. Both first name's William, William Burke and Hare they were in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1820s were when they're active, and they're there's like 18 murders that are contributed that are attributed to them. They may have done some, some some body snatching from graves, but they kind of realized that they could kind of get a little bit, they could make this a little easier if they were to just stick the bodies out that stuff. So they had either they had like lodges that would stay with them, or they would they had kind of like people that they they knew were in some questionable areas and stuff like that, that they would get super drunk or whatever, and then suffocate them. So it doesn't have like, obvious signs of foul. Yes.

Marissa:

And they can still use the body. They don't have.

Matthew:

Yeah, it's hard to say like this person was murdered. Yeah. Which was the case in some cases where they were like, This is a clearly freshly murdered person. But so what leads people to start stealing bodies for science? Right? That's the first question that we should really kind of tackle. The, this all kind of started in the 17, the act of 1752. Henry the eighth? Also, for the most part, we're kind of concentrating. And are you looking at me kind of funny? I'm pretty sure I was Henry the Eighth 1758 rang the bell. I'm

Marissa:

trying to think of what I'm thinking, Oh, my God.

Matthew:

So the, the timeframe with with all of this and kind of concentrating mostly on the United Kingdom and the United States between the A, the eras of like, eight, the 1800s, right? Because there's other places that are like in France, they didn't follow all the same laws, we'll kind of weave that in a little while later. So 1752 This is under a law created by Henry the eighth. There was something called the murder act of 1752. This allowed for barbers and surgeons, because they're practically the same thing in 1752. And by barber Yes, we actually mean barber like cut your hair, trim, trim your beard barbers. Basically, they were the equivalent of a surgeon because they're like, Hey, you're both both hands and have blades. So you're practically the same thing. They could legally obtain four bodies per year.

Marissa:

Why could Why would barbers need for the same thing? So they literally were one hand the next day, they would

Unknown:

warn a patient Oh my god. Okay.

Matthew:

Yeah, um, I mean, it's pretty man,

Unknown:

it was just like, they are similar. There, there

Matthew:

are some slight differences as to like the how much certifications and whatnot you would have through medical training, whatever, but for the most part, they kind of fell into the same kind of the same same company. Okay. I did not know that. The well it kind of happens also with like dentists, dentists and barbers where you could go to a dentist for a number of different things as a sidetrack anyways, but these four bodies were only to be from people executed for murder specifically. Okay, so they had to be murderers that then would be transported to a barber or a surgeon.

Marissa:

Well, we've seen that Yeah, I mean, some of our our our culprits and various Macabrepedia episodes have had been given to science for that.

Matthew:

Yeah. Well, that was also an again we're kind of getting a little bit ahead of the head of the wagon here. But the there are, that was one of the types of punishment you could have was to be like and you once hanged from the neck till dead. You will then have your body given the science and people were like, super scared of that. Reason being is because As there were accounts of people who are pronounced dead, only to be buried. And this, so there's a story. This guy, he has a fever goes into kind of like a coma. He's been having this fever for a long time. He's cognizant of what's happening around him. But he can't he's basically he can't communicate with anybody. He can't move. So PVS so people they say that he's dead. They bury him. His body gets snatched by by a grave robber by a by a resurrection just gets pulled up sold to a doctor. The guy wakes up when Doctor makes the incision into his into his abdomen. Wow, that's an intense

Marissa:

trip right there. Yeah. And he thought and then like he's verified, like, like, they believe it's true.

Matthew:

Yeah. But um, yeah, yeah. So I mean, it is I don't have the documentation of it as just an anecdote that I wasn't going to actually include in this. But it is something that I'm aware of, but it's but so I don't know, for 100%. But that had happened enough times that there was like a real fear of this. So when people were sentenced to be hanged, and they were going to be given to science, they would have people and this probably was not just for just being a fear of the waking up on the table. But people would, they would have like their friends and family run to the gallows like charge the gallows to grab their legs and weighed them down heavier to make sure that their neck snapped, make sure that they were dead beforehand. It also kind of falls into that like, same fear of like being buried alive kind of thing is like, not quite dead, but pronounced dead. It. Sometimes your body also gets snatched, there's Yeah, some some stuff in there.

Marissa:

Or like those stories where people will be given some anesthesia, but it's not correct. So they'll like be awake during surgery surgery,

Matthew:

remember, Sophia. So in the early 1800s, the demand for human cadavers begins to greatly exceed the availability of recently executed bodies. Also, there's pretty loose licensing around anatomists and lecturers and what it takes to be a doctor like if you go back to our other some of our other episodes like orange Wolf and stuff, the doctors of the time, they weren't like full time doctors, because you like the only place you could go was you had to go to Boston Medical, and that was too far away. So you could go to like a lecture hall where other people who were doctors who went to medical school could teach you their trade. But again, this is, you know, it's not like, it's not quite the same as like being a doctor as it is nowadays. So they would, the only thing they could do was try to claim these bodies and however they could. Now again, I said I specifically separated United Kingdom in the US, because places like France, for sure. And I think like Germany, which Germany. Also still parts of Germany still have this what I'm about to say here, as far as part of how they utilize the ability to get bodies for the process of Plastination, which was what this episode was initially going to be on, and then it went rabbit hole. Yeah, and then we'll save that for another episode. But in France and other parts of Europe, the law is extended to include any unclaimed body. So those were in poor houses, workhouses, asylums, prisons, and even foundlings. foundlings are children that are abandoned, like, okay, they're neglected on the street and are found dead or whatever. Just like street urchins. Yeah. Yeah, you find a dead child on the street and no one's glading claim to it, you can snag it. That goes for a bed. Yeah, well, it's not just Well, yeah, for all of that statement can be attributed to all the workhouses and everything. If you if you die, and nobody comes to claim your body like immediately, then they then a doctor can buy it off of the person. So that that's where that's where like the separation from France and everything else comes into because it was a lot more readily available, because there's no shortage of poor houses and unclaimed bodies and people found on the streets and stuff, all of those can get lumped into plus executions and all that on top of that. So there's not really as big of a profit for grave robbery. In those societies. In the United Kingdom and America, well, it would be decades before similar extensions would be made, so that that's where our entry is supposed to primarily take place. These are some of the many stories that can be uncovered in the 19th century body snatchers and wreck wreck resurrection men, also known as ghouls to also side notice to make a movie reference to this one. And there's a Tales from the Crypt called ghouls where there's these body snatching cannibals monsters that live underneath the graveyard so when you lower the body and they dig out from the bottom and drop it out,

Marissa:

I didn't see that one. Yeah. But

Matthew:

anyways, so there is a big portion of what happened like the, as I said, in Europe and other parts of Europe, the there wasn't a lot of money to be made in the resurrection, just live livelihood or whatever to the occupation of grave robbing, or body snatching. But there was a, there were in London, and in America, there were gangs of bodysnatchers that had formed around us because it was quite lucrative to be able to do this, if you could do it well, because so a lot of the bodies would be bought for about somewhere between like seven, seven to nine pounds, which a lot of money then with with inflation, it basically comes out to somewhere between like seven to $1,000 700, to 1700. To$1,000. US Yeah. So the, yeah, so there was money to be had there, if you could get a lot of it, that, you know, a lot of bodies, you could really do this well, because all these kind of I kind of got sidetracked, I apologize, but the you didn't need a lot of you could pop up these little colleges of medicine, pretty much wherever you just willy nilly wherever. So the in order to so there was it only increased the amount of bodies that were needed to do this. Particularly because in London, there was also a requirement that was later passed, where you had to have at least a certain number of dissections in order to get a certificate that actually states that you were a medical doctor

Marissa:

truly is not a bad idea. Because you know, you should know the human body fairly well. Oh,

Matthew:

yeah. You think? Yeah, I feel like, you know, that should take a couple of years.

Marissa:

It should, it really should.

Matthew:

But so, so this made it it was called like, because there was another there was like a college that came up in the London area that practice the French methods of training, which was to have dissections. So that made it there was like a standard practice for that. So it just like I said, it just increases and increases increases the demand on these bodies. So these games form. And there was a diary called the diary of Diary of a resurrection list.

Marissa:

Oh, this is the one that you were talking about when you were doing this research. Right. So yeah,

Matthew:

and this is made by it was written by a grave robber. You know what I mean, when I say great robber, who named James Blake Bailey, and he was part of the crouch gang, which was led by Ben crouch, he has a diary. Already know where you're gonna go with?

Marissa:

No, no, I just, I didn't realize, nevermind, I just like picturing them just crashing through London.

Matthew:

That's Assassin's Creed. I was just playing

Marissa:

Assassin's Creed.

Matthew:

So the this diary is like daily diary entries of the people that have been what they do in this gang. So it's like we met here we went on a watch, we did this and it's all like shorthand and stuff. But and but uh, he has like these, like, he was the person who was like, keeping the books effectively. So all of the bodies that they sold, they had like, they had large, small and fetus. So if it was a large it was an adult, MRF adult, M adult, F, or it's a small m small f. So that's, and then male or female, and then there was fetus, and which means a baby, right? So there was a lot of a lot of these things. And like I was blown away by how, like, they were getting these bodies daily. And they were this is this replace between the the diary that that has been recovered is 1811 1812. And they are pulling multiple bodies per day. And a lot of the graveyards that are doing this in our like, foreigners, or poppers, or you know, just the poor people or, and sometimes they would stumble upon these mass graves. So in some of these, like we found 12 Well, yeah, and, you know, and so they're finding all these bodies, and there's and they have the doctors, they're selling them to the prices that they're selling them to. So that's where I'm pulling some of these numbers for words, on average, about five to seven pounds per and it's pretty, it's pretty intense.

Marissa:

Oh enterprise. Yeah. And it really has.

Matthew:

It has some incredible details that illustrate the organization and the volume that these gangs moved in. And the crouch gang was not the only gang that's happened that's doing this in London at the time. This just this diary really just really hammers down some of the details. So there was like these, this like, cadaver gang war that's happening. So So they got to get in with different medical schools or different doctors to provide these these these bodies to and other games would try to undercut them or get beat them to the, to the grave or whatever in order to you know, obviously dig it up first. So that what it seems to be for the most part, people die all the time. They have a watch the people go around, they look for a fresh grave. So you do this on a fresh grave, obviously because you don't you're not just digging up rotting corpses, you have to get fresh in order to make them you know, have any medical educational value, right. So and actually he refers to a couple of them is digging a bad

Marissa:

hole. Oh, so it's like a bad corpse. Yeah,

Matthew:

it's been it's too far decomposed. So he says in certain entries, it'll say like, dug dug two holes. One good one bad took the C's. Taking the C's is pulling the teeth. It's taken the canines. Oh, because the doctors didn't really care about the teeth. But the dentist the dentist to make dentures they did not. That's where you go with Yeah. And Ben Ben crouch later, he kind of he gets out of the resurrection just kind of business for a while. He starts following military, like battles around through like Spain and stuff. That's a way to get bodies. Well, he's not pulling bodies. He's just he's just ripping the teeth out of fallen, fallen people. Oh, that's the way to get teeth. Yeah, teeth sell pretty well, too. So they weren't. So they sell the bodies to one guy and then some teeth to the other. And then it's don't let anything go to waste. So these, so there's like, there's these, these gangs that are traveling around, they have their watch, they go out, they look to see where there's a fresh body. Then when the time is appropriate, they take their wooden shovels and they go out there and they dig a small section of the grave out. So you know, they're not digging the full coffin. Right. So what they do is they dig like a two foot by three foot section enough that they can get down in there. They get in there. And then they pry apart the top of the lid. And then they take a rope and they tie it underneath the armpits or around the neck. That's clever. They just hoist it out. Then they refill it. Wow. And because it's a fresh grave. It was recently upturned. Yeah, notice Yeah. And they're they're quick. So why a wooden shovel because of wooden shovel when it hits a stone doesn't ring. It just thinks they want to be quiet. It's quiet. Yeah. So and with a freshly turned earth it won't matter if it Right, exactly. So it's already loose. You're not You're not having to have this

Marissa:

set when you said what I was like, Well, yeah, but it's freshly so so the

Matthew:

you got to ask that question so that the audience has reason to have an explanation. It came up it's fine. First day, but anyway, so the so they go there and they they try to do it as quickly as possible. They get in there they take everything out. And then they hoist this body out put this puts people back in there and you're good to go. Some some of these gangs also had actual grave diggers and cemetery workers and stuff that would give them the you know the heads up on these graves or you know, or provide them with it. Rescue teapots, I'm sure Yeah, so or sometimes they would take the body out before it was buried fill the casket with rocks. So that's the family just buries that and then they can sell it out the back right? Yes. All kinds of crazy stuff with this like there's even there's there's even accounts of like people who had heard that a family had recently lost somebody and they would go there under the guise of like for a different piece of business and then ask to ah, I heard that your your daughter died last night. Or that when them when they're like, Oh, I heard your son needed a job. I came here because I was looking for an apprentice. And then they see the beggar oh, what's wrong? Oh, well, our daughter died last night. Oh wow. Is the body still here? I would love to pay my respects to this last Angel sure she's you know, that's fine. Then the person they go they go into the room where the bodies being stored propped open a window go back out there they pay their respects go outside, jump back into the window, snatch the body and run. That's awful. Oh, yeah. Can

Marissa:

you imagine like mourning your your loved one and then all of a sudden their bodies

Matthew:

go in the next day and it's just gone. And it's just some strange dude who came here saying that he had a job for somebody else in the house. Still so bad too. It's not what these people are doing. So back to the gangs, got these gangs. They're all trying to look at these the same turf. Right? And sometimes somebody gets there beat you to the punch. Fine, fair game. You did so right. You have competition. Yeah. And you can't you can't like outwardly do something to these guys. Because then if you start just like attacking them in the streets or something, you draw attention the whole processes illegal, which gives you a certain level of like, keeping it on the DL? Right? You're not just going to openly have a gang war like a street fight in the middle of a graveyard over a dead body because then constables get called and everybody goes to jail or goes running nobody gets the body where so If you got there first you got there first, whatever, whenever maybe there'll be another excuse to get a fight into it later, but they're all kind of gives you that, that that level of safety in within the group. So what some would happen though is they would get that body and then they would go to a doctor that the other gang was supposed to already have a deal with that guy Dr would buy the body off of somebody else for the need of the body. The gang would then go into the dissecting theater and dismember the body before anybody else could or you know attack and destroy the theater or what not in generally destroy the theater in a big big way. Kind of more like the mafia the body mafia coming in and breaking a window. It's nice place a guy Yeah, okay, that kind of a thing. So they would either they would go in there would ruin the body, or they will in some fashion and the doctor can't really do anything you can't really get the police involved because he just bought an illegal corpse you know, so he's he's in it too. So then you had that kind of made it so you they forced the doctors hands to be in this and the students medical students do and there's some places like you get into Richmond, Virginia, and there's stories there for sure. But medical students would often go out with some of these people and dig up these bodies so this is like a known practice when was this 1860s In Richmond Virginia.

Marissa:

Wow. So now I know that I've been to Richmond but so the

Matthew:

Richmond let's go back to the gangs Hold on. So some of these gangs also will go to put a pin in Richmond will be in Richmond in just a minute. So some of these gangs would also what they could do is they would have a racket where they would basically screw the other game or other or just the Doctor Who bought it they would go and claim the body because if the body has been claimed then they can't do it so you could they would go to work houses and try to claim bodies that are recently killed so that they didn't have to go through all the all of the all that stuff but they could sell the body to the doctor get the money then go claim the body from the doctor who then has to give it to them and then they'd go so there's eras it is a quite the criminal organization that happens there so there's these gang wars that are happening and then these games kind of like start trying to like get together and corner the market and all this stuff and then that just leads to a whole bunch of stuff a

Marissa:

scary time to die.

Matthew:

Yeah. Oh yeah. Talk to the people of Edinburgh Scotland about how scary of a time it was to die.

Marissa:

I've seen like is that where they have those bars over the groups

Matthew:

the more yeah the more safes Yeah, so a more safe so there's more safes and then there's more houses?

Marissa:

Is that more like like, like this place as we saw in parallel che?

Matthew:

No, that's that's just a crypt. That a Morehouse. Alright, going back to we're not gonna ever get to Richmond. Now, a more safe are the bars that you see around the graves right now that we're not talking like the little decorative fence that that puts around the outside that we're talking like, an iron multi padlocked gate that is put into the ground and secured or some of them if you if you're a wealthy enough, you could you could actually put iron bars around the the casket itself before it was lowered down, like around the actual body of the casket, kind of like what we do with vaults now. Which vaults now, though, would be very good to deter this kind of behavior would also make it so that it was like it's for the ground doesn't sink, that according to our Grave Digger interview that you can go back let's do but you could, you could, you know, make a casket that you just can't, can't open, but that's very expensive. So the mark safe is like a bird cage that sunk into the into the ground with the body. But it's above the ground. It's just super heavy and hard to move. And they would and you could rent them from the from the parish.

Marissa:

So you could rent them until the body decomposed, basically, yeah. Yeah.

Matthew:

You read things that long enough. Then they take the cage and they can move it to another grave, stuff like that. So a more house similar, but what that what it would do, and there's even one that is in Scotland. I think it's called Guney. I don't know we have we have Scottish listeners, you can correct me. I'm not doing it in a Scottish brokes would be happy for that. But it's called like the Ooni courthouse, and it's kind of like a roundhouse. And on the inside of it. There's a seven chamber like lazy Susan, kind of like a turntable. You go in there, you put the casket in there, and then you just let it sit there until you have another casket come in and you move it one click to the right, drop another casket and by the seventh click it has gone around long enough that the bodies decomposed enough that or not so now you can enter it and it's an not going to be as likely to be snagged. And even if they do get through it, they're going to open it up and it's going to be a bad hold, you're going to get your teeth stolen, the things people had to come up with. Yeah. And unfortunately, that was kind of introduced at just before the laws in Scotland and the United Kingdom changed to allow kind of like that French thing where it's like, if the body is unclaimed, whatever. So the, so what ends up happening is the those are some of the defenses that they would have Scotland, because of what happened with Heron and Burke, these guys killed like 18 people, and Robin graves are doing all this stuff. It when this kind of spread, people were like, super scared. And this really helped to to push the laws that made it so that people would have so the doctors had better access to cadavers. So the way they had, you could you could like I said, you could rent a morte safe from the parish, there were also community watch people who were just paid guards that just that you would go in and everybody kind of Ante up and like rent you to go stand or you could do with your family members to just watch the grave day at night for or overnight, repeatedly throughout, you know, as long as it takes for the body to decompose. So there's also but those are pretty expensive, you had to put some money into it. Alternatively, there were were some people would, if they were poor, the defense that they would having as this again, this the people that are being that are having it, they're generally going for, for poor people in a lot of these places, because they're less likely to have people care. Not like family members, but like poor people have a tendency to not get the same level of treatment as wealthier people, right. So if you're pulling up, rich people, poor, other rich people are going to freak out if you're pulling up poor, poor people, poor people freak out, and the rich people go, Oh, well, tough deal with it. Right? Yeah. So what they could do is they would take straw and stones, and do like a layer of straw layer of soil layer of stones layer of straw, their soil, like a lasagna on the top of this casket, because it makes it it makes it so it's harder to get through. And then on top of that, if you're using like a wooden spade, you're not Yeah, it's really hard to cut through because you're basically just using a spoon to get through everything and just spoon the stuff out of the way. So you don't have like an edge to cut through the straw. So it slows them down and just makes it not worth it for people to do. They would sometimes they would also arrange sticks and stones on the top of the like, unlike a kinda like a mandala kind of effect on the top of the graves. And then they would go back and check to see if it's been disturbed at all. But any body snatcher worth his salt looks at it takes no maybe draws a quick little sketch of it or something or takes it and moves it to the side and the exact same formation and then just moves it back when it's all said and done. So that wasn't really a good one. There were some people that were so there was a father who his his child had had passed, and he filled the grave with gunpowder and a trigger. So that if you pulled the lid off, it wouldn't slow out.

Unknown:

Yeah.

Matthew:

And that that's where the end of that story goes. As far as I don't think anybody ever actually got into that gray. But yeah, so I mean, this was a real fear. And there was even there's even again, going into Scotland. There's like, permanent stone, like castle towers with like an actual they look like a you know, like a chess piece rook that has like the crenellations or the archers would stand around the top. Yes, it's only probably 15 feet high. But it's a stone tower. And so and people would stand up there and watch the graveyard for these people. And they also had they had these grave guns that were the they were self deterrence. But they would have like when the lid gets pulled kind of like, you know, the being buried alive. You had the bell that would go through the top of the casket tied to a finger, the person starts to wiggle there.

Marissa:

Really? Yeah. And yeah, the grave

Matthew:

guns kind of the similar purpose, similar thing. When you pull the top of the casket out or move the body. It has a string or something tied to it that ignites a pistol round or something that fires off all kinds of stuff that where people were doing this with to try to protect it was it wasn't a legit fear, like people were very scared. And if you look at the numbers, that from the diary of a resurrection, just like there are a lot of people Yeah, during this time. And so let's move over back to Richmond real quick. Richmond, Virginia, the US has a building that at the time in the 18 40s 60s whenever it was built exactly, I don't know that there's a medical school. It's called the Egyptian building. And it's built to look like you can go on if you want, I can tell you're really struggling. It's a big, it's a building that looks like air quotes straight out of Egypt, like it has like the columns and the hieroglyphs all around there. And I mean, what better place to work on dissecting dead people than a place that's known for having an idea like the, the imagery of mummification, right? So that's where it's called the Egyptian building. In the basement of the Egyptian building, was a man named Chris Baker. He was an African American man, who was born to the janitor of the Egyptian building. So his dad worked on this college campus, in Richmond, and at the medical facilities specifically. So he is born there. At this time, this is 1860, his dad with him and this was like, his dad would have most likely been a slave and enslaved person at the time. So he ends up living in the bottom play Virginia,

Marissa:

I think was it's hard to say that was around civil war time. So

Matthew:

yeah, but still so his father was most likely born a slave. It's quite likely he lived in this basement as a, I believe, paid custodian. Chris Baker, I am almost certain was a free man who was at this time who worked there out there, but he lived in the basement of this place. And he would go out with medical students and show them how to snag these bodies in the 1860s. And he was really, really good at so he would he show them where to go. And he's actually in Chris Chris Baker was known as like the Google of Richmond.

Marissa:

He that was his nickname.

Matthew:

Yeah, yeah, he won that when he had been arrested multiple times with students from from the, from the school snatching bodies. And they were always released, like pardoned, like, the next day, which most of them most of them also just kind of, you're not gonna get hanged if you're found stealing a body, you're gonna get like, generally about six months is what it seems to be. As far as the the amount of time that you're gonna be there. Harun Burke and Edinburgh. They got hung. They got hell they murdered Yeah, because they were murderers, not bodies. So they, but in Richmond, Chris Baker would take these guys out. And Chris Baker is actually you can see him in a lot of the medical students pictures. Like the actual photographs of them. They're posing with the bodies and stuff now. Chris or Mr. Baker, I don't know, I'm not really that close to the guy. He, they were always going to African American cemeteries and taking African American bodies. So even once all news came out that, that Mr. Baker was doing this, he became a pariah to his to his African American community. Because he's targeting Latinos. It's an extra level of disrespect as far as they're concerned. And the level. I mean, it's like I kind of said earlier, it's easier pickings, when he when you're when you're going after a group of people that people don't that they don't get the level of care and respect that. Other people do. Yeah. So he's digging these up. So he he ends up living in the basement of the building, partially because he works and he has a wife and at least one child named John. And they live in this in this building, because they can't really leave because any whenever he does, he's often a target by African Americans in the town for doing what he does. They know what he does. Yeah, so he basically he's a he's a free man who imprisoned himself because he just does any the hands staying season hands up staying and working at the the school for his entire life. He's buried somewhere, somewhere in the, in the area in unmarked grave. Yeah. But it said for a man who doesn't know how to read or write, because he always signed with his name with an axe that he probably knew more about human anatomy than most first year students there. Because he handled all the bodies he was also the guy who was he disposed of the bones after because I guess in this time, too, you couldn't actually keep the bones on display for anything, like had just be used for dissection. And then you had to get rid of them. You can if you're fine with that, it's another level of crime. So he would boil down the bones and, and then re re bury them somewhere. So he was very, very familiar with us. And he was actually, presumably in because he's in these photographs posing with these bodies. He was there during these dissections and stuff, and he probably learned quite a bit about it. So that's kind of that's our Richmond's Sorry, you know, we're kind of long long into it at this point in time because that's what kind of happens when I have one of these rambling look at how much stuff I learned during there in my research. So we have a sponsor we have a sponsor so let's let's see what we have the same kind of sponsor that we have all the time. So let's see we can dig up and it's like more appropriate because if you guys don't recognize what that sound is in the beginning of our and ending of our our sponsor break, it's supposed to sound like someone digging a grave and then pulling open the casket. It's supposed to sound that way. Does it sound like that? Apparently not. Because nobody ever catches it. So now when I say it, they're like, oh, yeah,

Marissa:

well, it wasn't Arbor creaking. To be fair, yeah,

Matthew:

it was me digging in a garden with a metal spade. So that was my that was my my biggest problem. And you know, who could help me solve that? Our sponsor? We would like to welcome back our sponsor Red Barn murder. After the Yeah, they after the massive success that they had with their mole spades. RBM reached out to us.

Marissa:

What? They're most buds. He said, most spades.

Matthew:

I'm just I'm reading the the ad that they sent me. Okay,

Marissa:

go ahead. Most butts Go ahead. Most buds.

Matthew:

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Marissa:

Yes, please, we really appreciate any ratings that you can give us and comments on it. And anyone who has already done so thank you so much. It really does help.

Matthew:

So yeah, the real, the real thing that we'd like to try to do is try to get some ears to listen, if you want to show us a little support, you can do so over on Patreon slash Macabrepedia. And now let's get back to the show so the the the medical profession is digging up all these bodies, eventually, people stop doing the they don't they don't have as big of a need for the the medical cadavers because the laws eventually loosen up a little bit so that they kind of follow suit. And bodies are easier to get. So that kind of takes all the profit out of the out of the whole whole thing. But there were some people who were collectors of particular types of bodies that were still interested in the trade. So hey, Ben crouch. I've only found this in one one place, but Ben crouch who, after the laws passed, and it's a little bit it's not as lucrative to do so. He ends up teaming up with Robert Liston. Now, that may or may not be a name that you're familiar with. I mean, Ben Kraus, you shouldn't be because I've already told you about. Not listen. Robert Liston is the surgeon who holds the Guinness Book of World Records. For the fastest amputation. Oh, no, I do know this guy, which was two and a half minutes of a man's leg. And in that same procedure, he also cut off other stuff, didn't he? While not in that procedure, he had also in other times, taking people's genitals off doing it so quickly, he had a thing unintentionally, unintentionally, he would go in there and he would say, as he rolled up his sleeves and got his his Bonesaw knife ready. He'd say, gentlemen, time me before he dug in and started doing this. But isn't he a guy not to interrupt you? Don't interrupt me, because you're probably going to ask me the same question. I tried to lead into God. So he is also in the world records for having a single surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Yeah,

Marissa:

that's what it was gonna ask.

Matthew:

So what happens during this surgery is there's a guy on the table supposed to amputate? Listen, says time me, gentlemen, I don't think this guy's gonna make it out of this. He now has a 300% mortality. Right? So how do you get three mortality or three fatalities in one surgery? How do we So listen, he has his bone saw and his meat knife, grabs the meat knife, whacks through the leg all the way down to the bone taking, taking the thigh all the way to the bone, but also taking the fingers of the man who is holding the patient to the table. That man later dies of an infection. Because of this of this problem. He also in doing so takes the knife that he normally would bloody during this. And clang put it into his mouth. He puts it into his mouth. And then he takes the bone saw and start sawing through to get to the to the to through the bone, then tosses that aside, grabs his grabs his knife again, and in a flourish cuts the coattails off of one of the observers who's who's there. As a bystander. That man dies, far back that man dies of a heart attack in the process. And then he finishes off cutting through through the leg. I mean, yeah. And that guy also dies with a gangrenous infection from this so he kills three men trying to amputate one leg. Yeah. And he's also he Robert Liston has a lot of medical coolness to him. He's also a dude who has made some spectacular follies it again, he's

Marissa:

here. 100%

Matthew:

Yeah. But he was also the first person in England to do a surgery with, like modern anesthesia. So he's, I mean, he has like a bust of himself, or like in he's a he's he is an icon of modern medical technology. But when he screwed up, he screwed up. But I feel like

Marissa:

he was just overly competitive. Like he wanted to be like, I'm the fastest out there. They called him the fastest knife in the world. Yeah. Like he just wanted to keep that up. And he was just too competitive. And too, that's a stone.

Matthew:

Yeah, so three people die. He gets the leg off the guy, you know, he dies anyways, but enlisted also as these things where he like, he insisted that there was like, there was a person who had like a, like a, like a goiter, something on their neck. That was that one of the doctors was like, oh, that's like a that's a inflamed artery and listens like it's not inflamed artery. It's this other, whatever. But you don't have here. It's just an anecdote. These like, Oh, it's this other thing. And the doctor is like, No, I'm pretty sure that's an artery. So when the doctor turns around list and pulls his pocket knife out, and turns out was an artery, yeah, bleeds out on the floor. He might have been older, but either way, so he kills another person that way. So when he when he messed up, he messed up big, would have

Marissa:

lost his license easy and been, like, thrown in prison for that 300% mortality

Matthew:

rate, probably probably. But what we're kind of getting back to this story here. He obviously had to he was part of this trade as well. And he had actually, there were some people that he had stopped, who he had reported as being like that as a murdered body like that person has been murdered. This is clearly you know, there's some he actually he was one of those bodies was the part that was the lady that ended up getting Burke and Hare. Hank, Oh, wow. was because he he recognized one of their one of the bodies that they had brought in. I could be a little bit off on that because I think that this again, this wasn't really going to be about Burke and Hare because they are they are murderers, not Body Snatchers per se. I think they found the body of this woman behind like a bed in the in or something like that. But anyways, there is there's seven degrees of Kevin Bacon between Ben crouch, Robert Liston and William hare and William Burke. So they listen and crouch get together because there was a person who apparently had died of hydrocephalus, which is water in the brain and list and wanted to get his hands on the head of this person. Okay, so and again, I only found this in one place, I couldn't really corroborate it with anything else. But you know, that's fine. We only have so much history that we have in this posture. So he so they they team up and dress as gentleman and they go and rent a an apartment, or like a room that in this hotel that's near the grave, the grave site. And then in broad daylight, crouch switches his clothes, goes across the graveyard, and basically within 30 minutes of them checking in, goes to the graveyard and grabs, digs up this body throws it into into a crate and then brings it back to the to the place and then goes to the front desk and tells the person at the desk that listen has a package had been delivered. So then he changes his clothes the two men go in they grab the body and they or they grab at least the head I think it's the whole body. They grabbed the body and they put it back into like their little their little cage like this is like a this is like a day out kind of wagon carriage that gentleman would have you know, and they go and they basically stole the body. So listen is a complex character I think, like to look at his story. He is a accidental mass murderer and a pioneer of medicine and an anti girl body snatching body snatcher so

Marissa:

the character MAN Yeah, like he's his own episode really for sure.

Matthew:

But, but anyways, that it was the original idea for this whole episode was to go from like, old medical practices and preservation of bodies and all that and then kind of go into I was gonna say bleed into no pun intended into like Plastination and current, like medical cadavers and stuff like that, but we kind of went a little long on this one, so, stay tuned for Plastination episode at some point. But the that's kind of going to do it for us. I feel like that's a quite a bit of stories that we've just shared there. Thank you, as always for listening. If you have any questions, concerns, comments, fun facts about Scottish burial grounds. Feel free to hit us up at Macabrepedia on Twitter and Facebook

Marissa:

and Macabrepediapod on Instagram, and macabrepediapod@gmail.com If you want to reach out to us via email and thank you to everyone who has actually suggested topics for episodes so far.

Matthew:

Thank you. Thank you we will be getting some of those in there possibly some are more appropriate for Patreon episodes, though show but thank you so much as always, and join us next week as we add another entry into this our

Marissa:

Macabrepedia