Body snatching in Belfast
Belfast did not have a medical school until 1835 when one was established in the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. However, Belfast (and other areas on the east coast of Ulster) was still involved in the gruesome side of medical teaching long before this.
Anatomy classes needed human corpses and the only legal way to obtain them was to wait for a criminal to be executed. Although the simply-named Murder Act of 1752 legalised the dissection of bodies of executed criminals and increased the number of crimes punishable by hanging, there were still not enough bodies to satisfy the growing world of medical teaching. Scotland was at the forefront of medical teaching in Europe, its medical schools rapidly increased at the end of the 18th century.
But what does this have to do with Belfast?
Belfast was extremely well placed to supply this need and with the port of Belfast offering numerous sailings a day to Scotland, it was not long before ‘resurrection men’ in Ulster took advantage of this way to make some money.
A body could only last a few days before decomposition made dissection very unpleasant. There were methods to try to prolong this period, usually keeping the body in a barrel of alcohol but there was little that could really be done without proper refrigeration. This is also the reason most anatomy lessons were scheduled in the winter.
Resurrection men worked in gangs, targeting fresh graves. They would dig a hole at the top and pull the corpse out by the head (or feet), sometimes with the aid of a hook. This could be done very quickly. Some savvy snatchers were careful to leave behind any clothes or shrouds buried with the body. Legislation covered stealing someone else’s property but a human corpse was a legal grey area - could it be considered someone’s property? Stealing items like clothing, however, was definitely theft. A member of the gang would often stay behind to tidy up the grave. Organised gangs would appoint watchers to keep up to date on burials in their area.
A miniature scene depicting the aftermath of a night of body snatching created by
Christopher (@themirthfulminiaturist) • Instagram photos and videos
People were understandably afraid of their bodies being used in such a manner after death. For many, dissection was thought of as an additional punishment for the executed criminal - not something that should happen to anyone else. But preventing body snatching depended on wealth.
The rich could protect their graves, aside from being buried in vaults or mausolea, with mortsafes, a cage-like structure which would remain in place over the grave for one or two months. One could hire coffin guarding apparatus, bury something heavy around the deceased to make the body harder to lift or simply install iron gates around the burial site. The poor couldn’t afford such things and so would simply watch over loved one’s graves until the time of danger had passed.
Examples of early 19th-century mort safes
Belfast was not immune from this crime and each of the three main cemeteries deployed various strategies. The long-standing Shankill graveyard erected a watchhouse in 1835 so that families could stand guard somewhere sheltered. The New Burying-Ground, known today as Clifton Street cemetery, employed night watchmen in 1831 - these hires weren’t that successful as they attracted criticism for firing their guns during the night, being rowdy and damaging tombs and headstones. Friar’s Bush, another well-established burial ground, expanded in the early 19th century and built its walls higher, while also erecting a gatehouse for shelter to stand guard.
All that remains of the Shankill cemetery watch house
Watch house sign at Shankill cemetery
Regardless of these measures, the ‘sack-em-ups’ carried on.
Unfortunately, we will never know how successful these body snatchers were, we only know of the cases where something went wrong. For example, when the body of an old woman was found in a wooden box en route to Scotland in 1824. On another occasion a medical student was found about to get on a boat to Glasgow with a body in his suitcase.
Perhaps the most famous Belfast case occurred in July 1823 when a barrel on a ship in the dock, bound for Scotland, aroused suspicion. With it being the height of summer, we can guess what might have attracted attention about this barrel. Inside was a woman around 30 years old and a small child packed in sawdust.
Only a few years later, the sale of dead bodies to medical schools would become a news sensation across Britain and Ireland when the infamous Burke and Hare were brought to justice in Edinburgh. William Burke and William Hare, both originally from Ulster, decided to recoup some financial loss when an old man called Donald died in Hare’s lodging house, still owing him money. Hare and Burke set out to take the body to the University Medical School but were directed to a school run by Dr Robert Knox. Knox gave them around £7 10s per body, the equivalent of 6 to 8 months pay and the men went into business. Burke and Hare would deliver bodies every 2 to 3 weeks for Knox’s very popular anatomy school. However, the Williams Burke & Hare skipped the part where you wait for someone to die and then dig up the body and they went straight to murdering people instead. Over a year they killed 16 people before the body of their last victim, Margaret Docherty was found in Burke’s house and they were caught in November 1828.
Hare turned King’s evidence and was granted immunity. Burke was executed on 28 January 1829 and was publicly dissected as an extra (and some would say appropriate) punishment.
The outcry from this very public case shed light on this macabre problem - how did medical schools secure cadavers to study without rewarding crime? The answer was the 1832 Anatomy Act which allowed the unclaimed bodies of the poor to be used for medical teaching and allowed people to donate bodies in exchange for burial costs.
One Belfast doctor, Dr James McDonnell, complained to a Scottish colleague that even after the passing of the Anatomy Act, there were still obstacles to dissection in Belfast:
“it is evident that the managing committee of such Charities, as are supported principally by Private subscriptions, are apt to be very averse to any thing of this kind - they are Bishops, clergymen, magistrates, merchants, all of whom are apt to revolt at Dissection, or even at the most simple examinations”
Stories in the newspapers did not help to assuage the fear of dissection as numerous reports appeared of the undignified way cadavers were used and disposed of after dissection. In January 1832 human remains were discovered in a field south of the White Linen Hall, the newspapers decried that it was essentially reduced to a skeleton “not long from the knife of the anatomist” (Northern Whig, 2 Jan 1832). At this point, with no medical school in Belfast, the assumption was that a medical student had brought the skeleton with them from Dublin or Scotland.
By the time the medical school began at the Academical Institution, cadavers were provided by the unrecorded poor who died in institutions throughout the town. If a family or friend did not claim the body of someone who died in the Fever Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum or the Poorhouse, the authorities could legally give that body to the medical school. In 1849, the school closed, transferring its remaining students to the newly formed Queen’s College but retained its connection to anatomy. When Queen’s was in its early years it did not have a dissecting room and so students walked to the old medical school buildings in order to attend anatomy classes. Queen’s finally opened its own dissecting room in 1863. Later that decade, Belfast City Cemetery opened where a plot can be seen which holds the remains of those whose bodies were used for medical science in the early 20th century.
Further reading:
Clifton Street cemetery & Body snatching Under Cover of Darkness: Part 2: The New Burying Ground - Great Place
Friar’s Bush graveyard & Body snatching Ancient burial ground in Belfast was popular spot for body snatching in the 1820s
