Page 46 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2012

The Real Body Snatchers The Real hole back in. body snatchers buffet. Body Snatchers A BUSINESS LIKE ANY BUSINESS ALL CORPSES AREN’T CREATED Entrepreneurs like Ben “Corpse King” EQUALLY If medical science was going to advance at all - Crouch of London trained rookie body But democracy meant the upscale dead this is during the Age of Enlightenment - it snatchers in the ways of the dark profession. His people weren’t safe from the attentions of depended on doctors improving their team patrolled London’s burial grounds in resurrectionists either. In one celebrated case, in knowledge of human anatomy. The medical search of the newly dead, and their nightly take 1878, the missing corpse of Congressman J.S. establishment needed bodies to practice on and was even recorded in a ledger like some ghostly Harrison turned up at the Ohio Medical College. to study. Most countries allowed medical corporation. Like any capitalist enterprise, Harrison was none other than the son of colleges to acquire unclaimed bodies of competition could be fierce. Some enterprising President William Henry Harrison and father of criminals for anatomy practice. But this supply body snatchers signed exclusive contracts with President Benjamin Harrison. This notorious was insufficient. What to do? particular schools or surgeons. event prompted some states to enact anatomy laws. But only some. A lot of other states DIGGING FOR THE ANSWERS A NEW WRINKLE maintained that the state had no business Once again the human mind, powered The famous team of Burke and Hare involving itself in legislating that sort of stuff. by greed, triumphs! The solution was the modernized the business in eben more So grave robbers had free reign to continue their ghastly practice of body snatching, that is, monstrous ways. They cut out the back- nasty ways in many parts of the United States. digging up the recently dead and selling them to breaking part of the operation - digging up the Certain American medical schools regularly surgeons for use in anatomy class. Sometimes bodies - just by killing people outright. In 1828 acquired their cadavers, no questions asked, medical students and surgeons did their own - 1829, these two enterprising fiends murdered from shadowy shady body snatchers as late as digging, but they were generally too busy - just 16 men, women, and children in Edinburgh and the 1920s. And, who knows, perhaps even more like now - to spend their time traipsing around sold the fresh bodies to a delighted Dr. Robert recently than that. [] cemeteries. So the position of body snatchers Knox, one of the finest surgeons in te city as From The ‘X’ Zone Book of was born. They answered to the elegant name well as, apparent one of the most gullible. “resurrectionists” ot eh decidedly less elegant FACT*oids “sack’em up men.” By the late 1700s, london THE FALL GUY and Edinburgh had become the body-snatching Gullible or not, when burke and Hare - In 1940, German soy josef Jacobs became the capitals of Great Britain. were finally nabbed, a wide-eyed Dr. Knox last person to be executed at the Tower of feigned ignorance of the murderous system, but London. JOB DESCRIPTION his denials didn’t satisfy the mob and he fled It was a relatively safe career. The only real Edinburgh. - Benito Mussolini was named for Mexican risks were the danger of contracting contagious Hare testified against his partner and revolutionary Benito Juarez. diseases from corpses, or being discovered and walked away scott-free, Burke was convicted or attacked by outraged crowds. Hardly any body murder and executed. Afterward, in the ultimate - In the 1800s, New Zealand had both a gold snatcher went to prison: Under British law, a irony, he was publicly anatomized at the rush and a jade rush. corpse was not considered property, so taking medical college. His skeleton i son display at one wasn’t theft. the University of Edinburgh, and a walled made - The Zulu army that beat the British at The resurrectionists could be prosecuted from his skin still graces the museum at the Isandhlwana included a regiment of soldiers in only if they took goods from the grave, like a Royal College of Surgeons. their 60s. shroud, or if they entered a cemetery that was private property. Even so, most of them were in ENOUGH CADAVERS TO GO AROUND - The Boer War was the first time motorcycles cahoots with wealthy and prominent doctors or Burke and Hare’s horrific crime spree and trucks were used in war. universities, so they often had access to good inflamed public sentiment and compelled the lawyers. British Parliament to pass the Anatomy Act of - Despite his name, Bernardo O’Higgins was 1832. This law improved medical school’s the first president of Chile. MODUS OPERANDI access to legal cadavers and pretty much put the They typically worked in groups. They - British resurrectionists out of business. - Darius I of Persia connected the Nile to the excuse the expression - haunted funerals, Red Sea with a canal. pretending to be mourners, so they could return THE AMERICAN WAY later knowing exactly where the dearly beloved The practice continued in the United States, - To free their emperor, the Incas filled a 23 x16 was buried. Using a narrow-bladed wooden where most states refused to pass such a law. room with 9 feet of gold. shovel to minimize the sound of scraping American body snatchers, like their British metal, they only shoveled out the area over one brethren, were particularly fond of preying on - The St. Nicholas on whom Santa Claus is end of the coffin, hopefully the end with the the poor and the indigent because there were so based was from modern-day Turkey. corpses head. When they struck the casket, they many fo them. They were less likely to have pried of the end of the lid, tied ropes to the family claim their bodies, and they were often - The 1898 book Futility eerily presaged th 1912 cadaver, and jerked it out. Then they filled the dumped in shallow grave in potters field - a sinking of the Titanic. []