By Norman Adams.
Published by Bell Publishing Company, New York, 1972. First Edition. Hardback cover with dustjacket (unclipped), 191 pages. Black & white illustration and photography throughout.
CONDITION
Overall fair condition - see photos. Some light wear to edges/corners of sutjacket, now protected by a clear sleeve. Light foxing to head and fore edges, and free end papers. Sticker to frontispiece, otherwise no names or writing. Images crisp & clear throughout.
This book is a gruesome document of more barbaric times-when even the dead could not rest easy. This, is the horrible history of bodysnatching, which reached its peak at the beginning of the last century. From Land's End to John o'Groats people lived and died in terror of the bodysnatchers, for the old saying you are worth more dead than alive was never as true as in those days, when the resurrectionists busied themselves in the graveyards of the land at the dead of night-in search of things for the surgeon."
Norman Adams here chronicles the story of the bodysnatchers, their victims and the remarkable steps taken to protect the dead in those far-off days. Much of the story takes place in Scotland, for it was there that many of the most remarkable cases occurred and that bodysnatching became rife, associated as it was with the rise of great medical schools in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow. Among the macabre and spine-chilling tales recounted are those of the well-known Edinburgh monsters Burke and Hare; their London imitators Bishop and Williams, hanged at Newgate Jail in 1831, who drugged and then drowned their victims in a well; the Aberdeen anatomist Andrew Moir whose alleged "Burkin Hoose?' was burned to the ground by an enraged mob; the Corpse King, Ben Crouch who, forced to flee London, became assistant to the Edinburgh surgeon Robert Liston and instructed his-students in the art of bodysnatching; the deformed Shotty' Ross who was resurrected and then reclaimed from the medical students by enraged villagers; villagers; not to mention that jovial- sounding yet macabre Edinburgh team of Merry Andrew, The Mole, Spunce and Praying Howard.
Parishioners banded together and remarkable efforts were made to protect the dead; all-night watches were mounted on graveyards, fortified watchtowers were built, table-top gravestones were introduced and iron-grilled mort-safes
used. The author describes in detail the various devices used to balk the "sack-'em-up men' and also provides, for those either merely curious or for those with evil intent, a full description as to how a body was removed from a grave.
In 1832 an end came to the gruesome trade with the introduction of The Anatomy Act. The anatomical schools of the country were now assured a legal supply of bodies and the dead became certain of eternal rest.
