Be it bodysnatching or restless undead, the same tactics apply to keep the dead, dead.
Picture of Protected Graves to prevent Grave Robbers by Les Hull, CC BY-SA 2.0, File:Protected Graves to prevent Grave Robbers - geograph.org.uk - 3301588.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
But there was a problem. In Britain, corpses could only be legally sanctioned under the Murder Act of 1752, averaging 10 to 12 corpses a year. Paris faced a similar challenge but had a system in place to provide for corpses, resulting in London schools losing as much as 20 percent enrollment as students fled to places where they could have guaranteed access to practice their profession. The pressure was on for a solution, and with money on the line, these institutions turned to a shady source for corpses: resurrectionists.
These upper-class institutions were willing to pay, and pay well, for these corpses. A corpse could net up to 250 shillings; a skilled weaver worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, to earn 1/50th that much.
Despite being universally reviled, body snatchers were a tight-lipped group of exclusive professionals, relying on stealth and discretion to keep their activities out of the public eye. But that all came crashing down with two men named William, William Burke and William Hare, who decided that the most lucrative corpse was one they had recently converted.
At the behest of Robert Knox, the leading anatomist in Edinburgh and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Burke and Hare were paid seven pounds and 10 shillings per body. And they made a killing, literally, by murdering as many as 16 people, passing them off as freshly interred corpses to Knox (who surely knew the difference but accepted them anyway). Of the three, only Burke was convicted and hanged; his skeleton remains are on display in the Anatomical Museum at Edinburgh Medical School. The murders were so notorious that their actions gave rise to a new word, “burking”: the act of committing a murder with the intent to sell the corpse.
John Bishop and Thomas Williams followed in the Williams’ footsteps in London three years later in 1831, murdering a child and selling his corpse to the King’s College School of Anatomy. After they were caught and hanged, the law finally changed in 1832 with the Anatomy Act, making it illegal to sell unclaimed bodies.
The rich could afford tombstones, vaults, and mausoleums; but body snatchers weren’t interested in drawing attention to themselves from affluent corpses. It was the poor who were targets, and they did what they could: placing flowers and pebbles on graves to detect disturbances, digging heather and branches into the soil to make disinterment more difficult, and even having friends and relatives watch graves at night.
Mortsafes were iron-and-stone devices of great weight, heavy contraptions with a plate placed over the coffin and rods connecting to a second plate, removable only by two people with keys. These were placed over the coffins for about six weeks in the summer, when the body was sufficiently decayed and of no use for dissection.
Watch-houses were even created to shelter the watchers, and in some cases morthouses were built to house corpses until they started to decompose (up to three months in the winter), buildings with no windows and multiple locks.
Necromancers—the fantasy resurrectionist equivalent—face a similar problem; both animate dead and create undead require a pile of bones or a corpse within 10 feet. Casting a spell at a target requires the caster to see it, so aspiring necromancers will need to be able to see the corpse somehow (clairvoyanceor scrying), and even then, the undead might be trapped until freed, from six weeks to three months. Similarly, spontaneously created corporeal undead might find they are trapped … until an unsuspecting resurrectionist frees them.
Picture of Protected Graves to prevent Grave Robbers by Les Hull, CC BY-SA 2.0, File:Protected Graves to prevent Grave Robbers - geograph.org.uk - 3301588.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Valuable Corpses
It’s hard to imagine just how valuable corpses were in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the rise of operating theaters to teach surgical students how to operate on the living, the dead were in high demand. In 1790 there were around 300 medical students between Edinburgh and London; by 1820, there were over 1,400. Each student was expected to dissect up to three cadavers.But there was a problem. In Britain, corpses could only be legally sanctioned under the Murder Act of 1752, averaging 10 to 12 corpses a year. Paris faced a similar challenge but had a system in place to provide for corpses, resulting in London schools losing as much as 20 percent enrollment as students fled to places where they could have guaranteed access to practice their profession. The pressure was on for a solution, and with money on the line, these institutions turned to a shady source for corpses: resurrectionists.
These upper-class institutions were willing to pay, and pay well, for these corpses. A corpse could net up to 250 shillings; a skilled weaver worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, to earn 1/50th that much.
Meet Your Taker
Body snatching, while serious, was only a misdemeanor in the eyes of the law, punishable by fines of up to six months in prison. The larger concern was valuables, which could invoke longer prison sentences (those were the domain of grave robbers, a different type of rogue). Most body snatchers stripped the body bare and loaded it into a horse-drawn cart. Armed with a wooden shovel (quieter than a metal one), a lantern, hooks, and ropes, they dug down in teams to a coffin and hoisted it out of the grave. This was hard work and required significant upper body strength; resurrectionists might snatch as many as six bodies in a night and had to lift them both out of the grave and over cemetery walls.Despite being universally reviled, body snatchers were a tight-lipped group of exclusive professionals, relying on stealth and discretion to keep their activities out of the public eye. But that all came crashing down with two men named William, William Burke and William Hare, who decided that the most lucrative corpse was one they had recently converted.
At the behest of Robert Knox, the leading anatomist in Edinburgh and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Burke and Hare were paid seven pounds and 10 shillings per body. And they made a killing, literally, by murdering as many as 16 people, passing them off as freshly interred corpses to Knox (who surely knew the difference but accepted them anyway). Of the three, only Burke was convicted and hanged; his skeleton remains are on display in the Anatomical Museum at Edinburgh Medical School. The murders were so notorious that their actions gave rise to a new word, “burking”: the act of committing a murder with the intent to sell the corpse.
John Bishop and Thomas Williams followed in the Williams’ footsteps in London three years later in 1831, murdering a child and selling his corpse to the King’s College School of Anatomy. After they were caught and hanged, the law finally changed in 1832 with the Anatomy Act, making it illegal to sell unclaimed bodies.
Defenses Against the Living … and the Dead
Not surprisingly, many of the tactics used to ward off the living from digging up the dead seem like they were meant to keep not just the living out, but the dead in. And in a fantasy game, both can certainly apply.The rich could afford tombstones, vaults, and mausoleums; but body snatchers weren’t interested in drawing attention to themselves from affluent corpses. It was the poor who were targets, and they did what they could: placing flowers and pebbles on graves to detect disturbances, digging heather and branches into the soil to make disinterment more difficult, and even having friends and relatives watch graves at night.
Mortsafes were iron-and-stone devices of great weight, heavy contraptions with a plate placed over the coffin and rods connecting to a second plate, removable only by two people with keys. These were placed over the coffins for about six weeks in the summer, when the body was sufficiently decayed and of no use for dissection.
Watch-houses were even created to shelter the watchers, and in some cases morthouses were built to house corpses until they started to decompose (up to three months in the winter), buildings with no windows and multiple locks.
The Corpse Problem
Even if your campaign isn’t technologically advanced enough to support anatomists (and many are), it’s easy to see how these practices might arise in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and why player characters might bump against these defenses. Many religions believed that the corpse was necessary for a future resurrection; in practical terms a cleric needs a body, and if they can’t reach the corpse before burial and without permission from family members, they may need to overcome the aforementioned defenses.Necromancers—the fantasy resurrectionist equivalent—face a similar problem; both animate dead and create undead require a pile of bones or a corpse within 10 feet. Casting a spell at a target requires the caster to see it, so aspiring necromancers will need to be able to see the corpse somehow (clairvoyanceor scrying), and even then, the undead might be trapped until freed, from six weeks to three months. Similarly, spontaneously created corporeal undead might find they are trapped … until an unsuspecting resurrectionist frees them.
