Body snatching

Mm.

Frankenstein's body snatching.

Okay.

This is where we kind of delve into the other side of it.

I will say the author, uh, she kinda goes into more of the, uh, movie side of it with, uh, what's old boy's name? Uh, Guillermo del Toro's movie adaptation of Frankenstein, all of this.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, cool.

But let's talk about the history of body snatching itself and how this kinda plays into Frankenstein the book and the story, and then we'll circle back to how it might play into the castle itself.

So the history of body snatching.

Two claims about the vaults are made constantly and should be dealt with where they arise.

The first is that they were used by body snatchers to store corpses, and the second is that Burke and Hare kept their victims down there.

Neither is supported by anything.

Burke and Hare operated from a lodging house in the West Port, over half a mile away, and the entire point of their business was to deliver a body the same night while it was worth the full price.

Robert Knox, at his height in the eighteen twenties, was lecturing to over five hundred students in a single session.

The gap between two bodies and five hundred students was filled by theft.

The men who did it were called resurrectionists in polite conversation and body snatchers everywhere else, and they were not, mostly, professional criminals.

They were laborers, grave diggers, porters, and, in the early years, medical students doing it for their own courses and for the money.

There's also a Pennsylvania connection to this history, including stories of unusual burial practices and the lengths people went to in order to keep their loved ones safe.

We're going to talk about why grave robbing happens, how body snatchers actually went about it, and what the public thought about the practice, and eventually, how it came to an end.

Joining us to give us that history is historian Chrissy Sienickel from Shippensburg University.

Welcome back to The Spark, Chrissy.

There were something like 1,000 medical students in the 1850s, so they all wanted dissection cadavers, and there were, like, less than 50 cadavers.

So frequently, it was the medical students, but not always.

There were also people just doing it for filthy lucre, the grave robbers.

And these people were called, they, uh, the, the names get me.

This is a special episode dedicated to my daughter, Liberty, who is currently studying to become a medical doctor.

Let's take a visit to an old cemetery with the body snatchers.

A horror story by Robert Louis Stevenson printed in 1884 from characters based on Burke and Hare who were employed by surgeon Robert Knox in the 1820s as grave diggers.

Cadavers needed for dissections and anatomical research in the Edinburgh Medical Schools were supplied.

Stay tuned.

Now, let's listen to my favorite radio adaptations on the case.

If a body needs a body, just call Burke and Hare by Crime Classics from 1953, The Body Snatchers from Suspense in 1942, and a scary production from Nightfall in 1980.

We will conclude with a version from CBS Radio Mystery Theater, broadcast in 1974.