Anatomy: A Love Story

Resurrection men arose to meet the needs of anatomists in 18th- and 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland. The city was a hub of medical education, and schools required human cadavers to train students and to advance scientific knowledge. If a felon was sentenced to death, a judge could posthumously punish the convict with an ignoble end on a dissection table. During the early 1800s, executed felons represented the bulk of legally obtained bodies. However, demand far exceeded supply.

A solution to this problem emerged in the form of a new criminal profession, resurrection men. Also known as “sack-’em-up men, shusy-lifters, corp’-lifters, Burkers and noddies,” resurrectionists dug up freshly buried bodies and sold them to anatomists (“An Introduction to Grave Robbing in Scotland,” University of Aberdeen, 2010). Law enforcement largely ignored these activities because resurrection men served a vital sector of the city. While body snatching was illegal, those found guilty faced only misdemeanor charges as long as they took nothing from the grave except the cadaver. As a result, the Scottish people took the protection of their loved ones’ remains into their own hands. Some churchyards utilized heavy stones called mortstones or iron cages called mortsafes to deter resurrectionists. These devices could be relocated to a new grave and reused once the remains they were guarding were “too corrupt to be of interest to the anatomists” (“An Introduction to Grave Robbing in Scotland,” University of Aberdeen, 2010).

Although they fulfilled an important need for the city of Edinburgh, resurrection men also posed ethical problems and sparked public outcry. At the end of the novel, Jack is falsely accused of killing people and selling their bodies to doctors. Historically, there were incidents of resurrectionists who turned to murder to augment their supply of cadavers and were executed for their crimes, including the infamous William Burke. Anatomy takes place in 1817. Fifteen years later, the British Parliament passed the Anatomy Act of 1832 in response to public furor over the actions of resurrectionists and widespread concern regarding infectious diseases. While the act eliminated the need for resurrection men, it created new moral dilemmas. Under the new law, anatomists were permitted to dissect corpses that went unclaimed for a week, especially the bodies of those who died in institutions, such as workhouses, debtors’ prisons, and almshouse hospitals. Thus, dissection went from “a hated secondary punishment for murderers after execution” to a legally permissible end for those who died in poverty (“The Anatomy Act of 1832,” King’s College London, 2023). Although the Anatomy Act ended the era of resurrection men, the ethical questions surrounding the dissection of human bodies continued.