How a demand from surgeons and medical schools for cadavers led to a boom in the dark business of body snatching.
The grisly trade of body snatching flourished for 100 years from 1730 on, mainly in Dublin. The introduction of the Anatomy Act in 1832 allowed doctors, teachers of anatomy and medical students to dissect bodies donated from workhouses and prisons. Prior to this act they were restricted to six corpses a year from convicted murderers who were hanged for their crimes.
The Royal College of Surgeons and private medical schools had been demanding more and more bodies and didn’t much care where they came from.
Those who practised body snatching and who made a living from it were termed resurrectionists or resurrection-men. To counteract body snatchers, high railings and heavy stone slabs were used to protect the graves. Many cemeteries such as Glasnevin in Dublin had watchmen keeping vigil in towers along the perimeter walls.
Dr John Fleetwood is writing a book about Irish body snatching and has discovered that bodies shipped to and sold in London could be sold for a much higher price than in Dublin. As a result, an export business in cadavers developed. The main exporters were two Dubliners named Collins and Daly and another man Wilson Ray, a retired Army surgeon,
He was the godfather, he ran the export business and you didn’t dare cross his path.
There is no longer a shortage of bodies because of the large number of people who bequeath their bodies to medical science.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 31 October 1984. The reporter is George Devlin.
