Crimes for Science Part 2

Here's the second part of the post I put up last week, hope you enjoy some more juicy information on crimes done for science.

Desperate anatomists in need of bodies sometimes stole the bodies themselves, while others hired resurrectionists - or body snatchers -  to do the work for them. Being a ressurectionist wasn't a bad job for an unskilled laborer. It paid $1,000 a year, about twice as much as other jobs of the same skill set. And, they had the summers off.

One of the large, detailed illustrations 

in Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica,

 1543,marking the rebirth of anatomy

Resurrectionists often shipped the bodies to their employers in the mail, and mishaps occurred. One anatomist received a pack of food and a large ball of yarn in the mail instead of the cadaver he was expecting. Imagine the horror of the person who expected to receive the food and yarn, but got a corpse instead.

Sometimes anatomists even turned a blind eye to fairly obvious murder if it meant they could get more bodies.

In 1828 anatomist Richard Knox opened his door to two strangers, William Burke and William Hare, with a dead body at their feet. He assumed they were resurrectionists, and without asking questions, paid the two men for the corpse and sent them on their way.

It ends up that Burke and Hare ran a boardinghouse called Tanner's Close. The previous night one of their lodgers died in his sleep. That lodger owed Burke and Hare some money, so instead of giving his body a proper burial, they sold him for dissection, which gave them plenty of money to cover the debt.

When Burke and Hare realized how much money they could make by selling corpses to anatomy they started killing off their customers. Their method of murder was smothering, and soon after "to burke"  meant to smother someone.

Knox never asked where all these nice, fresh bodies came from, even when some were still oozing with blood. Knox preserved one of Burke and Hare's victims, the young Mary Paterson, in a tank of alcohol in his lab.

Hare was let off for his crimes, but Burke was caught, hanged and then dissected. His skeleton is preserved at the Royal Collage of Surgeons in Edinburgh, and some wallets made of his skin exist to this day.

The creepy history of anatomy both disturbs me and fascinates me. It makes me wonder what secrets the history of other science disciplines hold. When I find out I'll be sure to write about it on here, so stay tuned!