triangle that commemorates the location of the Tyburn Tree, the three-
legged gallows that hosted the capital punishment of thousands of
criminals from the 12th century till 1783. Hangings at Tyburn were a
spectacle, attended by the masses as a celebration of justice, and the
wriggling, hooded victim struggling to breathe (and wishing to die) served
as a macabre form of entertainment.
John Hunter’s primary task in the twelve years he partnered with
William was the procurement of bodies. John stood only five feet two
inches, but his broad shoulders and strong hands from years of hard work
made him an able combatant in securing the precious bodies that were
freshly dead. The free-for-all and carnival atmosphere called for an
indecorous ruffian, and John Hunter—precise dissector and future
legendary British surgeon and paragon of scientific intellect—was the
ideal down-and-dirty steward of the corpses.
The Murder Act of 1752 was passed by Parliament, codifying the
expedient hanging of criminals and disallowing the burial of convicts after
hanging. This would serve to increase the numbers of cadavers, but there
were still not sufficient bodies available. Where else to get fresh pablum?
Shockingly, John Hunter became one of history’s great grave robbers.
So, hungry for fresh bodies, John Hunter turned himself into a body
snatcher par excellence. “So in October 1748, with William clamoring for
more bodies for his pupils, John Hunter almost certainly set out himself
under cover of darkness from the Covent Garden school, armed with a
shovel and crowbar, to scour local burial grounds for freshly dug graves.
Most likely, he commandeered parties of students, probably bolstered by
several rounds of ale in a tavern beforehand to help in his grisly
undercover work.”^13
In London and Edinburgh, and later in the Colonies, professional grave
robbers ransacked cemeteries and traumatized families. Also known as
“resurrectionists,” the midnight burglars would shovel their way down
through the freshly turned soil, digging a narrow shaft at the head of the
grave until they encountered the wooden coffin. Crowbarring the cheap
wooden lid until it snapped, and exposing the upper portion of the body,
the body snatchers then used ropes to drag the body from its supposed
final resting place.^14 The team of miscreants would load the body into a
carriage and deliver it overnight at the anatomist’s back-door basement
entrance.