‘Necessary Inhumanity’: St Thomas’ Hospital and London’s Earliest Bodysnatchers

Before the Anatomy Act of 1832, British surgeons and anatomists faced a meagre provision of cadavers for medical research and education – only a very limited number of bodies were made legally available from among the executed. So difficult was the problem of supply that the medical community resorted to desperate clandestine methods. Some people will have heard of churchyard raids to steal the dead in the early 19th century; however, few realise just how old the practice really was.

Join archaeologist and historian Robert Hartle as he tells the story of the earliest ‘resurrectionists’.

Delivered in the oldest surviving surgical operating theatre in Europe, where medical students would have once learned their trade, discover how the pupils, apprentices and surgeons of St Thomas’ Hospital were key figures behind the emergence of bodysnatching in early 18th century London.
About the Speaker:

Robert Hartle has been an archaeologist for twenty years and specialises in funerary archaeology and the study of London’s post-medieval burial grounds. His interest in the history of bodysnatching and medicine began in 2015, following the discovery of a mysterious protected grave during the excavation of the ‘New Churchyard’ for Crossrail – a burial ground which had, he found, been victim to bodysnatching in 1717.