After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Day In The Life Of A Body Snatcher

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Join Anthony and Maddy as they spend a day - or should that be night? - in the life of a 19th century body snatcher.Find out which months they favoured for body snatching, why they never stole the dead body's possessions, and why they would never steal a body under a full moon - all referenced from a real-life grave robber's diary.Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now, we are never shy of getting up close and personal with the darker side of history. Obviously, that's the whole remit of what we do. But it doesn't come much darker than body snatchers, grave robbers, or as they're sometimes known, resurrectionists. And I'm going to hand over to Maddie now to set the scene for this episode. London 1812, Nighttime. Down at the Thames-Docklands, ships creak at anchor, heavy with tea and textiles brought from across Britain's empire.

Along the skyline, the first great factories of the Industrial Revolution are grinding into life, casting black silhouettes against the night's sky. But in the shadows of this booming, busy and changing city, another industry thrives, one that feeds not on coal or cotton, but on the freshly dead. Joseph Naples moves quickly through the narrow lanes of Islington a short-handled shovel slung under his coat

beside him his gang kept the gloom boots muffled on the damp earth as they slip into the churchyard The funeral was only yesterday So the soil is still soft They work fast scraping away the top layer prising open the coffin lid Just enough to hook the body within

Then it begins The toll of a bell. A dog's sharp bark, slicing through the darkness, lanterns flare to life, the air split by shouts as the night watch surges forward. The figures vanish between tombstones scattering into the night, leaving the ground roar and open like a wound. And those who guard the dead know that this will not be their only attempt. In a city where the living hunger for the knowledge only the dead can provide, the resurrection men will always return. This is after dark, and this is a day in the life of a body snatcher. Hello, my name is Anthony.

Yeah. And this is up to dark. Why are we French, please? I don't know. I just felt it. I felt it, Maddie and I just went with it. We have previously, against our better judgment, spent a day in the life of a plague doctor.

Yeah. And you guys left comments and comments and comments I've heard and sent emails about other day in the life iterations. And now, whether we like it or not, we're spending the day in the life with really miserable jobs. Can I also say that when we did The Day in the Life of the Plague Doctor, you on socials were a very convincing and historically accurate Plague Doctor outfit. And there was quite a lot of internet excitement about this in certain circles.

Did you see that? Yeah. There were definitely people and fair play to them. Anthony was serving. Who love a bit of leather. Yeah. Who were like, where did you get this from? Also, will you wear that for me at my house?

Well, the answer is no, I was very uncomfortable. And I'm an absolute prude. But it, like, I was, I was like, shocked by this. Who knew? Clutching the pearls. Clutching the pearls. Wow, okay. Yeah.

So anyway, look, we are doing other days in the lives. And they won't be as sexy. I'm sorry to sit well. We are talking about the 18th and 19th century here. We're in Britain. We have, you know, George, the third, fourth, all of. of the Georges are there. This is a time when body snatching really takes off or resurrectionists really are part of the landscape in terms of anatomy. We're going to be talking about that as well.

But before we begin, Maddie, before you give us our context for the episode, we've had two now. Well, we're about to have two. Plague doctor, grave robber. Oh, why am I even asking you this? You don't want to be a grave robber, do you? What out of the two? Which of the two? Yeah. I mean, it has to be a grave robber, doesn't it? It has to be because who wants to be a Plague doctor. I don't want to be anywhere near the plague. Thanks very much. No, thank you. I am not going to take up somebody's dead granny. Well, I'd rather do that than get plague. Sorry, Granny. No, I'm going to take the risk. Really? In my sexy plague, Dr. Mask, yeah. Okay. Well, tell me what's happening. You, as you make your way through the city of London and Edinburgh

digging up bodies, what is the context for this, please? Right. So, really, we need to understand, first of all, the history of anatomy schools. So why are people digging bodies up at all? It's so that medical people can dissect them to learn about the human body. This is a practice that has its foundations in the medieval and Renaissance worlds in Europe. There was an anatomical research being done on human cadavers in England in 1540 when it was legalized. It was actually granted permission by Henry VIII. God, he gives everything. Because he's like, he's the sodomy guy as well. Interesting. He brings that law in. Well, you mean he outlaws it, not he grants permission for sodomy. But here's the thing. There's a lot of conversion of laws going on.

from ecclesiastical to legalistic things at this time. So that's why Henry the 8th is lumbered with so many of those. Yeah, so if you're alive in 1540, you can't have sex with a man if you are a man, but you can anatomize a dead body. Okay, I was wondering where that was going. It's like, but what can you have sex with nothing? God. Why do we keep going there?

Probably a big long list of things, let's be honest. So anyway, we are now in the long 18th century. We're in 1812, which is still very much in the 18th century as far as I'm concerned. So from the 1700s onwards, so. Surgeons become a professional body. They become separate from barber surgeons. So people who would cut hair and also performed minor procedures, you know, little cuts and bruises. They would remove things that got stuck in your body. They'd sew back up all of that. But surgeons are suddenly a more skilled group. They are hungry for knowledge and to learn more and to kind of fine tune

their trade. And also, it's no longer associated with the ecclesiastical by the 18th century. So this idea of, you know, being something that's happening within the church is not the case anymore. The demand, therefore, for bodies in order to expand that knowledge is huge. This is a moment when the British Empire is expanding. People are coming across new diseases. People are getting wounded, fighting to expand this empire. There's just a lot of desire, a lot of need for medical treatment of all kinds. So that's what's happening in terms of the anatomy schools. Can I just point out here as well? It's one of the things, I'm really kind of glad that you started with that because I think when we talk about body snatching, the last layer that's always missed off, and we've talked about

this before, is that official kind of upper-class thing that's going on. And because this is being professionalised, it is becoming more and more of an upper-class status job after all those distinctions that you're making between barber surgeons and then this professionalisation of the skill. But those people are the people that are skimmed off the top when we talk about body snatchers. We think about those working-class men, as far as I'm aware, exclusively men, that are skimping together the money to try and survive and that's why they're doing this horrendous thing. But you so easily forget about the anatomists who are way more wealthy, often from well-to-do families by this point, well, maybe younger children of well-to-do families, certainly well-off

middle-middling families. They just get forgotten about. But they're demanding the bodies. Yeah, I have a couple of sidebots there to say, were there women who are body snatches? There must have been equal opportunities. They absolutely should be. We can do whatever. 1812 was famous for those. Famous for those ladies. Yeah. So that would be interesting, to know. There's a period drama in that. If it exists, somebody needs to do it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The other sidebar was if you want to know

more about the culpability of the medical profession in this moment, you can listen to the episode that we did on Birken Hare, the famous body snatches of the 1820s who never snatched a body, by the way, if you haven't listened to that episode. But there we go. We also filmed an entire feature-length documentary, which is... She's on

promotional. You can watch on YouTube now. It was on the history hits subscription channel. It's now available for free on YouTube. Okay, so we now know the context of the anatomy. In terms of London itself, because we are in London. We're not in Edinburgh. I always go to Edinburgh with this because of Birkenhair who didn't even snatch, but London had a pretty significant craze. Yes. So Edinburgh was very much the place to go for anatomy in the late 18th and early 19th century, but London also had a huge scene, an anatomy scene, if you will. So there were hospitals like St. St. Guy's Hospital. I was born at St. Guy's Hospital. I was born at St. Guy's Hospital.

Oh, you actually, yeah. Am I meant to give up personal information like that on the sure they can't do anything about that. I don't think they can. But yeah, I was born on the 13th floor. Oh. Lucky or unlucky. Depends where you're a Swifty or not. Anyway, moving on.

I don't even get that reference. That'll tell you whether I am or not. Let's not get you started on Taylor Swift, weighing in where you are not allowed to be, my friend. If you don't listen, shut up. I have listened to some of her songs. For anyone who didn't catch this controversy and be posted online. I'm going to get.

What did you say? Pat is still popping off, by the way. Yeah. I said, and I stand by this. that the Brontes would not have listened to Taylor Swift, but Jane Austen would. And that Anne would have been tempted into Swiftland, but that the other two would have drawn out of it. And I know what you're going to say, because I've literally had thousands of comments going. They would have loved folklore and they would have loved this.

And I'm just like, that shows about your understanding of the Brontes then. Oh, oh, oh. That shows what you think you know about the Brontes. The nail of the claws are out. Wow. Okay. Well, that's a whole week. That's a book.

This episode in which we angrily debate this with each other because you are wrong. Okay, so we've got St. Thomas's. We've got St. Guy's Hospital. We have St. Barts as well, which interestingly has its own dissection room. So that tells you just how far this profession has moved on, like there are professionalised spaces in order to cut people up. There's also the Royal London Hospital, which has a little bit less money and relies on the cheap supply of unclaimed bodies. So there's already a lot of underground trading going on here. these hospitals cannot possibly consume legitimately the bodies there are allowed because, of course, in this period, the only bodies are allowed are those of executed murderers. Those are the only bodies that are allowed to be used and is part of your punishment as a murderer that you are executed, but then also you are destroyed.

Your body is destroyed publicly in this way. No other person is meant to be used as a cadaver for these purposes, but of course, so many are. And there is a belief floating around at this time that unless your body is intact, that you're not getting into heaven, basically, unless your body is intact. And it's like this is therefore really damning for these murders, but then anybody who is being resurrected, their family, they're going to be really worried about this. Yeah, I agree. Exactly. So it's a huge problem. It's really prevalent across British cities, but especially in Edinburgh and in London at the time, where these centres of anatomy are really, really building. And now we're going to introduce you to the person that we're going to be spending time as for this day in the life. Oh, this is our day. Okay, yes. I forgot that we were doing this. Yeah. This is the format. We are doing the format. We are in a podcast studio, Anthony. You are a presenter of a podcast. Okay. This guy is called Joseph Naples. He's born around 1774 in Deptford, which is in South East Landon. I live near there. Do you? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, lovely. He is the son. And I think this is interesting. He's the son of a respectable stationer and bookbinder. And he said,

in the Royal Navy on a ship called HMS Excellent under none other than Lord Nelson himself. When I was reading these notes, I was like, I am surprised that this is a man who needs to turn to... I was going to say bodybuilding, bodybuilding. I mean, he may well have been doing the bodybuilding. So he does his time in the Navy under Nelson in the 1790s. And by 1800, so he's about, can't do that mass.

Oh, she's trying to, you stuck yourself in there. 26 to 28, something like that. So this is around 1800, 1802. He becomes not a grave robber, but a grave digger. Okay, so it's still respectable. But even still, I'm surprised he's having to do that, depending on how respectable his background is. Anyway, sorry.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose a lot of people would spend time in the army or the Navy for a little bit as young men. They might be wounded and not be able to go back. They might be like, oh, I've seen enough of that to last me a lifetime. No, thank you. Yeah. And you come to a city like London, which is incredibly busy and overcrowded, and growing all the time in this period, you take whatever work you can.

And you do always hear about people being spat out of the Navy where it's, or they leave or whatever. It's just like, oh, and they often become quite poor and destitute, actually. So in that sense, it's. Yeah, I mean, the one thing I would say is it's interesting that he doesn't become a bookbinder like his father. Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. So, like, what's the vibe there? Yeah. Have they fallen out?

Is the father dead? Interesting. Because actually, he might have been apprenticed to his father, but he went to the Navy instead. So, like, there might be a bit of attention. Anyway, he ends up as a grade digger at the Spa Fields Burial ground in Clark &well. Sounds boogie. Spa Fields. Yeah, it does.

If you want to be buried anywhere... Probably shit, though. It's probably terrible. So he's working as a grave digger. It's all legit. But he is coaxed into the dark and murky world of body snatching. As I imagine so many grave diggers were. You can imagine the fee that someone would slip you to be like,

we need to know when this person was buried, how all the body is. Could you either look the other way while we dig it back up? Or would you like to be in on the cash in that we're going to be doing here and be part of it? But that's funny because you're saying being part of it. And there is a kind of a formalised gang in London that is doing this. This is a whole operation. So we've done Birkenhaer in the 1820s in Edinburgh. So it's a whole generation before at the first decades of the 1800s.

And it's a gang named the Borough gang who are like, could that be any more London? I love that. And there's a man called White, who is at the head of this organisation. We're going to hear a bit more about him. But they slip Naples money. They encourage him to be part of this operation. They work through what is called the dissecting season, which is the colder months because, of course. Oh, it's our season.

Yeah, it's a spooky season is also the dice. I'm going to counter dissecting season from now on. That is what we'll be calling it. Welcome to dissecting season because it's colder. Obviously, the bodies are fresher. Yeah. There are more frequent corpses because more people in this period are dying in the cold season, especially poorer people, think about people living on streets, people living, you know, in real poverty who can't heat their own houses and just die of illness or even cold.

they are removing at the height of their powers two to three people a day. It sounds a lot and it doesn't sound a lot in that two to three is not that many. I mean, it's two to three too many. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a day, that adds up pretty quickly and it also means it gives an indication of death,

numbers of death, like in that area that they're operating in. These are all fresh as well. Exactly. The general requirement was a body that had been in the ground for no longer than 48 to 72 hours because it starts to be bad then. and the medical staff don't want to be chopping up those bodies beyond that point. So, yeah, it gives you a sense of how quickly people are being put in the ground and how regularly.

So this gang, we know that the leader is called White, he's body snatcher. We don't really know that much by him other than he's described as a Scotsman, which I do think is interesting given the connection to body snatching in Edinburgh, which has already begun in this period. And of course, later on we have Birken Hare. So I think that was an interesting little detail. It might be that he wasn't from Edinburgh, but I just think there's something that's an interesting.

Either way, it's linking it to that center of anatomy again, right? It's going right back to, oh, this guy is well-seasoned because he's come from the city that everyone in the world looks to for their anatomy lessons. Yeah, exactly. Now, I'm going to tell you the rest of Joseph Naples' story. Yeah. But then we're going to go into what a day in his life would be like. And we know this because of an absolutely incredible document. He kept a diary. That's ridiculous. It's crazy, right? Is this available online? It is available online. It's all digitized. You can read it.

I think there's a digitized copy at the Welcome Collection online. Yeah, he literally kept a diary. And it's blunt and brief. There aren't reams. You know, this isn't Sylvia Plath. Thankfully. Well, can you imagine if Sylvia was a grave digger.

Yes. There'd be too many, yeah, I mean, I can. There'd be too many thoughts and feelings. Like, it would just be too babos. Yeah, she'd be caught because she'd just be sat by the grave, like just crying and like just absolutely thinking about death and everything. We digress. So Joseph Naples is eventually caught

for abusing his job as a grave digger. What he's been doing has been supplying some Bart's hospital with obviously cadavers. And importantly for the law, he has also been stealing the shrouds off the bodies and the coffin fittings. And this is important because whilst it was illegal to anatomise

someone who wasn't an executed criminal, there wasn't a law saying you couldn't remove a body from a grave. Because who owns a body? But you could not remove the things in the body because they belonged to the dead person. Interesting. Yeah.

So that's why he's caught for. He's sentenced to two years at something called the House of Correction, which I think is interesting that he, this isn't a capital offence. This isn't something he's going to be sent to the gallows for, but he has spent two years in this penal institution. And, you know, it's a way of sort of removing people from society for a short period of time, and that is the punishment essentially. He escapes.

What? Yeah. It's quite a dramatic story. He escapes. Guess how he escaped. He makes a skylight in his cell. He's recaptured, and he's recaptured by someone called Benjamin Crouch, who is, in fact, a previous resurrectionist, so a body snatcher, who is now a thief taker. And we absolutely need to do an episode on thief takers. These are criminals in the 18th century who turned informers and then are employed to go out and capture other criminals and bring them back to justice. Obsessed. Those are really famous one in London. I can't remember who's called, he was like the thief catcher. He's a really famous figure. So he's recaptured. He's taken back to. prison. But, and this comes into this class system as well that we have here. So there's a surgeon

and an anatomist called Sir Astley Cooper who has been using Naples services. And he actually vouches for him, which is interesting that he puts his neck on the line. So he manages to get him away from spending too much time in prison beyond that point. But Naples can now no longer work as a grave digger, which is fair. I think that's, we can all respect that decision. We can't trust you with the dead. Yeah, exactly. But this was a case that was reported, you know, across the newspapers. We've got an entry here from the Caledonian Mercury, which is obviously Scottish newspaper, and it doesn't necessarily mean that this news was just reported in Scotland, but simply that it was reported in London and then repeated in the regional papers. It says Joseph Naples, these are the words

of the judge who convicts him when he is sent to prison. It says, Joseph Naples, you're indicted for stealing dead bodies from Sparfield Barrier Ground, and also for stealing caps, pillows, shrouds, snails, screws, coffin plates, belonging there to, and the coffins wearing they've been buried. I love that little list. Yeah, I love the pillows. Yeah. It gives you a sense of how he has been caught and why he's been punished and it's not necessarily for the body's matching itself. Just that, yeah.

where swords were sharp. And hygiene was, actually, probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme,

subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the, so this is the day in the life of. We have that man now. Give me, well, is it a day in the life of or is it a night in the life of? Oh, it's a night in the, well, this is the after talk podcast. It should be a night of. Okay, so imagine that we are Joseph Naples and his gang and we are going out to snatch some bodies before he's caught and punished.

The first thing you would do is you would meet the gang at a prearranged destination. This could be a street corner in Southwick or a nearby burial ground. So they didn't just go to the burial ground where Naples worked. They liked to loosen up a bit. And obviously his skills as a grave digger would come in handy to actually access the bodies. The other thing they did to organise their work, and I'm so obsessed with this detail, is that they organised it via the calendars of the moon. You want to do it on the darkest night possible so you don't get caught.

So when the moon is full and high in the sky, yeah, yeah, I absolutely love that. My kind of romantic vision of this, I had like full moon and we're going by that, no, they need cloud cover and a small little nail moon thing. Which isn't very gothic because you think of it, it would be like under a full moon, but that is an issue. The first quote you're going to hear now from Joseph Naples diary in 1811, which was the year he started writing. This is ridiculous that he keeps a diary. Yeah, so he wrote, I mean, he's not very robust, right. He writes, Thursday the 5th of December 1811, did not go out, moonlight, very strong. So you really had to be organised by the calendars of the moon.

So that's really interesting. Now, the other members of the gang that we would be out with include Ben Crouch, who was one of the leaders. He was interestingly quite wealthy from the body snatching, but he'd made quite a lot of money off it, which I think is really interesting. These aren't desperate, poor people looking to do the job. Patrick Murphy, who's the second in command. He's definitely Irish. Name like that. And then, of course, we have White, who's the Scottish body snatcher.

And he was really involved with the recruitment for the gang. So he would kind of, you know, find the most useful people and bring them all together. You would be carrying tools, as we heard at the beginning of this. You would have a short-handled shovel, presumably short-handled. So it wasn't sticking out of your coat when you're walking down the street. You could disguise your under your cloak or whatever. You'd have a sack to put the body into. Yes.

Which kind of gives me the ick. And also, it needs to be quite a big sack, really. I suppose you could kind of crumple someone up, but that's... It's going to need to be... It's going to need to be big. Because, like, they shoved you over their shoulders often, didn't they, like, as if they were carrying a carcass of a... Oh, like a bag saying swag. Yeah.

Or, like, you know, sometimes they did, they pretended that it was like pigs stuff. Ah. And they just threw it over their shoulders to do that. Okay. Okay. They would also have a hook to open the coffin lid, of course, and to hoik the body out of. They would also have carts and wheelbarrows in case you didn't want to carry these bodies over your shoulder, which kind of makes sense. So, that's the setup.

Now, the gang would have watched in the... the preceding days to see if a funeral was taking place. So they're keeping tabs on lots of different burial grounds, obviously, you're sending different members of the gang out. What they can do individually, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, and to report back. Then you would wait, I say, at least 48 to 72 hours, I suppose, by that point, there are going to be no family members coming to the graveside.

Everyone's done the initial morning, and the body's still fresh, but I suppose maybe people are starting to think, okay, that hasn't been disturbed, that's going to be fine. Like, they're fully in there now. How many days are 72 hours? Three days, yeah. You're like, okay, maybe the danger's over now kind of a thing. Exactly, yeah. But they're still fresh enough that you can pop them right out and take them to the hospital. Now, they often targeted paupers graves. Why do you think that was? Okay. I will guess that it's because, well, I know that things like Mort safe and things start to come in around this time to protect more wealthy families.

So there are mechanisms that are being put in place in and around graves to protect wealthier people. So that's not there in Porper's graves. Also, in many cases in Porper's burials, there's not family that's known necessarily. So they're not necessarily standing watch for that long or whatever it is. So I think there's probably just more opportunity in those poorer graves. Yeah, I agree. I think also the coffins themselves were of a lower quality, right? So it'd be easier to get into.

So you've dug down a little bit with your short-handled spade. You get to the Porpo's grave. It takes about 30 minutes if the soil is fresh, because this is the other thing, right? 30 minutes in total or 30 minutes to dig? 30 minutes in total. Oh, the whole operation, okay. Because if you think about when someone's buried, and you can't put a gravestone, a stone one anyway,

at the head of the grave for something like six months because you have to wait for the soil to settle. Yeah, we do like a year in Ireland or something. Oh, really? Yeah, okay. The soil is loose in those first few 48, 72 hours. So it's easier to dig. So it's not taking them that long. You know, it's just loose stuff.

It's not compacted that well. So you get down to the coffin, open the coffin lid, not the whole lid because you don't need to and it's just too much work then you start to pull out the body you can either do that with your hook this is the gruesome bit I think yeah and I always wonder how much damage is being done to the body at this point because obviously you want to take to the anatomist a body that is in good form

so that it can be cut up how the anatomists want it so you don't really want to be sticking the hook like in the head how else are you going to do it I mean this is literally going to be my question because yeah there's a hook right and it is quite a violent it's like it's a meat hook it must be going in to imagine to the head it must be going inside of it's not it's going under the jaw, you know, and like brings it that way. I don't know if that would bear the weight of the body then.

I'm thinking like the side of the head or the back of the head, but that would be really hard to do. It could be that. But the other thing is it doesn't need to necessarily bear the, hmm, now I sound like I've done this, the weight of the body, because as long as you get them up out of the coffin a little bit, then you can then pull them. That's very true. Yeah, yeah. So some people were easier to remove than others.

So again, we're going to Joseph's diary. In January 1812, he says, got two adults. found them easy to lift. Now, I've just thought of something. They couldn't be putting the hook anywhere into the people because then they're leaving physically. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying. Okay, the anatomists will know they've been snatched because remember these things are lectures. You can't have a thing under the chin because it must be somewhere more discreet. Yeah. So it's not seen. Sorry. So he says he found those two easy to lift.

So this is very kind of, it almost feels like Joseph is taking the piss a little bit. Do you know what I mean? this diary. Like, why is he keeping this record? And it's quite emotionless, actually. Like, it's not got two adults, well, are those men, are those women? Like, what state were they in? How did they die? Do you feel anything? Did you bury them a few days ago as the grave digger? And now you're seeing them again. Like, how does that feel? There's not of that information. Once the body is out of the grave, though, they strip it if it's wearing any kind of clothing, which of course, in a porpoise grave, it might not have been, or it might have been, you know, wearing the most basic shift or

something underneath the clothes they'd worn in life, because, of course, it's theft. So they can't get done for that, although of course that is how Joseph Naples meets his downfall on the end. But generally, they strip the body naked. They cover it and then fresh sheets, put it into the cloth sack, and they're either carrying it over the shoulder or they're whacking it in the wheelbarrow. And of course, you're doing all of this under the cover of darkness without a full moon. But, as we know, from our previous episode on body snatching, you are also up against the watch. And in particular, people who are set to watch over the

Graves' yards themselves. Now, can I just take a second here? You love this history. I do. And it's this thing of going. Can you imagine being, you know, there's a really nice watch house in Greyfriars, the very famous Kirkyard. It's stone, isn't it? It's like built into the wall. Right at the entrance kind of thing. And they would do patrols

and stuff. But can you imagine being in there prior to electricity with your little lamp? Your pistol shaking. Absolutely shaking your tits off. Because it's like, I am so frightened that these people are coming in, despite the fact that I'm I'm here to do this job. And you might be one person there. Could be. Sometimes there was a couple, but it could be on your own.

Yeah. And you would be armed, but you don't know what gangs are coming in and presumably they're going to be armed because they're not going to go down without a fight. At the very least, they've got a meat hook. Yeah, very true. So, you know, these could potentially be dangerous people. So I just, I always imagined them sitting in the little watch. And they're not big buildings, the little watch. They're tiny little stone buildings. If you're lucky stone, there's, at this point, most of them are because they know there's a need to build them. Yeah, they're like, this is a permanent problem.

And like there's loads of them all around the country, loads them in Edinburgh. And it's like, or around Scotland generally. But yeah, just being in that little stone, cold, dimly lit thing, it's really... Do you know what I'd be thinking as well? I'd be thinking, are they really going to go to the effort of digging someone up when I'm here? They could just bash me over the head. Yeah, yeah. And of course, that's what Birkenhair do, right?

They don't ever snatch your body. They just kill people. They cut out the middleman of the graveyard and just go straight from people walking around living. exactly. So that's what I'd be thinking if I was on watch. Making tough target, yeah. Yeah. And of course, sometimes though, the watch does work as a deterrent. Sometimes it does almost catch people. So Naples's diary again from the 13th of January this time in 1812. He says, Met Patrol ran, dropped one adult, dropped one adult. So just one cadaver is just left. And then that watch has to pick that up and put it back in. the grave nicely or, you know, and if the body's been pulled out just by the head and the coffin lid isn't fully open, presumably putting it back in respectfully is a whole job in and of itself, right? You've got to get in the grave. You've got to dig all around the

coffin. You've got to open the lid properly. Do you then need the priest to come and say the words again? You know, like what is the deal there? Like how much admin is that? So you'd be like, freaked out. It's gross. It's sad. It's upsetting. And it's a pain in the ass. So there's all that, but you can just imagine these grave diggers like, leave that one, it's fallen, like, let's go, and they're just running away with this other one in the bag. It's so cinematic, even those few, I mean, it's, there are few words that Naples leaves us. The adrenaline, can't you, on both sides of going, yes, we caught one, that's what we're here for, and then on Joseph's side going, high-tail it out of here, guys.

Yeah, let's go, let's go. And it wasn't just the watch that they were up against as well. It was also dogs. So from December 1811, Naples says, went to harps, which must be a grave-few. somewhere. I can't think what that would be, it sounds like an abbreviation of something. I'm not sure. Could not work. Dogs very bad came home again. Could not work. Dogs very bad. That's my motto for when I write from home. Could not work. Dogs very bad. But dogs very bad. And you know, we again in our moment now, and in the 18th century, you know, we keep dogs as pets, but also dogs very much had a

function as guard dogs in this moment. And you can just imagine in the dock hearing a dog growling or barking and thinking, oh dear, time to run. I'm not facing that in the dark. We don't know how big it is. This is kind of key to after dark, actually. We truly cannot understand the level of darkness that these people are experiencing. We can't access it now. We don't know what that would have been like because, I mean, I'm from the dead of the countryside.

So that might be originally. So that is frightening. You start to populate that landscape as we've said a million times. Your imagination starts to fill it in. So that's happening even in cities where there's lots of noises that you can hear. And yeah, there is. is a lot more light. It's not that there's no lights. But, you know, it's not the same level. This is a different type of darkness. So this is, you know, creepy, AF.

Creepy even when you're not digging up bodies and trying to escape being mauled by a dog or shot by the watch. So we've talked about like mort safes and things like that and how wealthier families could afford the permanent mort safe. What I was found fascinating is that sort of middling people who weren't living in poverty but also weren't particularly wealthy could actually rent the mort safe. And that could be over the grave for, say, six months, at which point nobody wants to dig up granny. So, you know, you then, it goes to someone else, which I just think is like such an interesting system.

And why do people go to all these economies and rules and ways of preserving the body in the ground, all of this built up and things like building the watchman's places to stand or whatever? Why didn't the law just change to make this illegal? Is that not easier? No, no. We'll start renting out pieces of iron. Yeah, we're going to start doing that.

And then also we need to build this stone bit for the guy stand. We still do that today. Yeah. You know, it's human nature. It's so long to get the legislation in place for... Yeah, yeah. So we talked about those things, but there's also traps and alarms. These fascinate me.

These, and I love... They're quite camp. They're quite camp. And you can absolutely picture like a sort of 18th, early 19th century satirical cartoon capturing these, right? So you would have the coffin torpedo. Okay. Have a guess. What do you think is? Okay, wait.

I'm not going to look at the notes. It is in there, but I'm not going to look at it. So coffin torpedo. This is going to be something that, I'm guessing, torpedo that's going to fire at the grave digger. So something triggers some kind of a catch, and that releases something that... He's getting technical. Listen, I know.

That slaps into the face of the grave digger. Yeah, that's basically it. So it's a booby trap. It's essentially right. I think I'm a scientist. You've designed a whole new thing. It's on the coffin lid itself. It's basically a small explosive.

So when you disturb the coffin lid, it blasts open. It can injure the body snatcher. And obviously, it makes a very loud noise as well. So it alerts anyone to what's going on. Presumably that could only be afforded, though, by wealthy people. You've also got grave guns. Is that a thing?

Or are they real guns that people have? No, it's a mechanism. It's a mechanism. Grave guns. Is it actual bullets? So this would be either a flintlock pistol or a musket that was positioned on the grave and there would be a trip wire

and it would go off if you stepped over the trip wall. That would be just me. That happened to me. I wouldn't be trying to rob a grave and I get shot by those things. Oh my God, 100%. You'd be like just hanging out, being spooky, being like,

I love a graveyard. Oh, Death, lovely, lovely, yum, yum, yum, yum. Oh, I've been shot. Shut on the knee. 100%. 100%. Shot on the knee, fall over,

shot in the head by another one from another grave. And then a grave robber comes along, and finally, I was like, oh, this is super easy. Take this guy. And then you end up in St. Bart's in the dissecting room. Yeah, so there was basically lots. And the other thing that people would do is string wire across the grave with bells on.

Yes, I know this one. Which is a little bit more. Creepy, though. Can you imagine hearing that if you were like in the graveyard. Yes, exactly. You'd think, like, dinga, linga, linga, like, not today. Also, how many people, how many watchmen heard those bells go? And there was no one there.

Oh, and there was no one there. Yeah, because even the bit of wind would do that. Yeah, exactly. And you'd be thinking, has someone come up out of the grave? What's happening here? In a world where swords, Shah. And hygiene was, actually, probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive head first into the mud, blood, and very strange customs

of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So you have your body escaped all of these traps and now you're taking this to the anatomist which is the whole reason you're doing this to get money what kind of financial exchanges in this for you?

It better be good. It was lucrative. So if you brought a large adult definition of large, unclear, but I suppose like maybe be a large man, for example. You could expect to collect between two and three pounds, which was pretty significant. It's about £250 in today's money, which for the exchange of a human body does not seem that much, but at this time, thinking about £250, £250, the equivalent

of to these people living, if you're a grave digger, you're not being paid that much per day. Again, it's very hard for us to understand what the equivalent of £250 would have meant. I always quibble slightly in terms of, you know, what did this mean in modern money? Like, it's not really equivalent, but it gives you a sense, at least. If you bought a small body, so largely something like a body of a child, or I suppose a small woman, or indeed a small man, you... Small, basically. It's small, just a small person, like equal opportunities for all these small people. You could earn between 10 shillings and a pound. So it's still significant. Now, you could also earn extras. And this was not for a whole body, but for limbs or parts of a body.

What's happened there, that they've only come away with an arm or something? Exactly. Well, imagine if you've got the hook in the wrong bit, you've come away with an arm or a torso or something. It's not great. But people still wanted these things, right? They still wanted, I mean, could totally picture like a hand being dissected with all the tendons and things. You know, you can really envisage that. So people in the medical profession would absolutely accept that as well. This is interesting because it does show what you are able to do because the night's work that you're doing at. as a body snatcher is probably equivalent to a week's work that you're doing in some more legit jobs. And so you really are trying to give yourself a foot up. And you know, it's very easy to just be like, oh, these were ghouls and gruesome people. But actually, in a society that wants to keep you down and will do everything a bloody can to do so. If you're presented with a way out, I don't know, like, we could never know what's going on. But like, it's tempting

to get a week's wages in one night. And what if you do that? five nights or three nights or whatever it is like three weeks wages in and we know that this borough gang that members of the gang were incredibly wealthy from this right so it does and also i think it speaks as well to we imagine that everyone in the past until at least the victorian era all believed in god to the same extent and they all subscribed to the same belief system but actually i think what you see here is people who okay they may believe in an afterlife and that they are somehow disturbing that for these people they may believe in that to a certain extent but they're not needs as the living trump what's happening to the dead. And they're like, these people don't need

their bodies anymore. That's how the anatomists are looking at it. Yeah. That's definitely how they're justifying it. So why wouldn't the working poor be justifying it in a similar way, even if they're not thinking in terms of anatomy, they're thinking in terms of finance. Yeah. But of course, not everyone felt that way. And there was, you know, huge abhorrence of this practice as well. It wasn't that everyone saw the practical nature of it in a lot of ways. So alongside that kind of public abhorrence, we do then move towards a time where there is a legislative change. And this actually is really effective legislation because it more or less stops this dead and extracts. Not 100%, but it really, really brings it to an end. Yeah. So there's this moral outcry, I suppose, against the practice

of body snatching. And specifically, actually, against the anatomy schools, interestingly, considering, you know, we talk about how today we've forgotten their culpability, but that was not forgotten at the time. You know, there are riots in London. In 1788, the London Borrell riot, attacks St Thomas's Hospital. Ironically, a place where Naples is later allowed to work after he's done being a grave digger. Oh, well, somebody got him a job there that he knew then. Absolutely, and you know what?

He was comfortable handling the bodies, so there we go. And there was a similar anatomy theatre riot in the 1740s, so quite early in Edinburgh, right? So people are really pushing against this as a practice. And as you say, we do get in 1832 the Anatomy Act. So this basically regulates the dissection of human bodies of medical study and teaching. And it provides a sort of a legal supply of not just the bodies of murderers anymore, but unclaimed bodies. Right. Yes. So they're legislating the types of bodies and they're giving them more bodies.

You don't have to be a murder anymore. There's just... They're still predominantly poor people, though. They're bodies that have been unclaimed people who've died in the workhouse, who've died in prison, who've died out on the street. So in the same way that these poor people were the ones that were predominantly. permanently being dug up. They're still ending up on the anatomist's slab, but in a way that is now legitimate, the state is legitimizing it, basically, because it sees that this whole system, this whole economy of underground moonlit or not moonlit activity is just, it's not sustainable

in the long run and people as a society at large are pushing against it and it has to stop. This has always been one of those topics that, for me, it's because it's so visual and visceral that's always intrigued me and also to try and put yourself into the mindset of somebody who is going, I am going to do this. This is a legitimate thing that I am, well, illegitimate thing that I am going to do. But like, I just, and then the visual of the cover of night and they're moving in these different alleyways down rivers. It's so cinematic. You know, it's so easy to imagine these things. Before we wrap up, I just want to give a taste from Joseph Nable's diary that Maddie's been talking about, is just a quick line that says that in 1812, he cut three heads for

Brooks, hard work, Tom fainted, I did not. It's just, it gives you an idea, doesn't it? I'm going, oh, this, even the people who are doing it don't necessarily have the constitution to do it. But I think that kind of sums up the tension that even the people that are doing it are having. This is, this is gruesome, gruesome stuff. But anyway, look, perfect stuff for after dark. That's why we feature all of these things. And I think it helps us to understand the minds. out of people in a different time. So it's a fascinating way to look at this. I don't think I've changed my mind, though, about being a day in the life of a plague doctor. I don't want to do that either. But of the two, if I'm honest, I feel like you would not enjoy being a plague doctor

because, yeah, you, you would. Well, I wouldn't, but go on. I feel like, that would be a lot of hassle for you. And you'd be hot in the suit. And I'd be too warm. And you'd be like, stop asking me for help, you're all dying and I don't want to be touched. But we'd stay very distant. Remember the stick. But, well, that's true. And also, I do think we've talked before how you'd like to be a death dula. And I do think you would enjoy the calmness. Not that I'd like to be, but that like... You would be able to do it. You'd be good at that.

But do you think you'd be good at it. We should have a death dula on after dark. We totally should that be really interesting. Yeah, we totally should. Anyway, sorry. Listen, that's for another episode. If you'd like to hear a death dula coming after dark and talk to us about death If you are a death dula, oh my God. Yeah. If you're a death dula and you listen, then please let us know. otherwise you can go back and listen to our Birken Hair episode. You can watch our work and hair

documentary as Maddie has already said. We have different historical anatomy things. We've got the operating theatre with Sarah. We've had Cat Irving on quite a few times. We've had Cat Buyers on. There's lots of dead bodies floating around in the back catalogue of After Dark few to go and listen to. So please do...

To go and excavate. Come on, mate. Very good. It's like you're presenting a podcast. And if you have any future ideas, I know you've been sending these in already for any other days in the life. Day in the Life of the Prince Regent, that would be one for me. I'd like to do Day in Life of a Soldier in the First World Trenches. Get in touch if you have any ideas at After Dark at HistoryHit.com.

That's After Dark at HistoryHit.com. And until next time, thanks for listening.