41823. ] Report from the Dissection Commitice. 339 
— 
This difficulty of obtaining subjects sprang not immediately from the 
increasing demand—for people died fast enough—pretty nearly as fast as 
they did before—though, if registers, and returns, and calculations are 
at all to be relied upon, they do die now-a-days a year or two later than 
formerly—but from the greater number of detections, consequent on 
the greater demand—by which detections the facts of disinterments 
became more notorious—the public feeling was kindled—the sympathy 
spread—and greater vigilance was every where employed. The body- 
snatchers were regarded and treated as criminals; and, despicable as 
they were before, they degenerated—for even that was possible—till they 
became desperate. They grew careless of appearances; and greater 
publicity and greater indignation followed. To force a rise of prices, 
they voluntarily augmented the peril of their own hazardous trade ; they 
contested in the very graves the possession of the spoil—left those graves 
exposed—and gave information to magistrates, and to the friends of the 
disinterred, against their rivals. To extort gratuities, and to crush com- 
petition, they proceeded to still farther acts of violence, and excited the 
populace against the professors of anatomy. On one occasion, Mr. 
Brooks says, three subjects, for which he gave sixteen guineas each, 
were taken from him, in consequence of information by the very man 
who sold them; and once, on refusing a douceur of five guineas at the 
commencement of the season, “ some of them came in the dusk of the 
evening with two subjects, in a high state of decomposition, in a chaise- 
cart; one of which they dropped at the Poland-street end of Marl- 
borough-street, and the other at the end of Blenheim-street ; and, shortly 
afterwards, two young ladies, nicely dressed, stumbled over one of these 
horrible subjects, which raised such a commotion, that, had it not been’ 
for the prompt assistance of Sir Robert Baker and the police establish- 
ment, he might have been sacrificed to popular fury.’ These things 
tended still farther to bring resurrection-deeds to light, and exasperate 
the public prejudices against snatcher and anatomist alike. The diffi- 
culty is again augmented by the apprehensions of the friends of the 
deceased, who keep watch over the grave, and, in numerous instances, 
have taken the law into their own hands, and fired upon the desperadoes. 
In Glasgow, the students themselves dug up the bodies. Every teacher 
had what was called his “private party,” consisting generally of eight ; 
these were the dissecting students—none others dissected ; and these 
had no other resource than plundering the graves with their own hands. 
They were frequentiy shot at; and now that this miserable course is 
abandoned, the state of the Glasgow school is deplorable. Not more than 
two or three in the course of a season are obtained by exhumation, and 
these are obliged to be salted and dried. It short, it has at last become 
positively impracticable to obtain an adequate supply from this source. 
In this scarcity and perplexity, the resurrection-men, not disposed of 
_ course to stick at any thing, broke into the houses of undertakers, and 
stole bodies before burial ; while others personated the relatives, and 
_ applied to workhouses and hospitals for possession, which of course could 
aeceed now and then. Expedients of better promise were fallen 
cially importations from Paris and Dublin; but even this 
t dwindled to nothing—the bodies for the most part did not 
come in an useable state, and antiseptics have hitherto done little. “ The 
Secretary of State,” says Dr. Somerville, “ gave permission to the Cus- 
tom-house to allow bodies to be imported; and one of the conditions 
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