RISE OF THE RESURRECTIONISTS IN GREAT BRITAIN HQ 



cadavers. To meet this challenge, there arose a group of indi- 

 viduals, who by contrast, were given the name of "rascals." They 

 were made up of low-class rowdies, criminals, gravediggers and 

 sextons whose ultimate aim was to make money at the trade. It 

 did not take them long to commercialize the whole practice. They 

 found it an exciting form of employment which required more 

 brawn than brain, or at most what was needed was a crafty type 

 of intelligence. At first, the men in this group were recruited^ from 

 the laborers in the graveyard who were careful to hide behind 

 the curtain of night for the transaction of their business; know- 

 ing the landmarks and working in secret they, in general, escaped 

 notice. Others, of diverse ranking and personality, muscled-in on 

 the profit making enterprise. The smartest among them organized 

 others into gangs. At the beginning of the 19th Century, they 

 operated in the form of unlicensed and unwanted guilds in all 

 of the principal cities of the British Isles: London, Edinburgh, 

 Glasgow and Dublin. They were not averse to invading every 

 burial ground and cemetery in these urban centers; they also 

 roamed far afield in rural areas looking for fresh bodies when 

 the pickings were slight in the cities. Continued success and 

 ever keener competition made them bolder in their methods. 



The economic law of supply and demand worked perfectly 

 in the gradually expanding resurrectionist enterprise. When the 

 need was small, only a few men engaged in the traffic, and the 

 price was pegged accordingly at 2 pounds, or less. After the num- 

 ber of students and teachers multiplied sixfold, creating a marked 

 scarcity, extortion was employed and the cost of an individual 

 cadaver skyrocketed to as much as 14 pounds; this, in turn, at- 

 tracted more "rascals" to the trade. 



During the early part of the medical renaissance in Great 

 Britain, the building of anatomical and pathological museums 

 was in vogue, in all quarters. Whenever an abnormal or unusual 

 specimen presented itself, every attempt, which sometimes in- 

 cluded subterfuge, was made to gain possession of it. Occasionally, 

 a living individual with a diagnosed rarity, would be watched 

 closely, with the idea in mind of trying to obtain his body after 

 death. In this category, there seemed to be a fascination for the 

 giants of the period. 



