Today’s Extralegal Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Dissection as punishment – the legal judgment that added dissection to the death sentence – had been established in the West during the Renaissance, and eighteenth-century America’s few dissection laws stipulated that certain executed criminals be turned over to doctors. This was the case in early-nineteenth-century Britain as well, where executed prisoners provided the only legal source of bodies. With supply falling far short of demand, grave robbing was both widespread and lucrative.
The most infamous incident occurred in the 1820s, when in Edinburgh William Burke and William Hare suffocated some sixteen men and women to sell their bodies to Scotland’s leading anatomy professor. (The murders introduced a new verb to the English language: to burke is to kill secretly by suffocation or strangulation for the express purpose of selling the victim’s body for dissection.) Once Burke and Hare were discovered, their case led to a celebrated murder trial. Hare turned King’s evidence and escaped prosecution; Burke was hanged and his body publicly dissected.
Partly as a result, in 1832 the British Anatomy Act was passed, abolishing the dissection of executed criminals and decreeing instead that the unclaimed bodies of people who died in hospitals and workhouses be turned over to the anatomists. As historian Ruth Richardson has pointed out, “What had for generations been a feared and hated punishment for murder became one for poverty.” Massachusetts passed a similar anatomy act in 1831, Connecticut in 1833, New Hampshire in 1834, and Michigan in 1844. Especially with the proliferation of medical schools during the first half of the century, however, a shortage of cadavers continued to lead medical teachers to rely on extralegal sources.
Culled from: Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
Vintage Crime Photos!
A cache of vintage crime photos from the LAPD archives has recently been unearthed and over two hundred of them are on display at the Fototeka website. Of course, they are a fascinating peek into LA’s seedy past. (Thanks to Howard for the link.)