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Resurrection Men
Sep. 24th, 2022 03:33 pmA resurrection man digs up corpses for a living. In the 1800s, it was illegal to do anything with a dead body but bury it. This meant that medical students couldn't dissect and examine the human body, and it deeply hurt our understanding of medicine. For a long time, there was a thriving underground (cough cough) market of corpses. Resurrection men haunted cemeteries to watch for funerals, and the night after a fresh interment, they'd sneak into the graveyard with their shovels (made of wood because metal shovels are louder) and get to work. They sold the bodies they took to medical schools. Lots of men made a living this way.
Once the students were finished with a given body, it fell to them to rebury the remains. They rarely took them back to the original grave--too much risk of getting caught. Instead, they buried them in any remote place. In Ann Arbor, a favorite place was a track of woodland just past the then-boundary of the university. People sometimes noticed lights out there, and declared the area was haunted. It became known locally as Sleepy Hollow.
A couple hundred years later, the university bought the tract of land but let it lay fallow. A few years ago, however, the university decided to develop the spot. The workers were startled to uncover hundreds of human bones. Thinking it was perhaps the dumping ground for a serial killer, they called the police, who determined that the bones were far too old. It was then everyone realized the bones were the result of decades of reburials by early medical students.
Benjamin Franklin's house in Philadelphia was also the subject of some bemusement. Recently, researchers discovered a cache of human bones buried under his cellar. The most likely explanation was that he let college students or other researchers rebury dissected corpses there so they wouldn't have to risk hauling them through town.
Eventually, the law was changed. Bodies of prisoners, or people who died in poorhouses, or who went unclaimed at the town morgue became legal for medical examination. Then people were allowed to donate themselves to scientific study. There's no more need for resurrection men.
But the idea intrigued me. What would it be like to live that way? Did the job bother these men? What kind of relationship did you have with the local gravedigger?
I decided to find out. The result was Resurrection Men. It goes on sale October 1, and is available for pre-order. Have a look!
Once the students were finished with a given body, it fell to them to rebury the remains. They rarely took them back to the original grave--too much risk of getting caught. Instead, they buried them in any remote place. In Ann Arbor, a favorite place was a track of woodland just past the then-boundary of the university. People sometimes noticed lights out there, and declared the area was haunted. It became known locally as Sleepy Hollow.
A couple hundred years later, the university bought the tract of land but let it lay fallow. A few years ago, however, the university decided to develop the spot. The workers were startled to uncover hundreds of human bones. Thinking it was perhaps the dumping ground for a serial killer, they called the police, who determined that the bones were far too old. It was then everyone realized the bones were the result of decades of reburials by early medical students.
Benjamin Franklin's house in Philadelphia was also the subject of some bemusement. Recently, researchers discovered a cache of human bones buried under his cellar. The most likely explanation was that he let college students or other researchers rebury dissected corpses there so they wouldn't have to risk hauling them through town.
Eventually, the law was changed. Bodies of prisoners, or people who died in poorhouses, or who went unclaimed at the town morgue became legal for medical examination. Then people were allowed to donate themselves to scientific study. There's no more need for resurrection men.
But the idea intrigued me. What would it be like to live that way? Did the job bother these men? What kind of relationship did you have with the local gravedigger?
I decided to find out. The result was Resurrection Men. It goes on sale October 1, and is available for pre-order. Have a look!
