This article first appeared in Origins, the journal of the Buckinghamshire Family History Society, Vol 48, no 2, Summer 2024, and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Editor, Rebecca Gurney.
Gwyneth Wilkie.
Grave-robbing is mostly associated with large cities with burgeoning medical schools, such as Edinburgh and London. It is not what you might expect to find when combing the Buckinghamshire Archives catalogue for anything to do with medical practitioners in Amersham. The initial hit was the description ‘of the medical profession’ applied to Henry Okes Bradford, assistant to Mr ‘Ramsey’ [Rumsey], surgeon of Amersham, who was called as a witness in a trial at the Epiphany Quarter Sessions in 1821.
The expanded version of the catalogue entry showed that three men had been put on trial for ‘unlawfully entering churchyard and digging up and taking away dead body of John Aries’. So this was clearly a case of body-snatching but there was nothing about it in the British Newspaper Archive, except for one brief mention of the men’s names and that they were charged with ‘stealing dead bodies’. [1]
The catalogue entry read as follows:
‘R. v Thomas King, Robert Clark, Thomas Robinson, Great Missenden
On 6th December 1820, unlawfully entering churchyard and digging up and taking away dead body of John Aries.
Witnesses: Charles Cortis, Amersham, bailiff to Mr. Drake, Shardeloes, James Rogers, butcher, Amersham, Henry Okes Bradford, “of medical profession”, assistant to Mr. Ramsey, surgeon of Amersham, Samuel Clark, baker, Gt. Missenden, John Aries, keeper to Earl Bridgewater, father of dead child, Daniel Belch, silk weaver at Amersham, John Salter, labourer in Squire Drake’s garden, lives at Amersham.
Guilty – Each fined £10. and imprisoned for 12 months, and until fine is paid.’
This is a synopsis of the Justices Case Notes at Q/JC/4/8, which briefly summarised the proceedings and seems to be the only account available of this trial.
At 8am on 6 December 1820 Charles Cortis, the bailiff at Shardeloes, had seen the three men with a horse and cart and thought they looked suspicious. An hour later a young man reported to him that he had seen a package containing a dead body hidden in some leaves. This appears to have been John Salter, a labourer in Squire Drake’s garden at Shardeloes. Cortis decided to pursue them, taking with him James Rogers, a butcher. They overtook the cart between Chalfont St Giles and Chalfont St Peter and stopped them from going further. The men were handcuffed and placed in the [Parish] Constable’s gig.
On arrival at Amersham the package found in the back of the cart was taken to the Vestry Room and opened. Henry Okes Bradford, who was then assistant to Mr Rumsey, surgeon of Amersham, was sent for by the Reverend W Jones and when called as a witness stated that the body had been rolled into as little a space as possible. The boy had probably been dead for 7 or 8 days and could have been aged about 7.
The body was identified by his father John Aries, keeper to Earl Bridgewater. The child was aged 4 and had a speck on his lip. William Child, a baker from Great Missenden who had known the boy, confirmed his identity. He had died on 25 November 1820 and been buried 4 days later.
The three men were then taken to Aylesbury. The Calendar of Prisoners for the Epiphany Quarter Sessions shows that they were ‘Committed 6th December 1820 by the Revd Wm Jones charged upon the Oaths of Charles Cortis & others on a strong Suspicion of having on the Night of the 5th or Morning of the 6th of Decr instant dug up & carried away the dead Bodies of a certain Woman & also of a certain Male Infant of the Age of about 7 Years whose names are at present unknown.’[2]
This is the only indication that there was a second body. If there was, perhaps she could not be identified, as she was not mentioned in the charge when the case came up for trial in January 1821.
Cortis testified that one of the prisoners had in his pocket a package containing several turnscrews, a gimlet and a packing needle. The fresh dirt on the screwdriver, which was white and chalky, looked the same as that on the prisoner’s breeches, which were still wet.
The prisoners claimed not to know each other. Thomas King said he was not with the others but was on his way to Brentford. Robert Clark stated that he had come across Robinson driving the cart and had asked him if he could throw his frock into the cart. He was a navigator [a labourer excavating canals] and had not previously met Robinson. Robinson tried to exonerate the other two, declaring that they were not involved and had not been present. The tools had been given to him by ‘the parties concerned’.
Their stories were challenged by the statement given by Daniel Belch, a silk weaver of Amersham. He deposed that he had seen the three men together in the Chequers pub, Amersham, the afternoon before they were apprehended. They had left between 3 and 4 o’clock, having spent an hour and a half there drinking from a single pot.
The magistrates had heard enough to decide that all three were guilty. They were sentenced to 12 months imprisonment plus a fine of £10, to be paid before they were released.
The Background
The Buckinghamshire Burial Index contained details of a 4 year-old child, John Ayris, having been buried on 29 November 1820 at Great Missenden. The body-snatchers would presumably have wanted to disinter him as soon after burial as possible. The distribution of witnesses is surprising, as only one came from Great Missenden. It seemed likely that the cadaver would have been intended to be sold in London, where fresh corpses were in great demand for students in all the hospital and private medical schools of the capital.
By this date many private medical schools had been set up. Medicine towards the end of the eighteenth century was looked upon as a good career but by the 1820s there appeared to be an excess of supply over demand and it was generally held that the profession had become overcrowded.[3] This led to fiercer competition for the openings available. At the same time scientific advances were being made and the importance of a sound knowledge of anatomy was more widely acknowledged. This necessitated an adequate supply of dead bodies. The optimum ratio of cadavers to students was thought to be 3:1. Two bodies were used to learn anatomy and the third to practise operations. Meanwhile the number of students in London alone was calculated to have increased from around 300 in 1798 to approximately 1,000 by 1828.[4] For several centuries the traditional source of supply had been the donation of the bodies of executed criminals to official entities such as the Company of Barber Surgeons, which had never been adequate.
This meant that there was a ready market for those willing to supply fresh cadavers, who became known, amongst other labels, as resurrectionists. It was a seasonal trade, best carried out in cold weather as that slowed putrefaction. The extent to which corpses were treated as merchandise is revealed in evidence given to the 1828 Select Committee on Anatomy. Prices had ranged between two and twenty guineas but were settling at around 8 guineas. In the 1790s the notorious Lambeth gang had been offering children’s corpses at six shillings for the first foot [in length] plus ninepence for every extra inch.[5]
Figures quoted in Appendix C of the Poor Law Commissioners’ First Annual Report (pp 354-5) show agricultural labourers in Bucks in the 1830s earning 7 or 8 shillings a week, supplemented by some income from other family members when possible. 7 shillings was one-third of a guinea, so it is easy to see how tempting the crime might be, especially in hard weather, when agricultural wages were down while outgoings for food, fuel and clothing went up.[6]
The eventual passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832 aimed to bring an end to a repugnant trade while still assuring an adequate supply of cadavers for medical training. In future these could be supplied from workhouses and hospitals when no relatives came forward to claim the body.[7]
The Offence
The charge upon which they had been arrested was ‘unlawfully entering churchyard and digging up and taking away dead body of John Aries’. When body-snatchers took away a shroud or parts of a coffin, this constituted theft, which was a felony and thus subject to severe penalties.
The legal precedent for the offence of disinterment, Rex versus Lynn, had been heard in in 1788 before the King’s Bench. It was decided then that the carrying away of a body from a churchyard, even though for the purpose of dissection, constituted a misdemeanour as it was an offence contra bonos mores and common decency.[8] The law had not changed since. Since a body could not be defined as anyone’s property, unlawful disinterment could not be classified as theft and typically was punished by a fine or six months’ imprisonment. Where the body-snatchers had links with a particular medical school or surgeon, the fines might be paid for them, or other support given.[9]
Other sentences handed down around this time highlight the difference in outcomes for those charged with misdemeanour or felony. In December 1820 in Norfolk a man was transported for 7 years for for stealing 19 geese and 8 ducks and stealing some pork and a cheese resulted in two years imprisonment — double the time to be served by the three men, which was already twice the average.[10]
This was an offence which could cause enormous distress to relatives and some adopted defensive measures such as mort-safes or even booby-trapped graves to frustrate grave-robbers. This may help to account for body-snatchers ranging further afield where people were likely to be less vigilant.
Deep-seated fears, part pagan, part Christian, made people view the dismemberment of bodies with horror. If a body could not be reconstituted, how could the reunion of body and soul at the Last Judgement take place?[11]
THE PEOPLE INVOLVED
The three men arrested Disappointingly it has been impossible to get further information about the prisoners. They all have fairly common names and without extra detail such as their age it is impossible to get them to stand out from the crowd. It looks as though Thomas Robinson, who owned or had the use of the cart, was a key figure. Robert Clark, the navigator, may have been recruited because of his specialised skill. Canal (and later railway) navvies were renowned for their prowess in shifting large amounts of earth at speed. Thomas King may or may not have had some connection with Brentford.
Charles Cortis appeared in the 1841 census aged 61, so was born in about 1780. He was living at Coldmoreham House which is where the Shardeloes estate office was to be found and was clearly a figure of authority to whom anything causing concern might be referred. The 1851 census adds that he was born in Ashby, Lincolnshire. His retirement followed soon after and on 5 October both the Bucks Herald (p 5) and the Bucks Advertiser (p 6) carried accounts of the dinner given in his honour and the speeches made. He died in 1853. He and his wife Dinah, who died in 1858, were both buried at St Mary’s, Amersham.[12]
James Rogers is likely to have been the Parish Constable as he is listed immediately after Charles Cortis. Cortis took Rogers with him in pursuit and it was the parish constable’s gig which was used to bring the three men back to Amersham. The 1830 Pigot’s Directory lists a James Rogers, butcher, in the High Street while the tithe map shows him as owner and occupier of plot 362, a house, yard and garden between Coldmoreham House and the Market Hall not far from where the Museum is now.
In the days before the County police forces were formed the job of parish constable was undertaken for a year at a time. It was an unpopular post partly because of the impact on earnings of having to spend a lot of time on parish business. If churchwardens accounts or Vestry minutes survived from this period it should have been possible to see who held this post.
John Aries/Aris/Ayris
Has not been found in the 1841 census. It seems likely that he and his wife Elizabeth had two more children who were baptised at Great Missenden in 1822 and 1824. In 1824 he is described merely as ‘servant’ but the 1822 entry records him as a gamekeeper residing at Water End, which was in Hertfordshire. The Earl of Bridgwater seems to have held numerous parcels of land locally, including in West Wycombe, Ivinghoe and Wendover, and to have had a financial interest in building the canal connecting Aylesbury and Wendover with the Grand Junction Canal.[13] Gamekeepers moved around quite frequently, so Aries may have been transferred to another estate if he stayed with the same employer.
William Child, baker of Great Missenden. The 1847 Pigot’s Directory does not list him among the 9 bakers and flour dealers of Great Missenden, although a Benjamin Child, clockmaker, does appear.
Reverend William Jones It was on his sworn oath that the three men were committed to prison. It is likely that he was the Reverend William Jones who was lord of the manor of Chalfont St Giles and resided at The Stone. If so he died in 1837. He may have had jurisdiction over the place where the arrest was made and certainly would have been a person of authority in the neighbourhood.
John Salter Salter is a surname with a long history in Amersham but even so no further information has come to light about him.
Daniel Belch He was a local man and a silk weaver. Amersham had a silk mill on a site now underneath Tesco’s car park in the old town and not far upstream from the Chequers pub. He cannot be found in the 1841 census in which 7 other silk weavers appear.[14]
Henry Okes Bradford successfully completed his apprenticeship and went on to become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 4 September 1829. In 1832 he published a book co-authored with his late father Robert Bradford and dedicated to HRH the Duchess of Kent, The Mother’s Medical Guide Containing a Description of the Diseases Incident to Children with the Mode of Treatment, as far as can be Pursued with Safety, Independently of a Professional Attendant. This can be found in Google Books.[15]
The Sun Fire Insurance records show that he was insuring premises in Tottenham Court Road, London, during the 1830s. He married Frances Knight, only daughter of the late Captain John Knight, on 10 January 1838 at St Pancras but from 1841 seems to have been producing children with Angelina Davenport Why, whom he married on 27 April 1853 at Holborn St Andrew. The register recorded him as a widower. The 1841 census showed him as a surgeon living on his own in the St Pancras area. In 1851 and 1861 he can be found with Angelina and their children, still shown as a surgeon but not practising. He died aged 71 in 1874 in Birmingham after appearing in the final census there as a pawnbroker.
Although at the time this must have been a shocking incident, very little information is available about it. If this article can bring forth from family or local historians any further details about the people concerned it will have done its job.
Gwyneth Wilkie
[1] Oxford University and City Herald, 13 Jan 1821, p 4. The earliest newspaper with Buckinghamshire in the title in the British Newspaper Archive’s online collection dates from 1829.
[2] I am most grateful to Brian Horridge for a facsimile of this entry.
[3] Anne Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720-1911, 1994, p 36, and Irvine Loudon, Medical Care and the General Practitioner 1750-1850, 1986, p 208
[4] Suzie King, Bodysnatchers, 2016, p 19
[5] Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, 1988, p 57
[6] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075935373&seq=370
[7] See Elizabeth T Hurren, Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor, c.1834-1929, 2012
[8] Report of the Select Committee on Anatomy, 1828, pp 6 and 145, available through the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum Library website at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hyjrxujv/items?canvas=149&query=guineas
[9] Kevin Goodman, The Diggum Uppers: Body Snatching and Grave Robbing in the Black Country, 2014, p 14
[10] Bury and Norwich Post, 20 Dec 1820, p 3
[11] Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, 1989, pp 15-17
[12] For a list of Monumental Inscriptions at St Mary’s church see
https://amershammuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Monumental-Inscriptions-pdf.pdf
[13] See Buckinghamshire Archives catalogue, particularly D-BAS/37/565 and D-D/6/8
[14] For further information on the silk mill see https://amershammuseum.org/history/trades-industries/textile-production-in-amersham/
[15] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9IX6sAkuAa4C&pg=PP7&lpg=PP7&dq=%22henry+okes+bradford%22&source=bl&ots=bRScl0B6yO&sig=ACfU3U0Rse7SHdY_iVhTbOoQiW85vrxIng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPicLEiNL8AhXTa8AKHWO1AOYQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=%22henry%20okes%20bradford%22&f=false