Irish Ghost Tales by Tony Locke Page A

(quieter than metal). When they reached the coffin (graves used to be quite shallow), they broke open the coffin, put a rope around the corpse and dragged it out.
    Another method used by the grave robbers was to remove a square of grass about twenty feet away from the head of the grave. They would then tunnel down (about four feet) to intercept the coffin. A small boy would be employed to crawl down the tunnel and the end of the coffin would then be pulled off. He would place a noose around the neck of the corpse and it would be pulled up slowly through the tunnel. The square of grass would then be replaced and no one would be any the wiser. This method was used if the grave was protected by an iron cage or railings as it allowed the grave robbers access without disturbing the actual area of the grave site.
    During 1827 and 1828 William Burke and William Hare took bodysnatching one step further. They began to murder people in order to keep up with the demand for fresh corpses from the medical profession. This was to lead to the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832. Burke and Hare were both from Ulster and had gone to Edinburgh in Scotland to work as navigational engineers, or ‘navvies’, on the New Union Canal. This they did during the day but at night they took to their other more sinister and profitable trade: grave robbing, at first, and later murder. Their victims were usually those who wouldn’t be missed: the homeless, orphans, travellers. Soon they began to target drunks and others who roamed the dark streets at night. They would follow them and then strangle them when they got the chance, thus ensuring an undamaged corpse.
    Another Irish connection led to the eventual end of these gruesome activities. Mrs Docherty had recently arrived from Ireland. Burke met her in a local shop and befriended her. He invited her home to his lodgings for a bite to eat and it was there he murdered her. It was believed that Burke and Hare murdered up to thirty people, but Burke was the only one prosecuted
    Hare turned ‘king’s evidence’ and appeared as a witness for the prosecution when Burke was tried for the murder of Mrs Docherty. On his testimony, Burke was found guilty and was hanged on 28 January 1829. Hare was reported to have died a penniless pauper in London in 1858. The final twist in the story was that Burke’s body was donated to medical science for dissection and his skeleton is still displayed in Edinburgh’s University Medical School. His skin was used to make a wallet and this is displayed at the Police Museum in Edinburgh.
    In Ireland, the medical schools of Dublin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were constantly looking for new corpses. The Bully’s Acre, or Hospital Fields, at Kilmainham was a rich source of new corpses as it was a communal burial ground and easily accessed. Soldiers attached to the nearby Royal Hospital were always on the alert for grave robbers, mainly because many of their comrades were buried there. In November 1825 a sentry captured Thomas Tuite, a known resurrectionist, in possession of five bodies. When searched, his pockets were found to be full of teeth – in those days a set of teeth fetched £1.
    Many other graveyards were targets of the medical students or those who made robbing graves their profession. The largest cemetery in Ireland – Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, which was laid out in the eighteenth century – had a high wall with strategically placed watchtowers, as well as bloodhounds, to deter body snatchers. Even as late as 1853, a pack of Cuban bloodhounds was on patrol in Glasnevin cemetery.
    Dublin’s proximity to the sea meant that Irish corpses were exported to England and Scotland in barrels and crates so they could be sold to their medical schools.
    Once corpses were dug up they were stripped of everything and just the body was taken. The reason for this was that if you took anything from the corpse it was considered a theft. The government tended to