Free The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Montillo Page A

them.
    The money the resurrection men earned was appealing. A corpse could yield more than a week’s pay at any menial job. There was something in the forbidden act itself that was alluring to many as well. Christian Baroent described his work by saying, “The time chosen in dark winter nights . . . A hole was dug down to the coffin, only where the head lay—a canvas sheet being stretched around to receive the earth, and to prevent any of it spoiling the smooth uniformity of the grass. The digging was done with short, flat, dagger-shaped implements of woods, to avoid the clicking of iron striking stones. In reaching the coffin, two broad iron hooks under the lid, pulled forcibly up with a rope, broke off a sufficient portion of the lid to allow the body to be dragged out . . . the surface of the ground was carefully restored to its original conditions . . . the whole process could be completed in an hour, even though the grave might be six feet deep.”
    Resurrectionist gangs sprang up all over the city of London and the suburbs, working, for the most part, during the winter season. Their favorite haunts were the burial spots of the poor, who placed their dead in pine boxes that were easy to break into. If the gangs got particularly lucky, they found mass graves where several people who had died in the same day were buried together. The corpses were unearthed, put in sacks (hence the resurrection men’s nickname “sack-’em-up men”), and dragged to the waiting party, most likely a servant working for a well-known anatomist in a back-alley laboratory, who would haggle over the price of the corpse as if it were a barrel of fruit.

    Messr. Cruncher and his son, two typical men who worked as resurrectionists. These two were mentioned by Charles Dickens in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.
    Ben Crouch was the leader of the most famous gang in that period. He was a foul-mouthed former pugilist whose physical strength was an asset when it came to digging out corpses but also to bullying others intending to enter the business. He also was a crook who would wait until his mates were drunk before dividing the take. With the advantage of sobriety, he managed to keep a larger share of the profit without anyone being able to tell. If someone pointed out the fact, the muscular Crouch didn’t waste a minute but carefully landed a bejeweled fist (he was fond of wearing thick rings and bracelets) over the opponent’s mouth, as if engaged in one of his former fights.
    The other members included Bill Harnett; Jack Harnett; Tom Light; men named Daniell, Butler, and Hollis; and Joseph Naples, who might have been the only resurrection man who ever kept a journal that described all of their doings. It was not even a journal, but more of a log that told how many bodies they stole, where they removed them from, and where they sent them. Published under the title of The Diary of a Resurrectionist, it listed the gang’s doings from 1811 to 1812, often with such simple entries as “Sunday, 21st, Went to S. Thomas’s. Sent 1 to Mr. Tounton, 2 to Edinburgh S. Thomas’s took 6 of the whole this week, came home and slept at home all night.”
    Naples was described as “a civil and well conducted man, slight in person, with a pleasing expression of countenance, and of respectable manners.” He had learned to work briskly in the field and not to argue with Crouch, particularly when either one was intoxicated, which, according to the diary, was often.
    There was no pretense that the corpses themselves had led lives, however difficult or distasteful, prior to their deaths. They were, according to Ruth Richardson, who wrote extensively about resurrectionist life, “bought and sold, they were touted, priced, haggled over, negotiated for, discussed in terms of supply and demand, delivered, imported, exported, transported . . . compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust,