Theme: Grave Robbers

Grave Robbers are those that steal corpses or from corpses. Theft of objects buried with the dead has been with us since at least Ancient Egypt and does not concern us here. The theft of bodies from graves is commonly referred to as Body Snatching, although is referred to as grave robbing on this site to avoid confusion with alien Body Snatchers.

Body Snatching became a phenomenon in England during the 18th-19th Century where entrepreneurial criminals stole bodies from graves to deal with a shortage of cadavers available to medical science (where what was available was narrowly proscribed by law). This gained a notoriety with the story of William Burke and William Hare who were arrested in Edinburgh in 1828 after murdering sixteen people and selling their bodies to a doctor.

The Burke and Hare story has been filmed a number of times. There are also stories based around grave robbing such as the exploits of Dr Frankenstein – covered under Frankenstein Films – plus other original works. Grave Robbing and Body Snatching has largely disappeared as a criminal enterprise into the 20th Century and beyond, although some examples under the theme of Necrophilia could still be counted.