In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the study of human anatomy faced a severe supply crisis. Under the Murder Act of 1752, only the corpses of executed criminals could be legally dissected. While British medical schools required roughly 500 bodies every year, an average of around 100 executions took place annually in the eighteenth century.
This massive gap between supply and demand gave rise to the ‘Resurrection Men.’ These illicit body snatchers exhumed fresh corpses from graveyards to sell them clandestinely to anatomy teachers. The 1828 Select Committee on Anatomy estimated that around 200 resurrection men operated in and around London, mostly working on a casual, part-time basis.
A case was reported in several regional newspapers, including Baldwin's London Weekly Journal of Saturday 24 April 1819. Joseph Naples and George Marden were in court for ‘stealing several dead bodies out of the church-yard of Reigate.’ One of them was the body of a recently buried child, whose father gave harrowing testimony to the court.
T. Johnson said he was clerk at the Reigate-bank, and that on the 31st of March last he had an infant child, aged 2 years and 8 months, buried in the church yard of Reigate, and that he was extremely distressed at seeing the corpse of his said child again at the Red Lion Inn, at Sutton, on the 11th inst., which he immediately recognized.
The body was held for identification at the Red Lion because the resurrection men had been spotted by a sharp-eyed witness.
T. Allen, the carrier at Sutton, deposed, that on Saturday week he got up about five in the morning, and saw the two prisoners in a cart, coming upon Reigate Road, towards Sutton; that he followed them about a mile and a half, when they stopped in the middle of the road, and he then saw a third man burying a parcel in a dunghill; the two men in the cart then drove off, and the third man ran after them and made his escape. The witness and a patrol then searched the dunghill, where they, found a basket concealed, containing the body of Mr. Johnson's child, and another whose parents live also at Reigate. The prisoners were ordered to find bail. The third man is not yet in custody. ‘
Joseph Naples is one of the most famous "resurrection men" in British History. He wrote a hand written logbook of the trade, The Diary of a Resurrectionist (1811–1812), which is preserved in London's Hunterian Museum. It lists the bodies stolen and business expenses involved, such as bribes for watchmen to look the other way.
Born in Deptford in 1774, Naples was a former sailor who fought under Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797. He later joined the notorious Borough Gang supplying leading London surgeons at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals.
George Marden was a frequent associate of the Borough Gang. He acted as the reliable "muscle" and digger for Naples when they extended their area of operations into Surrey.
Prior to the Reigate incident, Marden had been apprehended with Naples at the St Pancras graveyard in London.
Despite frequently being caught red-handed, Naples and Marden rarely faced heavy prison sentences. This was because:
A minor offence: Under British law at the time, stealing a dead body was only a misdemeanour, because a corpse was not legally considered property.
Powerful connections: Elite surgeons like Sir Astley Cooper desperately needed a steady supply of specimens. Sir Anthony paid the bail, legal fees, and sureties for Naples and Marden to keep his trusted suppliers out of jail.
Naples only ended his lucrative career following the Anatomy Act of 1832, which legally regulated body donations. Ironically, he then took a legitimate job as an anatomy porter in a London hospital. The passing of the Act marked the end of the era of the Resurrection men.
Baldwin's London Weekly Journal of Saturday 24 April 1819
Executions Yearly by Sex in England and Wales from 1800 https://www.acrosswalls.org/datasets/executions-england-wales-from-1800/
Royal College of Surgeons
https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/diary-of-a-resurrectionist/