Dark Somerset: The body snatcher with a 'pretty good' hat

There was nothing particularly remarkable in these sad deaths at the time. But what happened to them afterwards sent ripples of disgust through the community.

Mrs Martin Watkins lived in Silver Street, Bridgwater. She passed away in February 1828 and was laid to rest in Durleigh. Sophia Bryer, who had not survived the birth of her child, was buried in Cannington that same month.

As for the four-year-old?

All anyone knows about him is that his body had been removed from his grave, pushed in a basket, labelled to an address in London and left at the Castle and Falcon Inn for collection.
 

The smell of his rotting cadaver alerted the coach firm’s office keeper to a problem with one of the packages. When he opened the basket, he was confronted with the corpse of a small boy, still wearing the clothes he had been buried in.

Police were alerted, and after a hurried investigation of local cemeteries and churchyards, it was soon discovered that five graves had been disturbed, and their occupants were missing.

On the 28th of February, ten days after the coach firm employee had discovered the child's remains, a basket was delivered to the George Inn addressed to Mr J Jones, ℅ Mr Hall at  41 Duke Street, Little Britain, London.

The landlord, Jeffrey Sutton, had been told the hamper contained bottles of wine. Aware of the value of the contents, he assembled a small group to help him move the basket to a more secure location.

As they lifted the basket, the heavy contents ripped open the bottom of the container. One quick-thinking man reached in to grab the innards and save them from disaster - only to find his fingers closing around an ice-cold human foot.

The foot - and the rest of the body - was soon discovered to belong to Sophia Bryer, who had been interred in Cannington Churchyard on February 27.
 

Why had these people been taken from what should have been their final resting place? And who would do such a thing?

The study of anatomy had something of a troubled history. Religion dictated that the dissection of human bodies was an offence. Medics then developed some decidedly ropey beliefs about the human body and how it worked without the ability to study how it worked.
 

But the industrial revolution brought social change and medical advances through scientific enquiry. Around the same time, on 26 March 1752, the Act for ‘better preventing the horrid crime of murder’ passed into law.

The Murder Act, as it is known, established juridical procedures for the execution and, critically, the post-mortem punishment of convicted murderers.
 

From 1752 to 1832, the punishment for anyone convicted of murder was execution by hanging. However, the sentence for murder did not end with the death of the condemned. The corpse of the convicted murderer was then sent for anatomisation and dissection or handed over to the sheriff to be hung in chains.

For those sentenced to anatomisation, crowds trooped through inns and other convenient sites to see bodies cut and spread open. Then corpses were carted off to the much more secluded anatomy rooms where they would be dissected by surgeons and groups of medical trainees until there was nearly nothing left.

So for the first time, medical students had a supply of cadavers to study legally and studying anatomy through public dissection became a significant part of the training of doctors and surgeons.

Over 80 years, 1,166 individuals were convicted of murder and sentenced under the Murder Act. Of these, 80% were sentenced to anatomisation and dissection, and their corpses were handed over to the medical men following their execution.
 

But the opening of new medical schools and training centres in the 18th Century meant that even this new supply of subjects could not meet the needs of the students.

The need for bodies created a profitable black market and ‘Resurrectionists’ or body snatchers became commonplace.

The job demanded a strong stomach; digging up a recently deceased human being and folding a cadaver in half to pack it into a suitable container was not for the faint-hearted. 

And while digging up a cadaver in the local churchyard for delivery to a nearby anatomy school was one thing, it was something else entirely to transport a body while trying to avoid detection.
 

But, for many, the risks were worth it - the going rate for a fresh corpse was between £12 10s and £15 - a small fortune in those days.

Police in Bridgwater were soon on the case, and they got to work finding out who had bought the basket to the George Inn. 

Edward Barber, known locally as ‘Nimrod’ -  (a name which means either 'mighty hunter' or 'socially inadequate'.) was soon identified as the person who had brought the basket from the White Horse Inn. A prompt investigation soon showed that the basket had been left at the White Horse by a man calling himself Thomas Jones, who lived in Durleigh.

Jones - who was using an alias and was actually called William - had talked a man named Channing to transport the basket in his cart to the Malt Shovel Inn and from there, Jones had carried the basket to the White Horse Inn.
 

Two constables were dispatched to Jones’s home, but by the time they arrived, he’d already fled. A warrant was issued for his arrest, with the public asked to be on the lookout for ‘a rather slight built Man, but muscular, about 35 years old, about 5ft 5 or 6ins high, dark Complexion, dark Hair and rather sandy Whiskers:  had on a blue frock Coat, blue Trousers, half Boots and a pretty good Hat.’
 

While the hunt got underway for Jones, a question mark hung over Barber’s involvement and he was committed to gaol pending further enquiries.

William Jones - also known as Thomas Jones, William Clarke and William Taylor - was arrested at Lewin’s Mead Bristol the following January and committed to Ilchester Gaol on 6 January 1830, aged 35.

That month he was tried in Wells for disturbing the body of Sophia Bryer and received a sentence of just four months.
 

Jones told the court he had been a ‘resurrection man’ for 13 years and had connections within the ‘industry’ - including Joseph Madden and John Lawrence who had been caught in Bath after stealing three bodies from a churchyard in Walcot and storing them in wooden casks.

Jones died just one year later, in the Bristol Infirmary, and bequeathed his body to Dr Riley - on the condition that he was dissected at an anatomical school in Limekiln Lane and turned into a teaching skeleton - a request, which was carried out, to the utter amazement of the press and public.

As Resurrection men ran rampant through the country, churches and graveyards erected watchhouses to guard against the desecration of graves. Others used a large, heavy stone which was placed over recent graves.

 
Following the Burke and Hare case, the British parliament saw the need to find a way for medical schools to obtain an adequate supply of corpses legally. The Anatomy Act of 1832 allowed medical schools to dissect, in addition to the corpses of executed criminals, unclaimed bodies of those who died in prison or a workhouse, and bodies that were voluntarily donated.

And finally, the cemeteries, and those who lay beneath the ground, were able to rest in peace.