Bodysnatchers: What was the price of a good corpse in Worcestershire?

And why not, for with important medical schools in Worcester and not far away Oxford, there was a high demand for bodies to dissect. Up to £20 was paid for a good clean corpse, which would be nearly £18,000 today.

In 1984 I visited what was left of the old county prison with photographer Roy Booker before it was finally demolished. This is was part of D Wing

In fact with demand exceeding supply, an ingenious local craftsman invented a gadget to oil the wheels of the body snatching business. It was a cunning bit of kit with a powerful screw that could lift the lid  from a coffin and a hook that was then hitched under the jaw of the peacefully resting body, so that it could be pulled out with the minimum of excavation.

Worcester Royal Infirmary as many older city folk will remember it. Image undated but possibly from the 1950s

It was particularly favoured by a gang of four which operated around south Worcestershire in the early 19th century and although they were never caught in the act, their identities were pretty well known.

One of them even had inside knowledge of the freshest graves being the son of a clergyman, the fruit of the Rev David Davies, aka “the Drunken Parson”, who served as curate of Broadway for 42 years, from 1777 to 1819. 

Worcester’s old County Jail in Castle Street. The frontage was knocked down and HA Saunders garage built, while behind in some of the old prison buildings furniture firm GT Rackstraws operated

On January 21 1831 Berrow’s Worcester Journal reported: “Graves were opened at Hanley Castle churchyard and two recently interred bodies taken away.

“They had been sent in packing cases from the Anchor Inn, Upton upon Severn to London, but parties following them found them and restored them to the churchyard. The resurrectionists were not caught.”

Taken from Pitchcroft in 1920, this image shows the Royal Infirmary, while opposite across Castle Street is the castellated old prison, which was to close two years later

There was no luck either in apprehending those who visited St John’s church, Bromsgrove on November 24 1829. Joseph Rose, the sextant, recorded in his notebook “three bodies have been stolen from the churchyard but the robbers not found”.

The most notorious case of body snatching concerned a lady called Mrs Hannah Ward, a pastry cook, who was buried at Broadway Old Church on Wednesday, February, 1831, aged 37.

Lovely old undated photo of nursing staff on the steps of the hospital entrance off Infirmary Walk

Not long after the burial her grave was opened at night, but this time it all went badly wrong. When the resurrectionists (as they were rather feyly labelled) turned up with the body at Worcester the surgeons didn’t want to know.

They pointed out the deceased had suffered from bad legs and decomposition had set in. Damaged goods, sir, we’re not interested.

Stuck with a body they couldn’t get rid off and faced with the time and trouble of re-burying it in its original grave – thus giving rise to the only known instance of a body resurrecting and then de-resurrecting a couple of days later – the criminals temporarily hid the late Mrs Ward in a large manure heap next to the churchyard. 

The front part of the old prison site was later turned into HA Saunders garage. This was the showroom fronting Castle Street. Anyone buy a car there?

Unfortunately a nosey terrier dog sniffed the body out and  began eating an arm. The animal was then witnessed running full pelt up Broadway’s main street,  never to be seen again. 

Meanwhile the surgeons at Worcester Infirmary in Castle Street returned to a more reliable supply, dissecting the bodies of those hanged at the old county jail just across the road.