Component 1.3.1 Thematic Analysis: Grave Robbing Then and Now
Sir William Turner, Professor of Anatomy, is hardly the kind of person that comes to mind when you think of a grave robber. Maybe you think of prolific grave robbers turned serial killers Burke and Hare, or Dr. Frankenstein. You do not, however, think of someone like Sir William Turner. Or really any of the anatomists of his time. Universities all over the UK (and the world) were quietly encouraging this activity prior to the 20th century. They needed bodies for their medical schools and many didn’t care where they came from as long as they were fresh and cheap. Parliament passed the Murder Act in 1752 as a way to dissuade people from grave robbing but this did not work for long. In 1832 the Anatomy Act was passed, again to try and dissuade the illegal acquisition of bodies (UK Parliament 2014). This act allowed medical staff and students access to the deceased from hospitals, workhouses, and prisons if they were not claimed within 48 hours (UK Parliament 2014).
Again, you would think this would have stopped grave robbers but it did not. Many anatomists, scientists, and surgeons like Sir William Turner were interested in skulls and “racial science”. This meant he needed skulls from all over the world to study. The CRC and Anatomical Museum have records showing shipments of skulls from all over the world, some from previous students and some from colleagues, all mailed right to the University of Edinburgh for Turner. Turner began the Skull Collection and encouraged people from all over the world to send him human remains. Many of the people sending skulls were important pillars of their communities, they were doctors or priests.
One such priest collecting human remains for “scientific study”, though not sending them to Turner, was Father Ernst Worms. Father Worms worked in Australia as a missionary. During the 1930s he sent multiple skulls to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. This was illegal in Australia and had been since 1911 when the government banned the removal of the skeletal remains of Aboriginals from the country without express permission from the Minister of Trade and Customs (Fforde et al. 2020, 317). Five people are known to have had their burials disturbed by Father Worms, though there is no way to tell if this is the final number of graves robbed (Fforde et al. 2020, 322). Father Worm, like so many others, was fully aware he was breaking the law, his own letters prove this (Fforde et al. 2020, 324).
In modern times, grave robbing continues to be a problem. Whether this be in the form of medical skeletons purchased from India or skulls purchased on Instagram for some macabre home decor. The interest in human remains for personal/non-medical use has begun increasing with social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok (Schwartz 2019). It is not illegal to own human remains in either the UK or the United States, this makes it easy for people to sell whole skeletons, bones, or skulls online. Of the 50 States, only three have restrictions on owning and selling human remains. This is different, however, for skeletons or body parts that have been grave robbed. In the US grave robbing is either considered theft if they are taking things like jewelry, or desecration of a corpse if they are taking or disturbing body parts. Both of these are crimes in nearly all (if not all) states. Due to the nature of state laws, it is difficult to be sure. In the US there is also NAGPRA which is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that protects native burials, making it a federal crime to rob the graves of indigenous people. In the UK the laws on this vary as well but are slightly simpler to understand. In Scotland, the desecration of a corpse is called the “violation of sepulchres” which is punishable by life imprisonment (Brown 2018). In England, grave robbing seems to fall under criminal damage to memorials.
All of this is to say, if a skeleton is not grave robbed, it can legally be owned but if someone has stolen it, which is generally the case, it is illegal to own. I am unclear on the laws regarding remains taken stolen from another country and then sold in either the UK or the US. It does not appear there is much legislation surrounding this issue.
There is also the problem of just what counts as grave robbing/desecration of a corpse. At my previous university, our osteology department had a skeleton purchased in the 60s from a medical supplier. All we know about it was that it was from India, and my professors assumed it was taken from the Ganges, where bodies are often left as part of religious ceremonies after death. Is this grave robbing? These bodies were left in the river in the hopes that they would float down the river and decompose on their way to the sea. Is taking a body out of its river tomb grave robbing? And if it is, is the import of these bodies illegal? Or because the crime did not happen in the country of import, is it legal? There is little legal information about this. In my opinion, countries like the US and the UK are incredibly hesitant to look too deeply into legislation regarding this because it would cause problems for many of their most prestigious universities. The University of Edinburgh is a good example of this. When people learn about the Skull Collection and about the history of grave robbing that the university was complicit in, they become very uncomfortable and it changes how they view the institution.
Grave robbing is still a problem today and it will continue to be until stronger legislation is put in place making it illegal to “own” skeletal remains as a private citizen.
Bibliography
Brown, Jonathan. 2018. “Res Religiosae and the Roman Roots of the Crime of Violation of Sepulchres.” Edinburgh Law Review 22 (3): 347–67. https://doi.org/10.3366/elr.2018.0503.
Fforde, Cressida, Paul Turnbull, Neil Carter, and Amber Aranui. 2020. “Missionaries and the Removal, Illegal Export, and Return of Ancestral Remains.” In The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, edited by Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown, and Honor Keeler, 316–34. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780203730966/routledge-companion-indigenous-repatriation-honor-keeler-timothy-mckeown-cressida-fforde.
Schwartz, Oscar. 2019. “Instagram’s Grisly Human Skull Trade Is Booming.” Wired UK. 2019. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/instagram-skull-trade.
UK Parliament. 2014. “Body Snatching.” Www.parliament.uk. UK Parliament. May 1, 2014. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/death-dying/dying-and-death/bodysnatching/.
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