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But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in a drunken trance.
Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a fringe of the Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale of anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley of the Shadow from the which he was but newly risen.
But I was too conscientious to be accessory to the crime of body-snatching, and he had not courage enough to do the foul deed. That land is now fenced in, and people dwell there. The bones of the last of the Barrabools still rest under somebody's house, or fertilise a few feet of a garden plot. The Ninety-Mile, washed by the Pacific, is the sea shore of Gippsland.
It is only when there are many unclaimed bodies of strangers and the poor, as happens in large cities, that there can be an abundance of anatomical material. The details of this body-snatching case are strangely familiar to those who know the history of similar cases before the middle of the nineteenth century.
Very probably the best evidence that we have of the comparative frequency at least of dissection at this time is to be found in the records of a trial for body-snatching that occurred in Bologna. The details would remind one very much of what we know of the difficulties with regard to dissection in America a couple of generations ago, when no bodies were provided by law for dissection purposes.
The bodies were usually those of condemned criminals, but in the year 1319 there is a record of a legal procedure against four medical students for body-snatching the first record, as far as I know, of this gruesome practice. In 1316, Mundinus issued his work on anatomy, which served as a text-book for more than two hundred years.
On the whole, therefore, it is impossible to reject the body-snatching story as certainly fabulous, though its truth is far from being proved; and though I can scarcely myself subscribe to Mr.
"That 'ud be like old Dovery, eh?" says a fifth, alluding to an old grey-headed fellow, who a returned convict was again under sentence for body-snatching. The snuffling imitation of a Methodist preacher was good, and there was another laugh. Just then a miserable little cockney pickpocket, feeling his way to the door, fell into the party. A volley of oaths and kicks received him.
The case occurred in 1319 in Bologna, just four years after Mondino's public dissections. Four students were involved in the charge of body-snatching, all of them from outside the city of Bologna itself, three from Milan and one from Piacenza.
In the meanwhile, we shall adjourn. There is near at hand a building in which we may do our business with perfect safety. You have heard, no doubt, of the custom of body-snatching. Certain men resurrectioners, I think, they are called have of late been robbing the graves of the dead and selling the bodies to the medical schools for the use of students.
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