Press enter after choosing selection

Grave-robbing

Grave-robbing image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
December
Year
1878
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The recent robberies of tlio grave have brought up some curious anecdotes of the state of aflhirs which existed in England about flfty ycars ago, when "body-snatching " was a regular trade. So skillful were tho robbers that they required but fifteen minutes (o draw a body from the grave. Xo trace was loft of their.work. One of these men, Biïrko, being in chureh one day, heard that passage of Scripture read which describes how Sazael killed the King by smothering liim with a wet cloth. This method struck Bttrke as sure and safe from detection, and by it ho committed rnany muxders for tlie sake of the profit he reaped from the ale of the dead bodies. The devil can be found even behind a text of scripture by those who want to iind him. When Burk's raurderè woro discovered, the English public was seized with a panie. One of the oddest manif estations of this craze was the queer devices of dying persons to protect their bodies iroiji the rosurreetionists. In J'uckinglunnsliiro iv Major Backhouse, aii old Kast ïndiuu officer, was buriea by his own orders in front of his house, on n sobd pyramidof flint, twelve feet square at the base, in which he was placed upright, a drawn eword in his hand. A Baronet of Yorkshire was buried at night ten feet decp in a level potato field, the ground being plowed up at once to remove all chance of discovery. Another country gentleman's coflin was swung to tle branches of an oak tree in front of his hall door. Another was covered with twenty tons of stonc, and still another cased in lead and hung to a beam of his own barn. The terror extended even to this country, and precautions against graverobbery were more common, fifty years ago than now, when there is more dan gei'. There is yet standing near one of the iron f urnaces of Kentucky a square [ bliek building, in the upper room of which is the body of a formar owner, by liis own request, remained for twenty years nnburied, tho lower apartment being furnished and occupied by his wife and faniily as an arbor. Cremation is just now strongly urged by its advocates as the only certain protection for tlie dead. There is, liowovor, as yet but one cremation furnace in this country, a private one in Western Pennsylvama, built by Dr. LeMoyne, of old Abolition notoriety. - Youth's Companion.