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Crime and Punishment


The names of Burke and Hare have become synonymous with the Victorian crime of body-snatching, the stealing of bodies from cemeteries which were then sold on to medical groups for research purposes. However, these crimes were not limited to these two men alone, nor indeed to Edinburgh where their activities took place.

Medical authorities were crying out for human subjects upon which to carry out research and with a lack of volunteers or people wishing to donate their own bodies after death, practitioners turned to the black market for assistance. Apart from Burke and Hare, there were only too many willing volunteers ready to dig up the bodies of the recently deceased and sell them on at a price. No doubt those in authority might have cast a blind eye in many cases; churchyards were already notoriously over-crowded.

Norwich had several cases of body snatching and in 1815, some apple merchants used the stables of the Duke's Palace Inn to store their merchandise. One night a watchman discovered three sacks containing corpses which had been freshly dug up from burial at Hainford. The apple merchants turned out to be body snatchers, or resurrection men. They were never caught.

The Pocket County Companion describes another notorious crime that took place in the city:

"The Hanging Tree formerly stood in the Town Close, and was for some time used as a gallows. On it was hanged Mr. Thomas Burney for the murder of Mr. Bedingfield. These gentlemen were on the Grand Jury in July 1864. Having indulged too freely at the "Maid's Head" they fought with their swords in the street in St. Andrew's, and Mr. Bedingfield was run through the body. Burney was hanged on the 8th of August."

Bedingfield was about 27 and Burney (Berney, in another account) was 21.

One account written some time after the event suggests that the duel took place at 2am on 20th July 1864. He was tried the next day and hung a fortnight later and "according the law, his body was put in a coffin for his friends to inter."

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