ABSTRACT
Considerable help in this regard has been provided by Ruth Richardson who, in her 1988 book, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, set forth with great clarity and poignancy the thesis that the Second Anatomy Act of 1832 made poverty the sole criterion for dissection in Britain (Richardson 1988). In order to understand this thesis, however, some appreciation of the various sources of cadavers in Britain prior to 1832 is required, and it is here that we encounter the use of murderers’ bodies, grave robbing (body snatching), and murder. It is relevant, therefore, to enquire further into the circumstances surrounding these uses of human bodies, and to follow the developments that ensued over a period of 150 years or so.
