Watch House

Back in the days when body-snatching was a big problem, many churches employed night watchmen to be on the lookout for resurrection men creeping into the churchyard. The resurrection men would dig up fresh corpses and sell them to medical colleges. Prior to the Anatomy Act of 1832, medical colleges could only use the bodies of executed criminals for dissection. Executed criminals being in short supply, the body snatchers did a lucrative trade.

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