By: Kelly-Dee Anderson
Edited by: Emmet Paradis
Pictured are students of the Queen’s University medical class of 1926. Look closely; posed among the white coats are skeletons that were once instruments of lab dissection. The semester would end and the students would graduate, but the laboratory became the final destination for the hollow remains that made them doctors. And in that cold crevice of the past, the grave became an interim resting place preluding the dissection table.
“Whose Corpse Is Missing This Time?” For Kingston locals in 1871, the heading of this article would pose no further questions. Where the corpse went and why was obvious. Since the establishment and expansion of Queen’s Medical School in the mid to late 1800s, an increased number of bodies had gone missing from their graves. It was not grave robbers, for what kind of “robber” would leave clothes and costly valuables alone at the gravesite? No, this had more gruesome implications. The answer? Body snatching: cadavers were in low supply, so medical students would dig up tombs and use the freshly-buried bodies for dissection. Naturally, this made locals more guarded in their burial practices. Some used vaults to house their dead; others, with more money, stationed guards outside the tombs until the body had decomposed enough to be of no use for dissection (Belyea, 2016, p. 27). Rural mourners had fewer options but often opted for placing heavy stones atop graves to make exhumation more difficult (Belyea, 2016, pp. 27-28).
Unfortunately, it’s true what they say: where there’s a will, there’s a way. And in this scenario, bodies were still being exhumed at increasing rates, despite public efforts to thwart them. Loose legislation meant that those caught body snatching were rarely punished with severity. This scenario is as good an example as any of how vile practices can persist in plain sight when there isn’t enough collective unrest to catalyze change.
If you think the horrors end here in Kingston, they do not. Kingston has notoriety; Montreal has longevity. While some medical students attending McGill University would use body snatching to pay for their tuition, others did it for sport. Getting drunk before unearthing tombs and tobogganing the bodies down Mount Royal was no uncommon affair. It was no question where McGill stood at the time, as the Faculty of Medicine would pay body snatchers to supply cadavers when the government supply was low.
In response to rising tensions, Senator John Simpson proposed a solution that, to him, seemed brilliant: medical students would be permitted to dissect the bodies of deceased immigrants. Some supported the proposal, only voicing disdain when the body of a well-remembered figure was stolen. Some rejected it, acknowledging that immigrants who came to Canada for a better life did not deserve such treatment in death. Others vouched for a new solution entirely—to allow dissection only for those who had been executed for crimes. In the end, Simpson’s proposition never prevailed, and although a new Anatomy Act (1843) promised legal reproach to body snatchers, the legislation was simply too ambiguous to be effective.
Tabloids jarringly exposed popular public opinion, describing medical students as “ghoulish robbers” and “band of half-drunken and blasphemous students” among many other names. But as sensational as these headlines were, it was still not enough to evoke meaningful reform.
Even so, the language in the headlines carried some weight. Editorials would refer to dissection rooms as a “Burking House,” a name already equated with medical murder. The relation lies in Georgian-era Britain where an obstacle similar to the one in Kingston and Montreal was being faced—there were not enough bodies for dissection. This is where William Burke and William Hare entered the scene. Influenced by the prospect of financial gain, they began luring and murdering victims to sell their bodies to an anatomy professor, Robert Knox. The fact that their crimes were referenced in many later accounts of body snatching speaks to their notable effect on the European public. Gangs known as the “London Burkers” formed and followed in their footsteps and at one point there was even a popular children’s rhyme that went: “Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef.”
These cases reveal that reform can only be sustained by collective and persistent pressure from the public. The aftermath of the outrage in Montreal was the establishment of a renewed Anatomy Act (1883) that fined medical students $200 (over $6000 today) for acquiring cadavers from any source outside of the municipally-elected anatomy inspector. To even the scale, the same fine would apply to government-funded charities who refused to hand over unclaimed cadavers to medical schools. In Britain, scandals surrounding the London Burkers prompted the Anatomy Act of 1832 which permitted medical access to cadavers from prisons and workhouses, and allowed voluntary donation.
Reform does not have to be riotous, but rather, it endured in these contexts because balanced solutions replaced short-sighted interventions. And finally, in this shift, the grave could be a final resting place for those long disturbed.
Image Citation: Queen’s University. (1926). Yearbook Queen’s University 1926. Queen’s University. https://archive.org/details/quyearbook1926/page/102/mode/2up
References
An Act to amend and consolidate the various acts respecting the study of Anatomy, 46 Vict., c. 30 (Que. 1883). https://www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/DepotNumerique_v2/AffichageFichier.aspx?idf=259993
An Act to regulate and facilitate the study of Anatomy, 7 Vict., c. 5 (Prov. Can. 1843). https://bnald.lib.unb.ca/legislation/act-regulate-and-facilitate-study-anatomy-9th-december-1843
Anatomy Act 1832, 2 & 3 Will. 4, c. 75 (U.K.). https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/body-snatchers/source-four-the-anatomy-act-1832/
Belyea, S. (2016). A Century of Snatching: Grave Robbing in Kingston, Ontario. Ontario History, 108(1), 24–42. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050610ar
Escape The Past. (2025, August). Who were Burke & Hare? Edinburgh’s Infamous “Body Snatchers”. https://www.escapethepast.co.uk/post/burke-hare-edinburgh-body-snatchers
Miller, E. (2013, October 29). A grave history. The Queen’s Journal. https://www.queensjournal.ca/a-grave-history/
Philp, J. (2021). Bodies and bureaucracy: The demise of the body snatchers in 19th century Britain. The Anatomical Record, 305(4), 827-837. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24794
Rankin, M. (2017, October 31). Anatomically Incorrect: Bodysnatching in the 19th Century. Canada’s History. https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/science-technology/anatomically-incorrect-bodysnatching-in-the-19th-c