Introduction Blog

When Science Dug too Deep: Grave Robbing and Frankenstein

Spanning approximately 150 years between the 1650s and 1800, the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, swept across Europe and America. In this time, scientific thirst swelled and knowledge gave people the perceived power to reshape the world. However, as science grew and more pursued its rewards, the resources on which the trade of science depends—such as cadavers—could not meet the new demand. Desperate, some turned to drastic and morally gray measures including stealing the bodies of the dead from their apparently not-so-final resting places. By 1818, when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, grave robbing evolved into an entirely new career, one which raised societal, religious, and ethical concerns.

Body Snatching

Etching of grave robbers (1)

In Britain, Enlightenment-era anatomists viewed the human body as a "key area of scientific investigation" (6). With science advancing and curiosity about the human body increasing, medical schools lacked enough cadavers to meet their needs. "[C]orpses began to acquire money-value" specifically during the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, but this increased sharply in the mid 1700s (9). Desperate for more corpses, students and surgeons' assistants of the late eighteenth century—since the actual surgeons tried to distance themselves from the "dirty work" (7)—hired men to snatch bodies from graves. Through the nature of their work, these men earned such titles as grave robbers, resurrectionists, or sack-'em-up men (7). They visited cemeteries with all the tools with which they "opened the grave, broke open the coffin, and removed the corpse" (10). They dug holes over only part of the coffins they stole from, careful not to let the sod touch grass and leave evidence of disturbance. They would then break open a portion of the coffin's lid, careful to muffle the snapping of wood, before they dragged the corpse out head first (7). Before leaving the scene, they removed all the corpse's clothing or other personal items as, ironically, society considered theft of belongings a greater crime than stealing a body (9). These grave robbers turned cemeteries into workshops, where an uneasy negotiation between science and morality stood watch over their meticulous violations.

Due to these body snatchings, some families guarded their graves. A loved one would watch over the graves of the deceased by staying out at night and keeping watch on the graves for "a length of time sufficient to render the body useless to those who wanted it" (10). After all, medical personnel had difficulty dissecting and learning from decayed corpses; in contrast, fresh corpses had not yet lost any important anatomical details. Those who kept watch often carried firearms and stood ready to defend (10). If the family did not want to guard their own graves or lacked the ability to guard, they sometimes hired another individual to do it for them. Whether family or hired hand, "armed watchmen" patrolled many graves, which led to some resurrectionists being either killed or badly beaten (7). This shows how graveyards became oddly violent and dangerous spaces despite their repertoire of providing a final resting place.

Image of a mortsafe (8)

To reduce reliance on human guards, people developed mortsafes, another form of protecting graves. These commonly used heavy stones, tightly-packed soil, and the use of iron cages on or around the graves of the dead as a means of preventing grave robbings (10). However, this method often proved more expensive, and usually only richer individuals could afford it, which, in turn, made the graves of the poor far more susceptible especially since poor people were commonly buried in pit graves (9). Pit graves often contained multiple bodies and lacked adequate protection, which, combined with their relatively easy access, made them more desirable to grave robbers (9). This illustrates the divide between classes and the sheer inequities that hang over the poor even in death.

Who Owns the Body?

Engraving of a public dissection (4)

At the time, law restricted which bodies surgeons could dissect. Criminals represented the primary source; in fact, the Murder Act of 1752 obligated the London Company of Surgeons to "conduct public dissections of convicted murders [sic], and to expose the corpse to general view" (6), establishing the act of dissection as a cruel form of punishment. However, the bodies of criminals at this time numbered around only an estimated fifty-five per year, and authorities permitted only four of those for dissection (3). Since schools needed far more—an estimated 500 bodies at this same time—surgeons and students paid people to procure dead bodies (3). Anatomists also earned most of their income by teaching anatomy students (6). In some ways, then, these teachers had more selfish pursuits in mind. These circumstances raised legal and moral concerns and prompted debate of whether innocent people should face the same fate as criminals.

At this time, many Christians (and Europe was predominantly Christian in the 1700s) held the belief that if something happened to one's physical body, they wouldn't be able to rise on Judgment Day, a tradition continuing from medieval times (5). Essentially, if they were not buried whole and left undisturbed, many people believed they would stay eternally dead rather than rise again (5). This stealing of the bodies, then, violated the very notion of one's eternal peace. This religious attitude contrasted with newer scientific ideals, which attempted to separate the body and human life. One way they did this was "the removal of the concept of the soul from anatomy texts" (3). Further, the law did not define bodily theft as theft, since it considered a dead body ownerless (9). Here, law, science, and religion collided and forced society to reckon with the question of who truly owned the human body.

Further, doctors often blurred the line between life and death during this time period. In the world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with doctors less knowledgeable and few far between, "a state of a coma might easily have been mistaken for death" (10). With this uncertainty, the act of stealing bodies unsettled people even more because what if the dead were not truly dead? This tension between law, religion, and science sets the stage for the moral questions Shelley explores in Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley and Graves

A Sketch of Mary Wollstonecraft's Grave (11)

In Mary Shelley's childhood and early adult life, "bodysnatching was rife" (9). Born at the end of the eighteenth century (1797), she likely encountered certain fears surrounding grave robbing. Her mother, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, died shortly after Shelley's birth, and Shelley spent a great deal of time visiting her mother's grave in the St. Pancras Old Churchyard (2). In the time she visited her mother's grave,  the churchyard's "convenient location" and "relative isolation" made it a "well-known haunt of bodysnatchers" (9). Spending a great deal of time among these gravestones gave Shelley an intimate connection with death and all the crimes committed thereafter. The sights of graves would have been familiar to her and even, perhaps, a topic close to her own heart, especially since her own mother was, in many regards, more of a gravestone than a real person to her, and visiting the cemetery was a means of keeping her mother close (2). Her visits to her mother's grave immersed Shelley into this tense world of the departed and shaped her understanding of death, the dead, and all the related crimes and obsessions that helped bring Frankenstein to fruition.

Grave Robbing in Frankenstein

Shelley's real-world knowledge no doubt influenced the actions of Victor Frankenstein in her novel. It is no secret that Frankenstein himself takes on the role of a grave robber to advance his own scientific experiments. While the novel gives little detail surrounding Frankenstein's thefts, he steals and violates bodies in pursuit of knowledge and power, mimicking real-world truths about grave robbing and questioning the line between what is done and what should be done. As Richardson writes, "The real monster of the book is the doctor scientist who loses touch with his own humanity" (9). Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein violates societal, religious, and ethical boundaries, not even for pay as grave robbers often did, but for his own power and pleasure. He exemplifies how the hunt for desire and power can distort morality and blur the line between mastermind and monstrosity, just as Shelley's world showed her. 

Works Cited

(1) Browne, Hablot Knight. Resurrectionists. 1847. The Old Operating Theatre, oldoperatingtheatre.com/the-resurrection-men/#:~:text=The%20Resurrection%20Men%20%7C%20The%20Old,Museum%20&%20Herb%20Garret. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026.

(2) Carr, Flora. "The Eerie Gravestone Where Frankenstein's Story Began." Time, 26 Feb. 2018, time.com/5133735/wollstonecraft-grave-mary-shelley-frankenstein/.

(3) Hogan, Corrine. "Diary of a Resurrectionist: The Unique Record of a Frightening Trade Born out of Necessity." Royal College of Surgeons of England, 27 May 2025, www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/diary-of-a-resurrectionist/.

(4) Hogarth, William. The Fourth Stage of Cruelty: The Reward of Cruelty. 1751. Hyperallergic, hyperallergic.com/the-power-of-the-criminal-corpse/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026.

(5) Lawing, Sean. "Medieval Depictions of the Last Judgment: The Resurrection of the Body." Glencairn Museum, 14 Mar. 2018, www.glencairnmuseum.org/newsletter/2018/3/8/medieval-depictions-of-the-last-judgment-the-resurrection-of-the-body#:~:text=The%20Body%20in%20the%20Theology,it%20be%20lost%20or%20gained?.

(6) Mitchell, Piers D., et al. "The Study of Anatomy in England from 1700 to the Early 20th Century." Journal of Anatomy, vol. 219, no. 2, 2011, pp. 91-99. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2011.01381.x.

(7) Nuland, Sherwin B. "Grave Robbing." American Scholar, vol. 70, no. 2, 2001, pp. 125-28. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=ff3f24b7-ef3d-31f2-bdbc-c2c49220ba35.

(8) Page, C. Mortsafe Old Kinnernie. 2006. Geograph, www.geograph.org.uk/photo/296083. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026.

(9) Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection and the Destitute. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.

(10) Ritchie, James. "An Account of the Watch-houses, Mortsafes, and Public Vaults in Aberdeenshire Churchyards, Formerly Used for the Protection of the Dead from the Resurrectionists." Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 46, 1912, pp. 285-326. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, https://doi.org/10.9750/PSAS.046.285.326.

(11) Sheppard, Richard. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's Grave, St. Pancras Churchyard. 2010. The Artist on the Road, www.theartistontheroad.com/mary-wollstonecraft-godwins-grave-in-st-pancras-churchyard/.