In the dark gloom of a December evening it is easy to imagine them. The news of the death would have brought them. When they arrived, the scent of the loose earth covering the freshly-dug grave would have heartened them, writes Anne MacLellan.
They would have brought a sack, some spades and a cart, and dug quickly. The cold of a winter's night would have been welcome: it preserved the body and deterred mourners from staying too long in the cemetery. Yet an evening like this wouldn't have been too cold: although my breath showed white in the air, the ground was not frozen. Digging would have been easy.
Thankfully, in December 2002, the graveyard at Rathfeigh, Co Meath, is no longer prey to grave robbers, or "sack-em-ups". And my visit at the end of a short winter's day disturbed only the birds nesting in the ivy covering the ruins of an old church and the dog guarding a nearby house.
But in the past, Rathfeigh was obviously the scene of nefarious activities as there is a small hut built into the wall of the graveyard - a watch-house dating from the time when fresh corpses were a valuable commodity much sought after by anatomy schools.
Today, people can donate their bodies to science but society's attitude to dissection has not always been so accepting. The Christian churches believed that the body was sacred and must remain intact for resurrection on the Last Day. Despite their opposition, European anatomy schools began dissecting cadavers in the mid-16th century. To them, we are indebted for many medical advances.
Early anatomist
One of the earliest anatomists was Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a surgeon, a dissector - and a grave robber. He performed dissection demonstrations at the University of Padua, hiring skilled artists to prepare large diagrams used in teaching.
In 1543, he wrote De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which stressed the importance of accepting the evidence of your own eyes, rather than believing implicitly in the words handed down from past generations. The Fabrica was aimed at a medical audience. He also published a summer for students, the Epitome.
Vesalius had a profound influence on his successors in Padua. There is a direct line from him to one of the greatest insights of the 17th century - William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. Gabriele Fallopio was one of Vesalius's students: he discovered the Fallopian tubes, connecting the ovaries to the uterus, and perhaps, more importantly, taught Girolamo Farbrizio, who became Harvey's teacher. Harvey's discovery was to revolutionise medicine. Before it, the received wisdom was that blood was manufactured in the liver and carried by the veins throughout the body to provide nourishment, getting used up in the process, so new blood was constantly being manufactured.
Back in the less rarified and decidedly colder dusk of Co Meath, we can speculate as to whether the Irish grave robbers were medical students, qualified doctors or hired men. In any case, bodies sold for two guineas in the early 1800s in Dublin, and for £13 in 1830.
Skeletons in basement
Builders demolishing a house in Liffey Street in 1999 discovered a dozen skeletons in the basement. The remains seemed to have been butchered, with small holes drilled in the bones and the skulls sliced open to reveal the brain. The premises, it emerged, was a medical school in the early 1800s, and holes in the bones were where copper wire was threaded to hold the skeletons up for display.
Ireland was also an important source of bodies for the great London and Edinburgh medical schools. Naturally, the activities of the anatomists were viewed with antagonism. Some anatomy schools were attacked by angry mobs, and there are reports of pitched battles at cemeteries between body-snatchers and those guarding graves. Spare a thought for the poor watchman alone in his hut at Rathfeigh as he heard footsteps outside.
Eventually, to counter fears about dissection, 100 prominent surgeons pledged to donate their own bodies for dissection, but it was the crimes of the notorious Irish body-snatchers Burke and Hare (who murdered lodgers at their Edinburgh boarding house) that eventually forced the introduction of the 1832 Anatomy Act. This allowed surgeons to take the unclaimed bodies of workhouse paupers. In the 1920s, voluntary donation was introduced.
Mysteries and marvels
I am indebted to Mary Mulvihill for much of this information. Her new book, Ingenious Ireland (TownHouse, €30 hardback), provides a county-by-county exploration of Irish mysteries and marvels. Apart from the grisly activities of the body-snatchers, it covers includes engineering, technological, scientific and natural wonders.
Back in my almost-native Co Meath, for example, there's the oldest unaltered bridge arch, Babe's Bridge, over the Boyne near Donaghmore. Named after an Anglo-Norman landowner, John le Baube, the bridge was originally 90 metres long and had a dozen arches. It is mentioned in Annales Hiberniae (1330) and may have been built 100 years earlier by a Norman stonemason sent by King John, who crossed the Boyne at Trim in 1210.
Ingenious Ireland includes the author's own intriguing choice of the seven wonders of Ireland. Buy it if you're curious.
ANNE MacLELLAN