Resurrection Man was the name given to a grave robber in the 19th Century. The demand for corpses for dissection at medical schools was such that the supply from executions alone was insufficient and needed to be supplemented by the gruesome removal of bodies recently laid to rest. Of course, this practice was illegal and conducted by men in the dead of night, the bodies being then sold on to the medical schools. The Government (in Britain) tended to turn a blind eye to the practice since the corpses were needed for medical training and research. Horrified relatives often sat a vigil at the graveside or enclosed their loved ones in a steel cage built into the plot. But the Resurrection Men were resourceful and could often empty a tomb without leaving a trace of their handiwork.

I am not fascinated by the macabre but only raise the subject because I have been reading Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. Jerry Cruncher, a messenger and general dogsbody for Tellsons Bank, acts as a Resurrection Man on the side. In one gripping scene, his son secretly follows him part of the way on one of his midnight adventures.

But Cruncher is only a small player in a wonderful book. Dickens can be a little long-winded and somewhat too ornate at times, but otherwise is a fantastic writer, with the imagination and scope of a Shakespeare. Little wonder that he was so popular during his lifetime. The plot is tortuous, the reveals sometimes shocking, the coincidences many, and the ending, extraordinary.

Who would want to meet Madame Defarge on a dark night?



John McLenan's illustration for Harper's Weekly, July 1859, entitled, Mr Cruncher's Friends.