Mr Robert Hartle

Thesis title: ‘Protecting the most Pious Mortal’: a historical and archaeological investigation of bodysnatching in London, c. 1740–1832

Supervisors: Professor Elizabeth Craig-Atkins (Primary), Dr James Shaw (Secondary)

History students - periods: 1500-1800 / Post-1800 

Thesis abstract: My research will combine social and medical history with funerary archaeology to study bodysnatching for anatomical dissection in London, c. 1740–1832. It will reassess published reports and extant scholarship and be the first to analyse a substantial body of newly-excavated archaeological evidence of grave protection alongside extensive new documentary research, drawing on popular culture (e.g. newspapers) and community, legislative, and institutional records (e.g. hospital, criminal, municipal, and parochial). A London-focused case study will be generated, contextualised by wider English evidence, to test established narratives, providing important new insights into the demographics of those protected at burial. A far clearer understanding of the dynamics of the practice, its practitioners, and the public responses it evoked will emerge.