Feature Articles - explore some of the history of Essex
BODY SNATCHING
A gruesome story of body snatching at Little Leighs.
Before legislation permitted medical schools to use unclaimed bodies for research, body snatching was a criminal activity which tried to meet the demand for bodies for use in medical science. At Little Leighs in 1824 a horrific case of body snatching was reported.
Samuel Clark appeared before the local Magistrates charged with disinterring a woman's body from Little Leighs Churchyard on Friday 26th December 1824. He had been arrested shortly after her body had been found in a nearby field. The Times noted that "the prisoner's pallad and otherways unhealthy appearance [...] would alone lead us to suspect that his avocations called him abroad at an hour 'when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead' ". It was suspected that the metropolis burial grounds were so well guarded that this had driven those who committed this crime to the country areas.
St John the Evangelist Church
©Robert Edwards
Photograph by kind permission of Robert Edwards,
contributor to the Geograph Project
The court heard that a passer by, C.Rogers of Felsted, discovered an abandoned horse and cart near the turnpike at Little Leighs. He discussed the find with Mr Redwood, the turnpikeman, and they decided to lodge the horse and cart at the Castle Public-House. A short while later Clark approached the licensee, Mr Crisp, and stated he owned the cart. He explained he had drunk too much the night before and had decided to tie up the horse and sleep off the drink in a nearby field. By confirming the contents of the cart he persuaded Crisp that it indeed belonged to him.Clark then went off, but remained in the area, obviously, it was later realised, with intent to recover the body.
Clark's actions had aroused some suspicions and Robert Broomfield, the local blacksmith, looked in the fields near to where the cart was found and discovered a shovel and then, much to his alarm, a brace of loaded pistols in a sack. He sought the assistance of the field owner, Mr Simmons. Together they resumed searching at it was then that they found a most gruesome discovery: a female's body.
Naturally alarmed by this, he went to find help. His route took him through the Churchyard where he noticed a disturbed grave and clothes spread about. The truth was then realised: that the body of Joanna Chennery (Chenery), wife of James, who had been buried the previous Sunday, was the body on the field.
The whereabouts of Clark was immediately sought and he was found in nearby Broomfield drinking in the Kings Arms public house
Later investigations found that he had been seen before acting suspiciously in area with another man. Because of this, other graves were checked at Little Leighs and two were found to have been disturbed. On inspection, the bodies of Abraham Leeder and female named Knight were found to be missing from their coffins.
The ultimate fate of Clark at the Chelmsford Assizes has not been established.
Place links: Little Leighs
Sources:
Times 5 January 1824
Essex Countryside Volume 12 Number 89 Date June 1964
Useful links:
The Italian Boy Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830s London
