We sinister saviours

On a fully thick and glutinous night, I set out to find Him.
The college needed a specimen of such importance that I was charged with accompanying the resurrectionists this time.
They were the darkest of thieves. I’d paid them before for their finds; spied them huddled in doorways and crouching under the city’s many shadows, their bodies covered always in long coats and reeking.
Boldly would they drag their wares through the finest of London’s streets - past properties whose residents would shudder and turn green should they guess what was carried on their backs - and visit myself or like-minded colleagues under the pitchest cover of night.
These people were fairly despised, but they were efficient workers and would be paid handsomely for the best specimens. We’d take whatever they offered though, and children would be paid for by the foot.
This night I walked down St John’s Street until I reached Islington Back Road. Here the gang seeped from a side passage, death enshrouding their furrowed brows and cursed hands, and swept me southwards across the river to the parish graveyard of St Saviour’s.
“My old woman’s been at the church today. Seen the funeral of the baker’s lad, James Reed. Just dropped yesterday, so he still looks right. Should be what you want.”
I nodded and they creaked open the great rusting doors guarding the cemetery. As the metal hinge whined we winced as one. Our group then poured through the gate, into blasphemy.
I followed close by the leader and as we neared the burial mound I saw the flash of blades drawn by two of the gang who circled some bushes and met the grave from the side. “Sometimes there’s resistance,” said the leader, who was perhaps a father, working with his sons and their friends.
“A loved one might wait and guard the grave against the likes of us, and the likes of you, I suppose, sir. Don’t want damnation for their husband or wife, see, by you chopping ‘em up and seeing how they work.”
I tried to fix him with a poisonous glare for the affront, but this was his kingdom and I wilted as he smiled.
The skilled gang set to work on the fresh grave with wooden spades. While toilsome, these tools were silent and wouldn’t alert a watchman or local. They worked without noise for five minutes until one of the number whispered: “There’s straw in the ground here, Jack. Damn them.”
“Keep at it lad, nearly there,” came the leader’s reply. Business must have been poor for this baker, or else his father cared little for him, because his grave was laid little over one foot deep. The body snatchers dug a tunnel down to the head of the coffin, deftly hooked their implements under its lid and snapped it back to reveal the corpse.
At once splendid and awful, this man was revealed to us in all the power of death, with all the beauty of life. He was soon hauled from his tomb and stripped of his burial garments. A wedding ring was also removed and the pile of worldly goods dumped back into the coffin.
It may seem surprising to you that such vile criminals as these would show the respect of returning a wedding ring to the grave, while not flinching from extracting the flesh which wore it. But rest assured, the act is merely one which governs the safety of the gang from the full weight of the courts, for as long as they do not remove a man’s possessions or property from his person, then no laws have been broken by this robbery!
With the tunnelled earth recovered and replaced, it barely looked as though we had been there. The body snatchers wrapped the corpse in sacking and spread the weight between them, throughout the long journey to the college.
We stole through the narrowest, the dankest and the fetid-most streets. I swear, that night, I walked through regions of the city that never before existed. What netherworld we’d stumbled upon I dreaded to contemplate, but often I shivered to expect a confrontation with the foulest of demons or the devil himself.
But perhaps we had protection that night, for we had business with the divine.
On arrival at the college I paid the men the sum of £50, with the promise of a further £150, should the specimen prove as useful as they had suggested.
A servant rang the bell, which called the senior physicians to the operating theatre. We surgeon anatomists have a grisly reputation, as dealers in death, but we are merely in the business of saving lives. Firstly, however, we need to understand. To understand every one of you - every one of God’s dear creations - by opening you up to see how you work!
This body, though, was different. He had been acquired for a quite singular purpose and no analysis of his tissues and organs would be attempted. He must appear perfection.
On the floor beside the bench lay a six foot wooden cross. The body was immediately lain upon this structure. His arms and legs were arranged in the manner of crucifixion while I was handed the dreadful nails and the crushing mallet…
We raised the structure together, set it in place and stepped back to view the scene. Some were open mouthed in awe, their eyes shuddering; others simply shook their heads and returned to their beds.
After rigor mortis had fully set in, I understand the body was removed from the cross, boiled and the skin flayed. It was later transferred to another cross, which was erected in the drawing room of the Royal College of Art.
And here the body of James Reed has remained for forty years. A still-life study in the anatomy of a crucifixion. The model of utter realism for the finest painters of the 18th century to depict an anatomically precise image of the passion and death of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The baker’s son. He was a perfect specimen.