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    The Body Snatchers
    The Body Snatchers
    The Body Snatchers
    Ebook31 pages29 minutes

    The Body Snatchers

    By Robert Louis Stevenso

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The Body Snatchers is a short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894). First published in the Pall Mall Christmas "Extra" in December 1884, its characters were based on criminals in the employ of real-life surgeon Robert Knox (1791–1862) around the time of the notorious Burke and Hare murders (1828). A group of friends share a few drinks, when an eminent doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane, enters. One of the friends, Fettes, recognizes the name and angrily confronts the new arrival. Although his friends all find this behaviour suspicious, none of them can understand what might lie behind it. It transpires that Macfarlane and Fettes had attended medical school together, under the famous professor of anatomy, Robert Knox. Their duties included taking receipt of bodies for dissection, and paying the pair of shifty and suspicious men who supplied them. On one occasion, Fettes identifies a body as that of a woman he knew, and is convinced she has been murdered. But Macfarlane talks him out of reporting the incident, lest they are both implicated in the crime. Later, Fettes meets Macfarlane at a tavern, along with a man named Gray, who treats Macfarlane in a rude manner. The following night, Macfarlane brings Gray's body along as a dissection sample. Although Fettes is now certain that his friend has committed murder, Macfarlane again convinces him to keep his silence, persuading him that if he is not courageous enough to perform such manly deeds as these, he will end up as just another victim. The two men make sure the body is comprehensively dissected, destroying any forensic evidence. Fettes and Macfarlane continue their work, without being implicated in any crime. However, when a shortage of bodies leaves their mentor in need, they are sent to a country churchyard to exhume a recently buried woman. As they are driving back with the body seated between them, they begin to feel nervous and stop to take a better look.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateMay 8, 2017
    ISBN9783961896936
    The Body Snatchers

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    Reviews for The Body Snatchers

    3.5/5

    47 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Again had the wonderful atmosphere so many newer authors lack. Was creepy and fun at the same time. If you can handle the idea of grave robbing and body snatching then this is an excellent way to spend a short amount of time
    • 3/5
      (1884) Great set-up, excellent writing... but the 'scary' ending didn't work for me at all. I felt like it was on the level of spooky stories kids tell each other during sleepover parties (do kids still do that?)
      It's about some young medical students whose duty to procure dead bodies for their eminent professor leads them down a spiral of moral depravity and blackmail. A nice exploration of guilt and complicity.
    • 4/5
      As I was reading this book the thought that was going through my mind was how doctors in the 19th Century would, during the middle of the night, raid graveyards for freshly buried corpses, exhume them, and take them back to their laboratories to dissect them. This story however goes a little further because it is suggested that the main character goes beyond exhuming freshly buried corpses to creating his own corpses.
      However, as I thought about the idea in this book, I came to realise how similar this story is to The Wolf of Wall Street. The reason I say this is because both of the main characters seem to go into a very grey world (actually, that is putting it very lightly because the actions of both of these characters are highly illegal) to become successful in their various trades. With the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort practices stock manipulation, high pressure selling, and multiple other acts of stock fraud to become a multi-millionaire. In this story MacFarlane resorts to murder to obtain the bodies that he requires to be able to study medicine.
      I would not be surprised if this happened quite regularly in Victorian England because back in those days one generally did not leave their body to science for study and the ability to obtain corpses to perform autopsies was very difficult. In fact I believe that when somebody died you generally didn't perform autopsies you simply buried the body and were done with it.
      I was included to connect this story with the legend of Jack the Ripper, until I discovered that Jack the Ripper was haunting the streets of London four years after this book was published. However, consider this, Jack, whoever he was, would select prostitutes as his targets (namely people that would not go missing, and not important enough to appear on the police's radar) and, as the story goes, would bit by bit remove parts of their body and place them around the corpse. This does not sound like the act of some psychotic serial killer, but rather the actions of a doctor, or a scientist, who was going out of his way to study the human body. Actually, I believe that one of the suspects in the case was a doctor.
      The story seems to be told from the perspective of a man named Fettes who gets caught up in this rather gruesome series of events, though as I suggested, it was not simply exhuming corpses from the graves, but rather creating corpses so that at a later time one can then exhume them. Obviously if one is doing this one needs to get to the corpse pretty quickly after it has been buried because if one waits too long then the corpse begins to decay and become useless. Obviously this is something that belongs in the past because these days you can hand your corpse over to science so that they can study it.

    Book preview

    The Body Snatchers - Robert Louis Stevenso

    2017

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    THE BODY SNATCHERS

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER ONE

    Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham - the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken Scotsman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasize with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum - five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known upon a pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a dislocation; but, beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.

    One dark winter night - it had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us - there was a sick man in the George, a great neighbouring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to Parliament; and the great man's still greater London doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and we were all proportionately moved by the occurrence.

    'He's come,' said the landlord, after he had filled and lighted his pipe.

    'He?' said I. 'Who? - not the doctor?'

    'Himself,' replied our host.

    'What is his name?'

    'Dr Macfarlane,' said the landlord.

    Fettes was far through his third tumbler, stupidly

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