The archive of documents Norfolk Record Office, situated in Norwich, is a great resource for discovering the history of Great Yarmouth. However, if you are unable to get there in person, information is available online. For instance, here is a short excerpt from one of their information leaflets about bodysnatching in Yarmouth in the early 1800s...
"Body snatching was the digging up of recently buried people from churchyards to sell to students in anatomy (whose only legal source of corpses was the bodies of hanged criminals). The most famous case in Yarmouth was that of Thomas Vaughan alias Smith in 1827. He and some associates rented a room opposite the west end of St Nicholas church, in Row 6 (known later as Snatchbody Row). They dug bodies out of the churchyard, moved them into their house and then sent them to London by wagon. Although it aroused terror in many hearts, the courts regarded body snatching only as a misdemeanour meriting a short prison sentence: Vaughan received six months. Later he was found in possession of clothes he had taken from a dead body he had dug up in Plymouth. This ‘theft’ raised his crime to the level of felony and he was transported to Australia. After 1827 high fences were put up around St Nicholas churchyard to prevent a repetition of the crime."
[Source: Norfolk Record Office, Information Leaflet No 29 -> click HERE for further info about Yarmouth history]
For a more recent case of bodysnatching, please click HERE
~ Colin ~
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