The Body Snatchers

Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Body-Snatcher (1884) is the tale of MacFarlane and Fettes, a pair of "resurrection men," or body-snatchers - unsavory types who secretly disinter fresh corpses from graveyards to sell as anatomy subjects. This grim little tale is based on reality, as in Edinburgh - Stevenson's home town - body-snatching was so common they built high walls and guard towers around the graveyards. Sometimes, for want of a corpse, an even less scrupulous body-snatcher might just off someone in the night instead of risking a trip to a rural graveyard…but I don't want to give away too much.