In the dead of night sometime in the late
1700s, two masked Englishmen sneak into a graveyard. As thick cloud moves in front of an almost-full
moon, they hop from headstone to headstone on the way to their prize. A Mrs. Crinklebottom has just passed away
from a bad case of consumption, God bless her soul, and her newly interred body is ready
for the taking. These couple of so-called “body snatchers”
are aware that the corpse of dear Mrs. Crinklebottom is worth a good bit of money if sold to the
right people, so with empty stomachs they have no qualms about resurrecting her. Getting her out isn’t hard, either. In no time at all, the two men are chuckling
as they carry the cadaver through the dark streets of London. After hearing that we’re guessing you already
have a good idea as to why graves might have been dug six feet in depth. Graverobbing was a job back in those days
for some people. It didn’t require much skill and could earn
a person a good living. You might now ask, why rob a grave? Surely there isn’t a huge market for smelly
corpses? Well, there was back then. Gravediggers, sometimes called “resurrectionists”
or “resurrection-men” were actually doing the work that the government kind of wanted
done. You see, the medical profession was advancing
very fast, but there weren’t enough fresh bodies around for a growing number of anatomists
in the medical schools. That’s one of the reasons why the government
only made stealing corpses a misdemeanor crime. The medical men of the time would usually
get their bodies from people who’d been sentenced to death and also dissection. But the thing was, this kind of sentence was
reserved for only the very worst crimes. There just weren’t enough extreme crimes
being committed, so the anatomists were always short of bodies. That’s why they paid for them on the black
market and why the government turned a blind eye to the trade. Of course, Mrs. Crinklebottom’s devoted
husband and family wouldn’t have been too happy about their beloved going missing in
the night. Back then, in all parts of Britain, families
were aware that their loved one might be stolen. That’s why they’d sometimes guard over
the grave for days, or pile big stones on it, or even surround it with iron bars. Still, those wily gravediggers were hard to
stop. Even if the grave was covered, they’d sometimes
dig a hole close to it and then tunnel to the coffin. They’d then open the box and pull out the
body, taking it back through the tunnel. They could subsequently cover up their hole
and the relatives of the deceased wouldn’t know anything had happened. A day or two later, a bunch of bespectacled
men with white beards would be brandishing scalpels as they stood over an almost-fresh
corpse. It really was a big business. You might have heard of two Brits named Burke
and Hare. They hatched a plan one day while sitting
in a tavern over a few ales. Why wait for people to die, they thought? Why not just kill someone and then tell the
guys at the medical school they’d dug the body up? That’s exactly what they did, and the surgeons
paid them hard cash for their victims. It happened in the US, too. Sometimes criminally-minded women would turn
up at the poorhouses and shed rivers of tears for the newly dead. It was all an act, they just wanted the body
to sell on. The US was a bit behind Europe when it came
to anatomical dissection, but it was catching up, so it, too, had a body shortage problem. So, corpses were snatched just like they were
over the pond. It was illegal, of course, but some people
thought, well, it’s for the greater good. When a famous physician named Charles Knowlton
was arrested for performing a dissection on a body that he had no business cutting up,
he defended his actions by saying the work he was doing could “increase the happiness,
or diminish the misery, of mankind.” He was probably right, but the public didn’t
really see eye to eye with the man. Remember there were a lot of people who really
didn’t want their loved ones ending up on the chopping block, never mind how good it
might be for their future brethren. Laws were eventually changed so that people
could donate their bodies to science, but before that happened, graverobbing was so
serious that sometimes cemeteries had to be guarded day and night. That’s one reason why the graverobbers sometimes
turned to places called a “Potter's field”, which is where the poor and unclaimed were
laid to rest, usually in unmarked graves. Even they might be guarded, but the guys stealing
for the physicians could easily get around that with a small bribe. There was also the fact that some bodies were
seen as fair game, just because they had died poor and were seen as having a low social
standing. African-American bodies were sometimes stolen
over poor white bodies, which in 1787 led a group of free blacks to petition the local
council in New York state. They wrote, “Under the cover of night, they
dig up the bodies of the deceased, friends and relatives of the petitioners, carry them
away without respect to age or sex, mangle their flesh out of wanton curiosity and then
expose it to beasts and birds.” Slaves in the south were often dissected after
death, as were criminals of any color who’d been sentenced to death. In all, graverobbing was a huge problem all
over the US. It was reported that yearly as many as 40,000
bodies were stolen for the purpose of advancing medical science, and people weren’t happy
about it. Sure, you could pay a fair bit of cash and
buy what one company called, “Burglar proof grave vaults made of steel”, but not everyone
was wealthy enough to do that. One simple and cheap solution was to bury
the body farther down. That’s just one of the theories as to why
bodies were buried that deep, although there are more theories. We thought you just needed to hear a little
bit of the history of graverobbing. Six feet is a lot of digging, so generally,
people wouldn’t have put the effort in when, say, three or four feet would have done the
job. That was the case in the 17th century in England. But then in 1665 something awful besieged
the city of London. This was called the “Great Plague of London.” The city might have been bustling and one
of the centers of the world, but it was also overcrowded and filthy in parts. This London plague killed around 100,000 people,
which worked out at about a quarter of the entire population. That’s why the authorities came up with
a bunch of ways to try and prevent the spread of the plague. Believe it or not, they imposed a lockdown,
but only on houses where it was thought people were sick with the deadly disease. When we say lockdown, it was more like being
locked in. If people were suspected of carrying the plague
their house was basically locked up from the outside on the order of the Justices of the
Peace in Middlesex. Many of the public, mostly the poor public,
didn’t much like this and they rioted in the streets and opened up locked down houses. This is what a well-known minister said in
regard to how the public felt at the time: “Fear quickly begins to creep upon peoples
hearts; great thoughts and discourse there is in Town about the Plague.” The rich of London got out of there, but most
people were stuck, and as we said, many of them died. So, one of the things those people came up
with to prevent the spread was to make sure the dead bodies were well and truly buried. A pamphlet was passed around at the time,
with the title, “Orders Conceived and Published by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City
of London Concerning the Infection of the Plague.” There were quite a lot of orders indeed. One of them was that “Watchmen” were to
stand outside houses of the infected day and night to ensure no one went inside. “Searchers” were hired to seek out infected
persons, and they were followed by “Chirurgeons.” That’s an old word for a surgeon. Social distancing measures were also put in
place, with “Dinners at Taverns, Alehouses” to be stopped. There were a lot more orders, but for the
purpose of today’s show we’ll go straight to the part headed, “Burial of the dead.” Basically, people were ordered not to go anywhere
near the corpse or even the grave of someone who’d died from plague. But the order also said this, “All the Graves
shall be at least six-foot deep.” So, possibly it was disease and that very
order where the six feet thing originated. Still, it wasn’t exactly a strict science. Often the victims of the plague were thrown
into deep pits with lots of other people. Word on the street is that another reason
why six foot was the measurement of choice was because if the grave was any more shallow
the body might accidentally be relieved of its resting place by a rather powerful plow. On top of that, with a shallow grave there
was a chance of an animal getting to the corpse. But that still doesn’t really explain six
feet. Why not 5.2 feet? Surely even a Jack Russell Terrier in its
prime could not get down that low. Let’s imagine that people did in fact want
to bury bodies quite deep because of disease or plows or even animals with strong claws. The question then might be, just how low can
you go? Some people have suggested that back in the
day someone came up with the idea that six feet was about a deep as you could dig without
the digging becoming dangerous. They said any deeper than that and the walls
might cave in. On top of this, what about the poor gravedigger
in the days before machines did the digging? Not only would his job have been very dangerous
had he dug down, say, seven feet, but if he pushed it to ten feet he would have been asking
for trouble. For that reason, graves were dug to a similar
depth as the person’s height. That way, he was likely not in danger and
the hole was deep enough to prevent things from happening that we’ve discussed. He could likely even get out of the hole without
the use of a ladder. Then there was the “rule of thumb” which
as you know means making a rough estimate without any kind of precision involved. It’s kind of doing what seems right. In the case of graves, the rule of thumb might
have been to bury the person down according to their height. Maybe a safe grave was as deep as it was long. In the case of a man’s average height back
in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was something like 165 cm (5 ft 5 in), in England at least. A six-foot-ish grave might have made sense
if you believe in the rule of thumb theory. The saying is an old one and was likely used
in the past, but these days gravediggers anywhere in the world are not told to dig a grave exactly
six feet. In the US, there is no rule about six feet,
with a grave being dug only as deep as the local authority says it should be. That depth will often be 30 to 36 inches above
the coffin, which would work out at closer to four feet or just a bit over in total. It’s the same in the UK, with most graves
being dug so that three feet of space is above the coffin once it’s down there. Coffins of course are not all the same size. For some particularly obese people, a coffin
can be super-sized. That might also require a deeper grave. It also depends on how people are buried. For instance, in Pennsylvania, if there’s
a concrete vault it is written that the “distance from parts of the top of the outer case containing
the casket may not be less than 1.5 feet (18 inches) from the natural surface of the ground.” In New York, if there’s a concrete vault,
it should be at least two feet from the surface and if there is no vault then the distance
should be three feet from the surface. We actually found an academic paper titled,
“Burial Practices in Southern Appalachia”, which told us things like back in the day
when someone was buried in those parts the family would often throw into the grave, “jewelry,
eyeglasses, tobacco, pipes, guns, knives, toys, Bibles, and alcoholic beverages.” The paper also said that those graves should
be six feet deep, which was to prevent burrowing animals from getting close to the coffin. That was in the past, though. These days the folks from Appalachia likely
don’t go six feet under. Then you have the fact that sometimes coffins
are stacked on top of each other, so in some cases, the grave will be way deeper than six
feet. All in all, it’s unlikely when you pass,
you’ll be resting deep down in the ground, but will be closer to pushing up daisies. Now you need to watch, “Best Evidence of
Life After Death.” Or, have a look at...
