Corpse-snatching and President Lincoln; a guest blog on a writer's inspriation by Anna Lee Huber

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I've been a fan of Anna Lee Huber's since I had the good fortune to read an ARC of her first Lady Darby mystery, The Anatomist's Wife. It's a fact well established that I'm a big historical mystery buff. Anna's unique heroine and setting - a gentlewoman versed in the reviled science of anatomy, Scotland at that moment in history when the Georgian era yielded to the Victorian - caught my imagination. It doesn't hurt that she has a sexy love interest for Lady Darby and that her mysteries are twisty and tricky.

Today, Anna is here to tell us how a little-known fact about President Lincoln's death inspired the plot of her third Lady Darby mystery, A Grave Matter.

When I was brainstorming ideas for the plot of Lady Darby Book 3, I knew I wanted to utilize the beautiful and melancholy Dryburgh Abbey near where I had set Kiera, Lady Darby’s childhood home in the Border region of Scotland. I’d been fortunate enough to visit the site in the autumn of 2010 and instantly fell in love with the crumbling ruins. However, I needed to come up with a unique twist to a crime happening there, and I found it from a somewhat unlikely source: by watching a documentary on President Abraham Lincoln.

I was surprised to learn that in 1876 there had been a plot to steal Lincoln’s corpse from its grave in Springfield, IL. Apparently, a gang of Chicago counterfeiters decided to steal Lincoln’s body and ransom it back to the governor of Illinois in exchange for $200,000 and a full pardon for their best engraver of counterfeit plates, who was locked up in prison. Luckily an informant for the Secret Service became involved with the plot and was able to tip off the authorities to the plan.

I found the entire caper to be fascinating, and a light bulb went off inside my head. In the time and place in which I’ve set my stories—1830 Scotland—body snatching was a viable, though criminal, profession, and a terrible problem for authorities and upstanding citizens. Resurrectionists, as they were called, would steal recently buried corpses and sell them to anatomy schools for the modest sum of 8-10 guineas, depending on how fresh the body was and whether it had any interesting abnormalities. But how much more could a grave robber hope to make by ransoming the body of a loved one back to their wealthy family? 

 

Considering the predominant beliefs of the time—that a person could not rise from the dead on Judgment Day if they were not buried whole in consecrated ground—most people would be frantic to get their relative’s remains back, and willing to pay far more than a few guineas. The endeavor would also be less taxing, dangerous, and messy for the body snatchers. By 1830, the public had become wise to the ways of resurrectionists and begun to take precautions to protect the bodies of the recently deceased until they were too decomposed to be of any use to the anatomy schools. But a body long past that state, perhaps even deteriorated so far that it was no more than bones, would not be guarded. Bagging up a pile of bones from an old grave was far easier than transporting a heavy, stinking corpse under close surveillance. 

It seemed feasible that an intelligent body snatcher might become wise to such a ploy. After just a few successful ransoms, an entire team of resurrectionists could earn enough money to live comfortably for decades, so long as they didn’t become too greedy. And thus the plot of A Grave Matter—how apropos—was born. 


Anna has a copy of A Grave Matter to give away to one lucky commentor. Let's make it interesting: in order to win, tell us the names of Scotland's two most infamous resurrectionists!

You can learn more about Anna Lee Huber and the Lady Darby mysteries, and read excerpts, at her website. You can friend her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter as @AnnaLeeHuber and share book suggestions with her on Goodreads.