Possessing the Dead The Artful Science of Anatomy

In 1832, after a series of calculated murders in Edinburgh and London, British parliamentarians passed a new law to regulate how the country's medical schools could lawfully obtain bodies for dissection. The Anatomy Act's aim was to bring a halt to the grave-robbing and murders through which the schools had been tenuously supplied. But this controversial statute's deliberate ambiguity on many matters caused snatching of one kind or another to remain the pivotal means through which corpses were obtained for the rest of the century. 'Possessing the Dead' explores what happened in the wake of the Anatomy Act in Britain and Australia.

Helen MacDonald is the author of the critically acclaimed Human Remains, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and was short-listed for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She is a senior fellow at The Australian Center in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.