culture, history

A Short History of Grave Robbing

The arrest of a Pennsylvania man on charges of grave robbing this week has led to hundreds of news outlets reporting the horrific details of his collection of hundred of bones and several skulls. Much like Ed Gein before him, Jonathan Christ Gerlach (yes, that’s his middle name) raided, at the very least, Mount Moriah Cemetery on the border of southwest Philadelphia — for purposes, at this time, unknown. Like Gein, was Gerlach a necrophiliac? Was he on his way to becoming a serial killer? Or was he, as some have suggested (based upon his being tagged in Facebook group about the sale of human remains) more interested in the money that can be had from “the bone trade” as it is sometimes called (oh, and he stole jewelry, too).

raiders-at-tomb-of-ameneminet
Are these grave robbers at the tomb of Ameneminet?

The history of grave robbing is fascinating, albeit gruesome, stretching back into antiquity. Ancient Egyptians were known to rob the tombs of the wealthy. In fact, most tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings were robbed within one hundred years of their sealing. But theft was not the only motivation for those who disturbed graves. In China, for example,  in 506 BC, military general Wu Zixu dug up the corpse of King Ping of Chu to abuse and whip his corpse. Desecration, and the fear and revulsion that came with it, gave the abuser a sense of power over the living AND the dead.

The first known case of what is otherwise called “body snatching” was committed in 1319 by four medical students in Bologna, Italy. For centuries following — most notably the nineteenth century with the infamous duo of Burke and Hare active in the 1820s — grave robbers illegally sold human remains to medical schools primarily for purposes of teaching anatomy. Many doctors believed it to be a necessary evil. These body snatchers came to be known as “ressurectionists,” and many were paid handsomely for their ability to supply cadavers (with no questions asked as to how they were obtained). They would send spies to funerals  to scout out the freshest bodies that would later be easily removed from the loose, newly disturbed ground. Some, like Burke and Hare, would even kill to get bodies, making the job all that much easier.

Mortsafes
Mortsafes at a church yard in Logierait, south of Pitlochry, Perthshire, Scotland. Photo by Judy Wilson. Taken from Wikipedia.

Iron coffins, grave alarms, and mortsafes (the iron cage around a grave) became common as a way to combat body snatchers. In the UK, the problem was so prevalent that the government issued the Anatomy Act in 1832, making grave robbing a criminal offense. Of course, the practice didn’t stop. And to this day, there’s a black market for bones, skulls, scalps, skin, teeth — you name it. Not for medical schools, but for private collections… even sexual gratification. Morbid obsession. Anti-social urges.

At “oddities” flea markets, conventions and the like, one can actually find and buy a human skull. They are often accompanied by a certification of some kind stating that the skull was obtained by legal means (e.g., a museum auction for deaccessioned pieces). But these are relatively few and far between, whereas availability on the black market / dark web / and even — as was apparently the case with Gerlach — social media groups, is prevalent.

"Resurrectionists” stealing dead bodies from a graveyard.
“Resurrectionists” stealing dead bodies from a graveyard. 1887 illustration by British artist Hablot Knight Browne.

Psychologists say the motivations for grave robbing vary. But at the root is a need for power and control. Thieves feel empowerment when they take from the dead, justifying their crimes as having no real victim, or seeing the theft as revenge for perceived injustice (“eat the rich”). Sociopaths find an outlet for anti-social behavior, whether its extreme vandalism, an inability to relate to the living, or an obsession with the dead and all things related to death. And psychopaths? They satisfy unspeakable urges. Some, like Ed Gein, go on to murder.

What were Gerlach’s motivations? The truth will come out in time. The details will be horrific. We will be further shocked by this man’s behavior. Perhaps what is most disturbing is that the reasons behind crimes like Gerlach’s are impossible to fully understand. But it gave him an identity in a subculture that exists at the fringes of polite society.

And that this subculture even exists is perhaps the most disturbing revelation of them all.

 

music

Mark E. Smith and the Inscrutable Fall

Formed in Manchester in 1976, The Fall — with vocalist and founder Mark E. Smith at the helm — is the most inscrutable of post-punk bands. Experimental and enigmatic, The Fall released 31 studio albums from 1979 to 2017, a significant number of live albums, and many beloved John Peel sessions (24, a record number). Peel himself once cited The Fall as his favorite band, as do many in the British press. But all recordings by them are decidedly uncommercial, and Smith was forever proud for it to be that way.

Mark E. Smith
Mark E. Smith

Born in 1957, Smith had a normal childhood, but always felt like the outsider. At sixteen, he quit school and worked menial jobs — something he may even have become accustomed to had it not been for the summer of 1976 and seeing the  Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Members of Joy Division / New Order, the Smiths, Magazine, and The Buzzcocks were there, too. Each was inspired that night to eschew the pop music of the time and pick up instruments that most couldn’t even play. Each inarguably original. And Smith — who told Dave Haslam he already had begun his music career in 1975 — from thenceforward took the DIY aesthetic of the Pistols and made something uniquely his own. Unique, even, among his post-punk contemporaries.

Forever the contrarian, Smith — in the 42 years of the band’s existence (with rotating members) — never really had a hit, nor did he want one, really. THE INFOTAINMENT SCAM (1993) reached the UK Top Ten, but it was their only album to achieve this degree of success. Covers of R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s a Ghost in My House” and The Kinks’ “Victoria” charted in the UK in 1987 and 1988, respectively, but among their original material, only “Cruiser’s Creek” — from 1985’s excellent THIS NATION’S SAVING GRACE (where the song was an unreleased b-side until 1988) — broke through to the public at large, becoming a minor classic of what post-punk had become by the middle to late nineteen eighties. Their most heard song? “Hip Priest,” used in the final scenes of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) is played by serial killer Buffalo Bill on an unseen stereo while FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) walks a dark basement, gun drawn. It’s a moment many have seen, but few have really listened to. It’s an uncomfortable moment, and the music is similarly disorienting. Hardly accessible. And hypnotic.

The Fall
Mark E. Smith with his wife, guitarist Brix Smith, and keyboard player Marcia Schofield. Manchester, 1987.

I AM KURIOUS ORANJ (1998) is perhaps their most approachable album. Intended as the soundtrack for the ballet “I Am Curious, Orange,” a collaboration with the dancer Michael Clark, ORANJ was The Fall’s eleventh studio album.

ORANJ was also the last to include then-at-the-time wife Brix Smith, whose songwriting skills were strong — even as her marriage to Mark was weakening. The guitar riff in “Cruiser’s Creek” wer hers, as are many memorable songs on I AM KURIOUS ORANJ. But the lack of her presence on 1990’s EXTRICATE (also deemed accessible by critics) is apparent. Still, the proverbial show went on for The Fall for almost another two decades. Mark E. Smith didn’t seem to skip a beat.

“One of the most intelligent blokes [to walk] the planet,” said Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch in a 1999 issue of UNCUT magazine, Smith’s voice (often heard through a megaphone or cassette recorder which he often brought on stage) may have been caustic — and the music described by those who hate it as repetitive. But it was never boring, and often hypnotic. Smith’s lyrics, though sometimes buried in the mix and occasionally unintelligable, were at times biting, even beautiful.

After his death in 2018 at age 60, the British press and world at large briefly sang his praises, something Smith himself would have hated. He didn’t look for praise. His band didn’t sound like anyone else. And his attitude toward music was as mordant as the man.

In an unreleased documentary, Smith said

“It’s rock and roll. It’s all about the abuse of instruments, not playing instruments. That’s why music is so boring [now]. Every record you hear is so well-produced, and the blokes playing it have the imagination of a flea.”

By being so creative, innovative, and on the fringe for so many years, The Fall was able to help other bands that followed them find the elusive middle between experimentation AND commercialism. It’s a palpable dichotomy. And one need only listen to The Fall’s later albums, like I AM KURIOUS ORANJ, to even begin to hear and try to understand how that convergence and split makes for quite memorable music.