Christine Miller’s discussion of this episode on her Escape-Suspense blog starts out like this: “Suspense's 'The Body Snatchers' is a light-hearted drama…” What? But once you read that phrase you just know there’s a qualifier coming. “… but the true history on which it is based is dark and gruesome.” Whew! Sounds like a Suspense story then!
Her blogpost is at https://www.escape-suspense.com/2007/05/suspense_the_bo.html
The program’s introduction gives some background, but she adds some details as follows:
in the early 19th century when the legal supply of human bodies for medical research in Britain was limited only to criminals given the death penalty
the supply was insufficient for the number of medical students who needed cadavers
the difference was made up by "body-snatching"
families who lost loved ones had to use lead coffins, locks, vaults, grills, and mortsafes to deter robbers
the story is based on criminals who committed murder for profit, notably William Burke and William Hare in 1827-1828 in Scotland
Wikipedia has details about the Anatomy Act of 1832 which reduced the need for body-snatching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_Act_1832 and a pages that details the Burke and Hare murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders. Burke and Hare were found guilty, and executed, and their bodies were used as medical school cadavers.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP421124
Unfortunately, the only cast information available is that Ted Osborne is the Signature Voice of Suspense. None of the actors are mentioned in the program.
There are no newspaper clips about this episode to be found, unfortunately. They often shed light on the cast of the programs, but not this time.
This is another script that was adapted for the Suspense comic book (issue #1). The title was changed to “Graveyard Ghouls.” The PDF of the story can be downloaded from the same Internet Archive page.
Suspense would slowly abandon this style of storytelling in favor of more current time frames in first-person narrative style. This kind of story, however, was close to what Charles Vanda had in mind in his creation of the series. By the time he returned from WW2, Suspense was quite different.
In just about two weeks after this episode, Suspense would implement its “star” policy and in five months would be officially moved from New York City to Hollywood.
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