The Dead Robbery

Of all the causes that induce mankindTo strike against themselves a mortal docket,Two eminent above the rest we find--To be in love, or to be out of pocket:Both have made many melancholy martyrs,But p’rhaps, of all the felonies de se,By ponds, and pistols, razors, ropes, and garters,Two-thirds have been through want of £. s. d.!Thus happen’d it with Peter Bunce;Both in the dumps and out of them at once,From always drawing blanks in Fortune’s lottery,At last, impatient of the light of day,He made his mind up to return his clayBack to the pottery.

Feigning a raging tooth that drove him mad,From twenty divers druggists’ shopsHe begg’d enough of laudanum by dropsT’ effect the fatal purpose that he had;He drank them, died, and while old Charon ferried him,The Coroner convened a dozen men,Who found his death was phial-ent--and thenThe Parish buried him!Unwatch’d, unwept,As commonly a Pauper sleeps, he slept;There could not be a better opportunityFor bodies to steal a body so ill kept,With all impunity.In fact, when Night o’er human vice and follyHad drawn her very necessary curtains,Down came a fellow with a sack and spade,Accustom’d many years to drive a trade,With that Anatomy more MelancholyThan Burton’s!

The Watchman in his box was dozing;The Sexton drinking at the Cheshire Cheese;No fear of any creature interposing,The human Jackal work’d away at ease:He toss’d the mould to left and right,The shabby coffin came in sight,And soon it open’d to his double-knocks,--When lo! the stiff’un that he thought to meet,Starts sudden up, like Jacky-in-a-box,Upon his seat!Awaken’d from his trance,For so the laudanum had wrought by chance,Bunce stares up at the moon, next looking level,He spies a shady Figure, tall and bony,Then shudders out these words “Are--you--the--Devil?”“The Devil a bit of him,” says Mike Mahoney,“I’m only com’d here, hoping no affront,To pick up honestly a little blunt--”“Blunt!” echoes Bunce, with a hoarse croak of laughter,--“Why, man, I turn’d life’s candle in the socket,Without a rap in either pocket,For want of that same blunt you’re looking after!”“That’s true,” says Mike, “and many a pretty manHas cut his stick upon your very plan,Not worth a copper, him and all his trumps,And yet he’s fetch’d a dacent lot of stuff,Provided he was sound and fresh enough,And dead as dumps.”“I take,” quoth Bunce, with a hard wink, “the fact is,You mean a subject for a surgeon’s practice,--I hope the question is not out of reason,But just suppose a lot of flesh and bone,For instance, like my own,What might it chance to fetch now, at this season?”“Fetch, is it?” answers Mike, “why prices differ,--But taking this same small bad job of ours,I reckon, by the pow’rs!I’ve lost ten pound by your not being stiffer!”

“Ten pounds!” Bunce echoes in a sort of flurry,“Odd zounds!Ten pounds,How sweet it sounds,Ten pounds!”And on his feet upspringing in a hurry--It seem’d the operation of a minute--A little scuffle--then a whack--And then he took the Body Snatcher’s sackAnd poked him in it!Such is this life!A very pantomime for tricks and strife!See Bunce, so lately in Death’s passive stock,Invested, now as active as a griffin,Walking--no ghost--in velveteens and smock,To sell a stiff’un!

A flash of red, then one of blue,At last, like lighthouse, came in view;Bunce rang the nightbell; wiped his highlows muddy;His errand told; the sack produced;And by a sleepy boy was introducedTo Dr. Oddy, writing in his studyThe bargain did not take long time to settle,“Ten pounds,Odd zounds!How well it sounds,Ten pounds,”Chink’d into Bunce’s palm in solid metal.With joy half-crazed,It seem’d some trick of sense, some airy gammon,He gazed and gazed,At last, possess’d with the old lust of Mammon,Thought he, “With what a very little trouble,This little capital I now might double----”Another scuffle of its usual brevity,--And Doctor Oddy, in his suit of black,Was finishing, within the sack,His “Thoughts upon Longevity!”

The trick was done. Without a doubt,The sleepy boy let Bunce and burthen out;Who coming to a lone convenient place,The body stripp’d; hid all the clothes; and then,Still favoured by the luck of evil men,Found a new customer in Dr. Case.All more minute particulars to smother,Let it suffice,Nine guineas was the priceFor which one doctor bought the other;As once I heard a Preacher say in Guinea,“You see how one black sin bring on anudder,Like little nigger pickaninny,A-riding pick-a-back upon him mudder!”“Humph!” said the Doctor, with a smile sarcastic,Seeming to traceSome likeness in the face,“So death at last has taken old Bombastic!”But in the very middle of his joking,--The subject, still unconscious of the scoff--Seized all at once with a bad fit of choking,He too was taken of!Leaving a fragment “On the Hooping Cough.”

Satan still sending luck,Another body found another buyer:For ten pounds ten the bargain next was struck,Dead doctors going higher.“Here,” said the purchaser, with smile quite pleasant,Taking a glimpse at his departed brother,“Here’s half a guinea in the way of present--Subjects are scarce, and when you get another,Let me be first.”--Bunce took him at his word,And suddenly his old atrocious trick did,Sacking M.D. the third,Ere he could furnish “Hints to the Afflicted.”

Flush’d with success,Beyond all hope or guess,His new dead robbery upon his back,Bunce plotted--such high flights ambition takes,--To treat the Faculty like ducks and drakes,And sell them all ere they could utter “Quack!”But fate opposed. According to the schools,When men become insufferably bad,The gods confer to drive them mad;March hairs upon the heads of April fools!Tempted by the old demon avaricious,Bunce traded on too far into the morning;Till nods, and winks, and looks, and signs suspicious,Ev’n words malicious,Forced on him rather an unpleasant warning.Glad was he to perceive, beside a wicket,A porter, ornamented with a ticket,Who did not seem to be at all too busy--“Here, my good man,Just show me, if you can,A doctor’s--if you want to earn a tizzy!”

Away the porter marches,And with grave face, obsequious precedes him,Down crooked lanes, round corners, under arches;At last, up an old-fashion’d staircase leads him,Almost impervious to the morning ray,Then shows a door--“There, that’s a doctor’s reckon’d,A rare Top-Sawyer, let who will come second--Good day.”

“I’m right,” thought Bunce, “as any trivet;Another venture--and then up I give it!”He rings--the door, just like a fairy portal,Opens untouch’d by mortal----He gropes his way into a dingy room,And hears a voice come growling through the gloom,“Well--eh?--Who? What?--Speak out at once!”“I will,” says Bunce.“I’ve got a sort of article to sell;Medical gemmen knows me very well--”But think Imagination how it shock’d herTo hear the voice roar out, “Death! Devil! d--n!Confound the vagabond, he thinks I amA rhubarb-and-magnesia Doctor!”“No Doctor!” exclaim’d Bunce, and dropp’d his jaw,But louder still the voice began to bellow,“Yes,--yes,--odd zounds!--I am a Doctor, fellow,At law!”The word sufficed.--Of things Bunce feared the most(Next to a ghost)Was law,--or any of the legal corps,--He dropp’d at once his load of flesh and bone,And, caring for no body, save his own,Bolted,--and lived securely till fourscore,From never troubling Doctors any more!