ng a five-foot grave, the coffin lid would be about four feet from the
surface. A rough slanting tunnel, some five yards long, would, therefore,
have to be constructed, so as to impinge exactly on the coffin head. This
being at last struck (no very simple task), the coffin was lugged up by
hooks to the surface, or, preferably, the end of the coffin was wrenched
off with hooks while still in the shelter of the tunnel, and the scalp or
feet of the corpse secured through the open end, and the body pulled out,
leaving the coffin almost intact and unmoved.

"The body once obtained, the narrow shaft was easily filled up and the sod
of turf accurately replaced. The friends of the deceased, seeing that the
earth _over_ his grave was not disturbed, would flatter themselves that
the body had escaped the Resurrectionist; but they seldom noticed the
neatly-placed square of turf, some feet away."

A somewhat similar account is given in the _Memorials of John Flint
South_.[14] This method is also referred to by Bransby Cooper,[15] who
states that it was told him by one "who fancied he had found out their
secret, but had, no doubt, been deceived by some of them purposely."
Bransby Cooper also says that he asked one of the principal
resurrection-men as to the feasibility of this method, and the man showed
him several objections to it, and stated that "it would never do." This
statement was made after the resurrection-days were over, when there could
be no advantage in keeping the true plan secret. It must be remembered
that there were some amateur body-snatchers, and that it was not at all
unlikely that the regular men would tell to them a plan as full of
difficulties as that quoted above. To make the tunnel as described, would
be impossible, and it is somewhat difficult to see how grappling-irons
were fastened to the coffin; a man could hardly get down a tunnel 18 in.
in diameter and 15 feet in length to do this; if he did succeed, his
difficulties in returning must have been still greater. To pull a body
out of the head or foot of a coffin, as described, is an impossibility. No
allowance is made, either, in digging the tunnel for obstacles, in the
shape of intervening graves or grave-stones. As regards the evidence on
the surface of a grave having been disturbed, it would be greater in one
opened in this manner than if the recently-disturbed earth had been again
dug out. It would be impossible to get back into the tunnel all the earth