Today Watford is most commonly known for the wide green spaces of Cassiobury Park and the Harry Potter studio tour. But there was a time when Watford was infamous for bodysnatching and highwaymen.

In the eighteenth century Watford was plagued with the attention of bodysnatchers. Medical schools needed corpses for dissection and anatomy lessons, and resurrectionists were paid to dig up bodies to help advance their studies.

The explosion in bodysnatching was in part due to a reduction in executions, the traditional source of cadavers. Bodysnatching had a certain appeal over other crimes, as the punishment was minimal: the convicted were given a fine or imprisoned, rather than hanged as they would have been for highway robbery. It was a highly organised activity, with resurrectionists sending spies to funerals to scout the grave and plan the removal of the body. Medical practitioners and institutions condoned the activity, seeing it as a necessary evil, offset by the benefits.

For example, knowledge gained from studying anatomy allowed for the significant improvement of the operation for removing bladder stones in the 1720s. Before, the operation took hours, with countless risks including blood loss, infection and incredible pain. But new techniques meant that now it could be finished in under a minute, greatly reducing patients’ distress.

The increased use of stage-coaches contributed to this trade as well. In Watford there were two coaches daily to London. By bringing Watford closer to the capital, the stage-coach gained the town the gruesome reputation as a centre for the macabre, yet lucrative, practice of bodysnatching. The convenient network of roads made it easy to spirit the bodies away into the anonymity of London.

One tale from the Watford Observer centenary edition, 1963, tells of three men wheeling a handcart round to the rear of one of the public houses in Watford and unloading a heavy box, obviously with the intention of returning and picking it up later to catch the coach to London, after refreshing themselves in the pub. Unfortunately there came from the box a rather unpleasant smell which attracted dogs on the street who came sniffing and whining round it. The constable was alerted and he decided this was a matter for investigation. The box was opened in front of an excited crowd looking for some morbid melodrama. And they got it, as the corpse rolled out into the yard whilst the resurrectionists, well-warned, hastened away to hiding.

The situation became such a problem that the 1832 Anatomy Act was passed in the United Kingdom, making bodysnatching a criminal offence.

Another problem Watford faced in the 17th and 18th centuries was highwaymen. The heaths and byways in and out of London were the haunt of highwaymen, who attacked lone horse-riders and stagecoaches. They could work alone, but more often attacked in pairs or in gangs. No one travelled along quiet roads without fear of being robbed, and many travellers even wrote their wills before setting out, just in case. They travelled in fear of hearing the famous words, “Your money or your life.”

Bushey Heath’s history in particular – due to it being heavily wooded and its lack of street lighting and police – is full of tales of thieves, highwaymen and even murder.

The road from Bushey Heath to Stanmore is said to be where the highwaymen lurked, ready to raid the dozen or so caravans that passed through Bushey Heath daily, carrying money from trade in London.

A white stone on Boxmoor Common, Hemel Hempstead, is said to mark the grave of James Snooks, the last highwayman in England to hang. Before his fortieth birthday he was well-established in his career as a highwayman, living as a wanted man, forever on the run. The event of his hanging was reputedly witnessed by thousands of people who came from far and wide especially for the occasion.

Highwaymen in Hyde Park became so common that King William III had the route between St James’s Palace and Kensington Palace lit at night with oil lamps as a precaution against them. This became the first artificially lit highway in Britain.

The last recorded robbery by a mounted highwayman occurred in 1831. However, the practice of bodysnatching continues today as a lucrative underground activity.