07-Weird Lit Tales: Was the great poet John Keats a grave robber?

Podcast Cuentos Oscuros

It is well known that the English poet was obsessed with death, a theme that permeated his poetry, along with a fascination for funerary objects such as tombs, urns, and gravestones. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 23 and passed away two years later, in 1821. According to a BBC article, it is possible that Keats wandered through cemeteries in search of fresh corpses for his classes at Guy's Hospital in London. At the time, medical schools needed bodies for practice, but the law only allowed the use of executed criminals' corpses. As a result, it was common for body snatchers to be hired to supply corpses—or, failing that, for the students themselves to take part in the task. Who knows if Keats's fascination with death in his work originated during his student days, shaped by the sight of tombs, gravestones, and the dead?