Penny Dreadful Presents ... The Body Snatcher and The Strange Bed

'The Strange Bed' by Wilkie Collins

The author of 'The Moonstone' and 'The Woman In White' was a frequent contributor to Household Words, the popular Victorian literary magazine run by Charles Dickens. 'The Strange Bed' (a.k.a. 'The Traveller's Story of A Terribly Strange Bed') was Collins' first contribution to the magazine and was something of a sensation when it first appeared in the spring of 1852. Its literary merits transcended the usual schlocky standards of 'Dreadfuls' and the story remains just as captivating and suspenseful today, over a century and a half later.

'The Body Snatcher' by Robert Louis Stevenson

First published in the Pall Mall Christmas "Extra", in December 1884, the story is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the Burke and Hare murders.

The story begins with a group of friends sharing a few drinks, when an eminent doctor, Wolfe MacFarlane, enters. One of the friends, Fettes, recognizes the name and angrily confronts the new arrival. Although his friends all find this behaviour suspicious, none of them can understand what might lie behind it . It transpires that MacFarlane and Fettes had attended medical school together, under the famous professor of anatomy, Robert Knox. Their duties included taking receipt of bodies for dissection, and paying the pair of shifty and suspicious men who supplied them...