1830: On this Tuesday evening, a drunken Richard Weston entered a hut outside the city and fell asleep on a convenient pile of hay. He woke up the next morning on a suspiciously hard and uncomfortable bed. Beneath the hay, he found a sack containing the dead body of a young woman, believed to be Elizabeth Billings, who had recently died and been buried. She was promptly reburied with due reverence. On Thursday, magistrates heard a man named Ladds state that he had assisted in the removal of many bodies from the graveyard, the 'customers' taking them to London. There was proof that the gravedigger had done well out of the trade, it being reported that he had, at various times, placed considerable sums of money in one of the Peterborough banks, although before he held the office he was in abject poverty. He was dismissed. Later, it was discovered that the raided grave was not that of Elizabeth Billings - she had actually been buried in the wrong plot the first time around! This led to the exhumation of the first body, the interment of Elizabeth in her correct plot, and the body of the unknown woman being buried in a new, unmarked, grave. (Stamford Mercury)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.