At first glance, this is a Gothic murder in the form of a play. It tells the story of a grisly series of events, a tale of bodysnatchers, grave robbers and murderers for hire. However, it is also a play about medical ethics and the class system in Britain, because the plot of the play is based on real life events that fascinated Dylan Thomas to such an extent that he felt compelled to turn them into theater
The main antagonists in the play are the criminals themselves; yet, they do not start out as grave robbers or murderers at all. Their first crime is a thing of opportunity; a room mate dies at a time when medical cadavers are in short supply, and the men find themselves selling the body of their deceased acquaintance to a doctor in need of anatomical supplies. The process is so easy and so lucrative that they decide to do it again - and again, until a business is born, and victims are murdered just so their corpses can be sold to the highest medical bidder.
By the end of the play, the men are criminals guilty of the most unethical and pointless murders. They are punished by death themselves; but the person to whom they have been selling the bodies does not receive punishment himself. Although he does not actually order anyone's murder, Dr Burke is perfectly well aware that people are being murdered as a result of his plea for cadavers and his hiring of the two men to find him a supply of them. He is almost an accessory, probably guilty of pre-meditated murder himself, yet as a doctor, he is respected, revered even. He is not arrested; there is no trial, and no punishment, He does, admittedly, lose a great deal of the public's respect but this seems to be the extent of the repercussions that he faces. Not only has he shown himself to be ethically bankrupt, but he also demonstrates a class system that will turn a blind eye when a doctor orchestrates a series of murders, but not when a member of the working classes does. To be a doctor in Victorian England was to be almost above the law, and the play demonstrates this by mirroring exactly the events that happened in real life.
