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The story is set in the early 1800s in London. The medical field of the time was advancing knowledge of human anatomy while laws made it difficult to obtain cadavers for study. Embalming as a common practice was still decades away, and medical schools had to have fresh bodies for medical students. Stevenson would have known about the infamous case of William Burke and his subsequent execution for murdering at least sixteen individuals and selling their bodies to Professor Robert Knox at Edinburgh University’s medical school.

The allusion to Burke and the implication that Mr. K— in the story is the disgraced Robert Knox show how Stevenson employed the history of the time for the setting of “The Body Snatcher.” Stevenson also places most of the events in the story at night, especially in the graverobbing scene in which Macfarlane and Fettes work in absolute darkness without the benefit of lanterns. Using the setting of night contributes to the ominous mood of the story. The night also emphasizes how the illicit and despicable actions of the men cannot sustain the symbolic light of day but must be conducted to and confined within the cover of darkness.

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