More widely known than the nephew during Sir Astley’s life was his servant, Charles Osbaldeston—a name which in practice softened down into Balderson. He was keenly alive to his master’s interest, and had much tact and disposition for manœuvre; he boasted that in twenty-six years he never lost a patient for his master whom it was possible to retain. Wherever Mr. Cooper was, Charles would start after him, if urgently required, and at any cost of post-horses track him out and bring him triumphantly to the fore. Mr. Cooper in his earlier years, when anatomy formed a great part of his work, was of necessity largely concerned with the resurrectionists, and was one of the main supporters, it may be equally conceded, of their practices, the details of which he was not unfrequently made acquainted with. But the state of the law, which almost made it impossible to gain possession of subjects for dissection legally, must be accepted as the apology for much that would now as then be regarded as shocking. It cannot be strictly germane to Sir Astley Cooper’s life to describe the procedure of the body-snatchers, as Mr. Bransby Cooper has done;[17] but it may be remarked that on occasions when public notice was threatened, Astley Cooper took prompt steps to obviate injurious publicity of his name. For a time the men of ill-fame reigned supreme, exacting almost what prices they chose. If any demur was made, they stopped the supplies, and then the medical students became angry, held indignation meetings, sent deputations to their teachers, sometimes asserting that their lecturers were not as active or as liberal as those of some rival school, and threatening to leave _en masse_. Thus the lecturers were in a manner forced to pay more for their subjects than they could receive from their pupils for dissecting them. Another disagreeable consequence was, that when the regular “resurrectionists” got into trouble, the surgeons had to make great exertions in their behalf, and often advanced large sums to defend them, or to keep them and their families during imprisonment. Sir Astley Cooper spent hundreds of pounds in this way. One of his accounts includes £14, 7s. for half the expenses of going down and bailing Vaughan at Yarmouth, £13 for Vaughan’s support during twenty-six weeks’ imprisonment, £50, 8s. for four subjects, paid to Murphy, and six guineas “finishing money” to three men, a douceur at the end of a session.