[Borrible]

I just remembered that the first time I read about this, I rummaged around for source material. There is a book from 1840 in which the processing of human bones from battlefields is described as productive and profitable. Carl T. von Natorp, "Ueber den Gebrauch und Werth der Knochendüngung", 1840 "On the use and value of bone fertilization"

There is a bad scan by google books of parts of the text written in German Fraktur, but on page 410 he's clearly talking about the English that started to collect bones from the battlefields to use as fertilizer in 1822.

https://books.google.de/books?id=PyRAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA410&lpg=P...