Editing Body snatching (section)

==United States==
Body snatchers generally worked in small groups, which scouted and pillaged fresh graves. Fresh graves were generally given preference since the earth had not yet settled, thus making digging easier. The removed earth was often shoveled onto canvas tarp laid by the grave, so the nearby grounds were undisturbed. Digging commenced at the head of the grave, clear to the coffin. The remaining earth on the coffin provided a counterweight which snapped the partially covered coffin lid (which was covered in sacking to muffle noise) as crowbars or hooks pulled the lid free at the head of the coffin. Usually, the body would be disrobed–the garments thrown back into the coffin before the earth was put back into place.<ref name=Richardson>{{cite book |author=Richardson, Ruth |title=Death, dissection, and the destitute |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |year=2000 |isbn=0-226-71239-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WGUtC-y0YtUC&q=Richardson,+R.+Death,+Dissection,+and+the+destitute&pg=PR11}}</ref>

[[Night Doctors|Resurrectionists]] have also been known to hire women to act the part of grieving relatives and to claim the bodies of dead at poorhouses.  Women were also hired to attend funerals as grieving mourners; their purpose was to ascertain any hardships the body snatchers may later encounter during the disinterment. Bribed servants would sometimes offer body snatchers access to their dead master or mistress lying in state; the removed body would be replaced with weights.<ref name=Richardson/>

Although medical research and education lagged in the United States compared to medical colleges' European counterparts, the interest in anatomical dissection grew in the United States.  [[Philadelphia]], [[Baltimore]], [[New York City|New York]] with several medical schools, were renowned for body snatching activity: all locales provided plenty of cadavers.<ref name=trafficdead/>  Finding subjects for dissection proved to be "morally troubling" for students of anatomy. As late as the mid-19th century, [[John Gorham Coffin]], a prominent aptly named professor and medical physician, wondered how any ethical physician could participate in the traffic of dead bodies.<ref name=trafficdead>{{cite book |author=Sappol, Michael |title=A traffic of dead bodies: anatomy and embodied social identity in nineteenth-century America |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton, N.J |year=2002 |isbn=0-691-05925-X |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-9cKRzEx6ywC&q=A+Traffic+of+Dead+Bodies}}</ref>

[[Charles Knowlton]] (1800–1850) was imprisoned for two months in the Worcester (Massachusetts) County Jail for "illegal dissection" in 1824, a couple of months after graduating with distinction from Dartmouth Medical School. His thesis<ref>http://www.danallosso.com/Graverobbing.html{{dead link|date=November 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> defended dissection on the rationalist basis that "value of any art or science should be determined by the tendency it has to increase the happiness, or to diminish the misery, of mankind."  Knowlton called for doctors to relieve "public prejudice" by donating their own bodies for dissection.

The body of Ohio congressman [[John Scott Harrison]], son of [[William Henry Harrison]], was snatched in 1878 for Ohio Medical College, and discovered by his son John Harrison, brother of President [[Benjamin Harrison]].<ref>"The Graveyard Robbers,"  ''New York Times'', May 31, 1878</ref><ref name="Taylor">Stephen J. Taylor, "[http://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/ghoul-busters-indianapolis-guards-its-dead-or-does-it/ Ghoul Busters: Indianapolis Guards its Dead: Or Does It?]", ''Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana's Digital Newspaper Program'' (January 24, 2015).</ref>

Large, gated, centralized cemeteries, which sometimes employed armed guards, emerged as a response to grave-robbing fears.  Gated, "high-security" cemeteries were also a response to the discovery that many old urban and rural burying grounds were found to be practically empty of their human contents when downtown areas were re-developed and old pioneer cemeteries moved, as in Indianapolis.<ref name="Taylor"/>

===Use in medical schools===
{{See also|Sociopolitical issues of anatomy in America in the 19th century}}
The demand for cadavers for human dissection grew as medical schools were established in the United States. This was due to the demand for students to have more first-hand experiences with multiple cadavers, rather than observing dissections on only one specimen. The sudden advances in surgery were what brought on this demand for cadavers for medical school students to learn more about internal anatomy.<ref name="Highet 415–440">{{Cite journal |last=Highet |first=Megan |date=2005-12-01 |title=Body Snatching & Grave Robbing: Bodies for Science |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240536269 |journal=History and Anthropology |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=415–440 |doi=10.1080/02757200500390981|s2cid=162248891 }}</ref> Between the years of 1758 and 1788, only 63 of the 3500 physicians in the [[Colonies]] had studied abroad, namely at the [[University of Edinburgh Medical School]].<ref name="Moore82">{{cite journal |doi=10.1097/00000658-198211000-00004 |author=Moore FD |title=Two hundred years ago: origins and early years of the Harvard Medical School |journal=Ann. Surg. |volume=196 |issue=5 |pages=525–535 |date=November 1982 |pmid=6751245 |pmc=1352783 }}</ref>  Study of anatomy legitimized the medical field, setting it apart from homeopathic and botanical studies. Later, in 1847, physicians formed the [[American Medical Association]], in an effort to differentiate between the "true science" of medicine and "the assumptions of ignorance and empiricism" based on an education without the experience of human dissection.<ref name="trafficdead" /> In addition, the medical community wanted to grow medical students’ knowledge and improve their education by creating a licensing system to terminate those who only went to medical school for pleasantry. By requiring training in anatomy as a prerequisite, this demanded the need for cadavers for medical school students for their graduation.<ref name="Highet 415–440"/>

==== University of Pennsylvania Medical School ====
The University of Pennsylvania was the first medical school in America in the 18th century.<ref name="MONTGOMERY 1966 374–393">{{Cite journal |last=Montgomery  |first=Horace |date=1966 |title=A Body Snatcher Sponsors Pennsylvania's Anatomy Act |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24621865 |journal=Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=374–393 |doi=10.1093/jhmas/XXI.4.374 |jstor=24621865 |issn=0022-5045|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In 1762, [[John Morgan (physician)|John Morgan]] and [[William Shippen Jr.]] founded the medical department of [[University of Pennsylvania]].  Shippen put an advertisement in the [[Pennsylvania Gazette]] in November 1762 announcing his lectures about the "art of dissecting, injections, etc."  The cost was "five pistoles." In 1765, his house was attacked by a mob, claiming the doctor had desecrated a church's burying ground. The doctor denied this and made known that he only used bodies of "suicides, executed felons, and now and then one from the [[Potter's field|Potter's Field]]".<ref name=Keen>{{cite book |title=Addresses and Other Papers |author1=Keen, William Williams |year=1905 |publisher=W.B. Saunders & Co. |url=https://archive.org/stream/addressesotherpa00keenuoft/addressesotherpa00keenuoft_djvu.txt}}</ref> Later in the 19th century, this school issued an anatomy law that would be state-wide, which was issued around the statement of grave-robbing. This was due to an organized group of grave robbers in Philadelphia. Senator [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24621865 William James McKnight] was the person behind the upbringing of the state-wide anatomy law and was involved in grave-robbing himself after this act was finalized to the public.<ref name="MONTGOMERY 1966 374–393"/>

==== Boston Medical School ====
In Boston, medical students faced similar issues with procuring subjects for dissection.  In his biographical notes, [[John Collins Warren (surgeon, born 1842)|John Collins Warren Jr.]] wrote, "No occurrences in the course of my life have given me more trouble and anxiety than the procuring of subjects for dissection." He continues to tell of the difficulty his father John Warren had finding subjects during the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]]: many soldiers who had died were without relation. These experiences gave [[John Warren (surgeon, born 1753)|John Warren]] the experience he needed to begin his lectures on anatomy in 1781.<ref name=Leypoldt/> His advertisement in the local paper stated the following: "A Course of lectures will be delivered this Winter upon the several Branches of Physick, for the Improvement of all such as are desirous of obtaining medical Knowledge: Those who propose attending, are requested to make Application as soon as possible, as the Course will commence in a few days." It was dated and signed: "Boston 01/01/1781 John Warren, Sec'y, Medical Society."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cfE7AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA288 |title=Colonial Society of Massachusetts|volume=19|year= 1918|page=288}}</ref>

==== Harvard Medical School ====
[[Ebenezer Hersey]], a physician, left [[Harvard College]] £1,000 for the creation of a Professorship in Anatomy in 1770. A year earlier, John Warren and his friends had created a secret anatomic society. This society's purpose was to participate in anatomic dissection, using cadavers that they themselves procured. The group's name was the "[[Spunkers]]"; however, speaking or writing the name was prohibited. Often the group used shovels to obtain fresh corpses for its anatomical study.<ref name="Moore82"/>

[[Harvard Medical School]] was established November 22, 1782; John Warren was elected Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.  When his son was in the college in 1796, the peaceful times provided few subjects. John Collins Warren Jr. wrote: "Having understood that a man without relations was to be buried in the North Burying-Ground, I formed a party&nbsp;... When my father came up in the morning to lecture, and found that I had been engaged in this scrape, he was very much alarmed."<ref name=Leypoldt/>

John Warren's quest for subjects led him to consult with his colleague, [[W.E. Horner]], professor of anatomy at [[University of Pennsylvania]], who wrote back: "Since the opening of our lectures, the town has been so uncommonly healthy, that I have not been able to obtain a fourth part of subjects required for our dissecting rooms."<ref name=trafficdead/>

Warren later enlisted the help of an old family friend, [[John Revere]] (son of [[Paul Revere]]) to procure subjects for dissection. Revere called upon [[John Godman]] who suggested that Warren employ the services of James Henderson, "a trusty old friend and servant" who could "at any time, and almost to any number, obtain the articles you desire."<ref name=trafficdead/>

During this time, there was an intense growth in New England of medical programs, which led to an increase in the need for anatomy cadavers. To keep a good supply of bodies became a difficult endeavor. Students were sent away to Boston to seek subjects by grave-robbing. This caused the public to get involved, and people began to set up grave watchers in graveyards to catch those who were snatching the bodies. This led the students to move to New York to find potential bodies for cadavers, which at this time was not the safest option. People were going to jail and were fined for disturbing the gravesites.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shultz |first=Suzanne M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJPwpgQYwzEC&dq=harvard+body+snatching&pg=PP5 |title=Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America |year=2005 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-2232-6 |language=en}}</ref>

Warren attempted to set up a cadaver provision system in Boston, similar to the systems already set up in New York and Philadelphia. Public officials and burial-ground employees were routinely bribed for entrance to Potter's Field to get bodies.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sappol |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-9cKRzEx6ywC&q=A+Traffic+of+Dead+Bodies |title=A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-century America |date=2002 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-05925-9 |language=en}}</ref> Potter's Field was a public cemetery. These types of places were favored by medical doctors who were in search of bodies to use for their dissections.<ref name="Highet 415–440"/>

In New York, the bodies were divided into two groups–one group contained the bodies of those "most entitled to respect, or most likely to be called for by friends;" the other bodies were not exempt from exhumation. In Philadelphia's two public burying grounds, anatomists claimed bodies regularly, without consideration. "If schools or physicians differed over who should get an allotment of bodies, the dispute was to be settled by the mayor–a high-reaching conspiracy that resulted in a harvest of about 450 bodies per school year."<ref name="trafficdead" />

These medical colleges were targeted by the general public opposed to body snatching, but the medical colleges fought back. One argument was that the medical colleges tried to see them as doing a good thing for the body, since most of the bodies that were taken were ones who did not have loved ones who grieved for them. These schools also attempted to convince the public that the bodies were from a source on the outside, rather than making it look like they had not got permission to take the body.<ref name="Highet 415–440"/>

===Race and body snatching===
Public graveyards were not only arranged by social and economic standing, but also by race.  New York was 15% black in the 1780s. "Bayley's dissecting tables, as well as those of Columbia College" often took bodies from the segregated section of Potter's Field, the Negroes Burying Ground. Free blacks as well as slaves were buried there. In February 1787, a group of free blacks petitioned the city's common council about the medical students, who "under cover of night...dig up the bodies of the deceased, friends and relatives of the petitioners, carry them away without respect to age or sex, mangle their flesh out of wanton curiosity and then expose it to beasts and birds."<ref name=trafficdead/>

In the [[Antebellum period|antebellum]] [[American South]], bodies of enslaved workers were routinely used for anatomical study; in one case that has been studied, 80% of the corpses dissected at [[Transylvania University]] in the 1830s and 1840s were African American.<ref name=Van/>{{rp|180}} The ready availability of such bodies was cited as an incentive to enroll by Southern medical schools such as the [[Medical University of South Carolina|Medical College of South Carolina]]. According to [[Hampden-Sydney]], in [[Richmond, Virginia]], "from the peculiarity of our institutions [slavery], materials [anatomical subjects] can be obtained in abundance, and we believe are not surpassed if equaled by any city in the country."<ref name=Van/>{{rp|183–184}} In fact the ready availability of [Black] corpses was cited as a reason why Richmond would be a good place to found a medical school.<ref>{{cite news
|title=Benefits of slavery
|newspaper=[[The Colored American (New York City)|The Colored American]]
|date=March 29, 1838
|page=1
|via=[[Accessible Archives]]
|url=https://accessible.com/accessible/emailedURL?AADoc=THECOLOREDAMERICAN.FR1838032902.03445}}</ref> The largest burial ground for enslaved and free people of color in the United States, the [[Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground]] is located in Richmond.

The bodies of criminals about to be executed were routinely requested of authorities for this purpose. In 1859, after [[Virginia v. John Brown|John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]], Virginia, the University of Virginia and [[Winchester Medical College]] both requested the cadavers of those about to be hanged.<ref name=Van>{{cite book
|title=Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University
|editor-first1=Maurie D.
|editor-last1=McInnis
|editor-link1=Maurie D. McInnis
|editor-first2=Louis P.
|editor-last2=Nelson
|year=2019
|publisher=[[University of Virginia Press]]
|location=[[Charlottesville, Virginia]]
|isbn=9780813942865
|pages=171–198
|chapter=Anatomical Theater
|first=Kirt
|last=van Daacke}}</ref>{{rp|191}} Four, three black ([[Shields Green]], [[John Anthony Copeland Jr.]], and Jeremiah Anderson), and one white ([[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]]'s son Watson Brown), were obtained by the latter college. In retaliation, [[Union (Civil War)|Union]] troops burned Winchester Medical College in 1862; it never reopened.<ref>{{cite web
|title=A 'Malicious Design': Burning the Winchester Medical College
|publisher=Historical Markers Database
|url= https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=126603
|access-date=September 5, 2020}}</ref>

In December 1882, it was discovered that six bodies had been disinterred from [[Lebanon Cemetery]] and were en route to [[Jefferson Medical College]] for dissection.  Philadelphia's African Americans were outraged, and a crowd assembled at the city morgue, where the discovered bodies had been sent.  Reportedly, one of the crowd urged the group to swear that they would seek revenge for those who participated in desecration of the graves.  Another man screamed when he discovered the body of his 29-year-old brother. The Philadelphia Press broke the story when a teary elderly woman identified her husband's body, whose burial she had afforded only by begging for the $22 at the wharves where he had been employed.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=261 |archive-url=http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20091015071101/http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=261 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2009-10-15 |last=Bazelon |first=Emily |title=Grave Offense |website=legalaffairs.org }}</ref> Physician [[William S. Forbes]] was indicted, and the case led to passage of various Anatomical Acts.

After the public hanging of 39 Dakota warriors in the aftermath of the [[Dakota War of 1862]], a group of doctors removed the bodies under cover of darkness from their riverside grave, and each took some for himself. Doctor [[William Worrall Mayo]] received the body of a warrior called "Cut Nose" and dissected it in the presence of other doctors. He then cleaned and articulated the skeleton and kept the bones in an iron kettle in his office. [[Mayo brothers|His sons]] received their first lessons in osteology from this skeleton.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Doctors Mayo |last=Clapesattle |first=Helen |year=1969 |publisher=Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research |location=Rochester, Minnesota |pages=36–37, 91 }}</ref>

For many years [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] burial sites have been used as a place for body-snatching. The bodies would be removed from their graves in the name of science. Usually the bodies would be removed without consent from relatives, and there was no attempt to reach relatives. When these bodies are removed they are given to museums to be put on display. Even if the tribe or relatives found out about the bodies being on display, they did not have the authority to have the bodies removed and returned. In November 1990 the [[Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act#:~:text=The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is a,the Water Resources Department Act.|Native American Protection and Repatriation Act]] was signed.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Highet |first=Megan J. |date=2005-12-01 |title=Body Snatching & Grave Robbing: Bodies for Science |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/02757200500390981 |journal=History and Anthropology |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=415–440 |doi=10.1080/02757200500390981 |s2cid=162248891 |issn=0275-7206|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

During the early 1800s in Michigan the first Indian graves were robbed. Even though it was known at the time that Indian burial sites were considered sacred and should not be tampered with, many still dug up skulls and skeletal remains. During this incident two Indian burial sites were tampered with. In the first site the entire body was taken while in the second the head was cut off. Robert McKain was seen carrying the head back into the barracks with it wrapped in a handkerchief. It was shown that he had previously been accused of taking Indian heads from burial sites to give to paying surgeons.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Peters |first=Bernard C. |date=1997 |title=Indian-Grave Robbing at Sault Ste. Marie, 1826 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20173675 |journal=Michigan Historical Review |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=49–80 |doi=10.2307/20173675 |jstor=20173675 |issn=0890-1686|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

===Public outcry===
On February 21, 1788, the body of a woman was taken from the graveyard of New York City's Trinity Church.<ref name=trafficdead/> A hundred-dollar reward was offered by the rector of the church for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.  In the ''Daily Advertiser'', many editorial letters were written about the incident: one such writer named Humanio warned that "lives may be forfeit&nbsp;... should [the body snatchers] persist."<ref name=trafficdead/> There was cause for concern: body snatching was perceived to be "a daily occurrence."<ref name=Prothero>{{cite book |author=Prothero, Stephen R.
|title=Purified by fire: a history of cremation in America 
|publisher=University of California Press 
|location=Berkeley |year=2001 |isbn=0-520-23688-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XqVOH9uzDDwC&pg=PA67}}</ref>

A famous case of body snatching in the United States was the [[1788 Doctors' Riot|Doctors' Riot]] of 1788.<ref name="whiteambd">{{cite book |author=Martin, Charles C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K4RUy9Hs6lMC&pg=PA196 |title=The white African American body: a cultural and literary exploration |publisher=Rutgers University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-8135-3032-6 |location=New Brunswick, N.J}}</ref> On April 13, a group of boys playing near the dissection room window of [[Weill Cornell Medical Center|City Hospital]] peered in. Accounts vary, but one of the boys saw what he thought were his mother's remains or that one of the students shook a dismembered arm at the boys.  The boy, whose mother had recently died, told his father of the occurrence; the father, a mason, led a group of laborers in an attack on the hospital, known as In order to control the destruction of private property, the authorities participated in searches of local physicians' houses for medical students, professors, and stolen corpses. The mob was satisfied. Later, the mob reassembled to attack the jail where some of the medical students were being held for their safety. The militia was called, but few showed; this was perhaps due to the militia sharing the public's outrage. One small troop was harassed and quickly withdrew. Several prominent citizens–including Governor George Clinton; General Baron von Steuben, and John Jay–participated in the ranks of the militia protecting the doctors at the jail. Three rioters were killed when the embattled militia opened fire on the mob, and when militia members from the countryside joined the defense, the mob threat quickly dissipated.<ref name="whiteambd" />

To assuage the outraged public, legislation was enacted to thwart the activities of the body snatchers; eventually, anatomy acts, such as the Massachusetts Anatomy Act of 1831, allowed for the legalization of anatomy studies.<ref name="Leypoldt">{{cite book
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1rwqAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA69 |title= American Social Sciences Association – "Journal of Social Sciences: Containing the Transactions of the American Association"|publisher= Leypoldt & Holt|year= 1879}}</ref>

Prior to these measures allowing for more subjects, many tactics were employed to protect the bodies of relatives. Police were engaged to watch the burying grounds but were often bribed or made drunk. Spring guns were set in the coffins, and poorer families would leave items like a stone or a blade of grass or a shell to show whether the grave was tampered with or not.<ref name=Keen/> In his collection of Boston police force details, Edward Savage made notes of a reward offer on April 13, 1814: "The selectmen offer $100 reward for arrest of grave-robbers at South Burying-Ground".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/policerecordsrecr00sava/policerecordsrecr00sava_djvu.txt |title=Savage, Edward H. 'Police Records and Recollections, or Boston by Daylight and Gaslight: For Two Hundred and Forty Years'|publisher= John P. Dale & Co.|year= 1873}}</ref> Iron fences were constructed around many burying grounds as a deterrent to body snatchers. "Burglar proof grave vaults made of steel" were sold with the promise that loved ones' remains would not be one of the 40,000 bodies "mutilated every year on dissecting tables in medical colleges in the United States."<ref name=Prothero/> The medical appropriation of bodies aroused much popular resentment. Between 1765 and 1884, there were at least 25 documented crowd actions against American medical schools.<ref name=trafficdead/>