Editing Body snatching (section)

==Other countries==
===Australia===
In Tasmania, the bodies of [[William Lanne]] (1835–1869) and [[Truganini]] (1812–1876), considered at the time to be the last [[Aboriginal Tasmanians]] (Palawa), were both exhumed from their graves. Lanne's head, hands and feet were removed illegally by surgeon [[William Crowther (Australian politician)|William Crowther]] and members of the [[Royal Society of Tasmania]] before he was buried, and the rest of his body was stolen after his burial.<ref name="Lawson2014">{{cite book|last=Lawson|first=Tom|title=The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eJykAgAAQBAJ|access-date=6 October 2015|date=2014|publisher=I.B. Tauris|isbn=9781780766263|pages=166–168}}</ref> Truganini, who outlived Lanne by several years, had wished to avoid his fate and expressly asked to be cremated, but was buried anyway. The Royal Society of Tasmania exhumed her body and put it on display.<ref>Antje Kühnast: 'In the interest of science and the colony'. Truganini und die Legende von den aussterbenden Rassen. In: Entfremdete Körper. Rassismus als Leichenschändung [Alienated Bodies. Racism and the desecration of corpses]. Ed by W. D. Hund. Bielefeld: Transcript 2009, pp. 205–250.</ref> 100 years after Truganini's death, aboriginal descendants finally won the rights to their bodies following many years of petitioning the government, and their remains were cremated and spread in the ocean.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Urry |first=James |date=1989 |title=Headhunters and Body-Snatchers |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3032960 |journal=Anthropology Today |volume=5 |issue=5 |pages=11–13 |doi=10.2307/3032960 |jstor=3032960 |issn=0268-540X|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

These two instances were not isolated. With the aboriginal Tasmanians being wiped out, other native Australians still faced the same threat of body snatching due to continued intrigue from the colonial British presence. In 1910, 12 aboriginal bodies were stolen from their burial places along the coast, where the natives were forced to settle after being driven away from their ancestral land.<ref name=":4" /> The leader of this heist was W.E.L.H. Crowther, an 18-year-old medical student simply seeking the favor of one of his professors.<ref name=":4" /> After obtaining the bodies, Crowther and his associates took them back to Melbourne to undergo further examination.<ref name=":4" />

==== Project Sunshine ====
[[Project SUNSHINE|Project Sunshine]] was launched during the height of the Cold War as a series of multinational studies concerning the danger posed to humans by radioactive isotopes as a result of nuclear fallout. The Australian government became involved in the program during the mid-1950s, and began collecting body parts from citizens during autopsies, including many children, most often without their next of kin consenting or even being made aware.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last=Roff |first=Sue Rabbitt  |date=2002 |title=Project Sunshine and the Slippery Slope: The Ethics of Tissue Sampling for Strontium-90 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45352078 |journal=Medicine, Conflict and Survival |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=299–310 |doi=10.1080/13623690208409637 |jstor=45352078 |pmid=12201087 |s2cid=45691025 |issn=1362-3699|url-access=subscription }}</ref> By the time the program ended in the early 1980s, the Australian government had stolen thousands upon thousands of body parts from deceased Australians to be used for research in [[Project SUNSHINE|Project Sunshine]].<ref name=":7" />

===Canada===
The practice was also common in other parts of the [[British Empire]], such as [[Canada]], where religious customs as well as the lack of means of preservation made it hard for medical students to obtain a steady supply of fresh bodies. In many instances the students had to resort to fairly regular body snatching.

The first medical school established in [[Canada]] was 1822 in [[Montreal]]. Body-snatching tended to vary between English and French speaking students. The French speaking students would steal bodies to pay for their schooling while the English speaking students stole bodies for fun and were usually caught. The students who stole the bodies for medical use would use elaborate measures to make sure the bodies could not be identified or found if a search was conducted at their residence. Facial identifiers and scars would be removed from the body so that they could not be identified. Students would make elaborate hiding places for the bodies such as using pulley systems to pull bodies up into chimneys or hide bodies under trap doors so that the bodies would not be found. When trying to find a body the robbers would be selective in that they would choose [[negro]]es.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Francis |first=Deepa |date=2001-02-20 |title=Bodysnatching in Canada |url=https://www.cmaj.ca/content/164/4/530 |journal=CMAJ |language=en |volume=164 |issue=4 |pages=530 |issn=0820-3946}}</ref>

In [[Montreal]] during the winter of 1875, [[typhoid fever]] struck at a [[convent school]]. The corpses of the victims were stolen by body snatchers before relatives arrived from the United States, causing an international scandal.<ref>{{cite book | last = Gordon | first = Richard | title = The Alarming History of Medicine | publisher = St. Martin's Press | location = New York | year = 1994 | isbn = 0-312-10411-1 | page = [https://archive.org/details/alarminghistoryo00gord/page/12 12] | url = https://archive.org/details/alarminghistoryo00gord/page/12 }}</ref>  Rewards were offered which students collected to return bodies to the families. Eventually the [[Anatomy Act of Quebec]] was amended to prevent a recurrence, effectively ending medical body snatching in Quebec.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hom.ucalgary.ca/Dayspapers2000.pdf |title=Proceedings of the 9th Annual History of Medical Days |year=2000 |page=132 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080909212147/https://www.hom.ucalgary.ca/Dayspapers2000.pdf |archive-date=2008-09-09 }}</ref><ref>Jack 1981, 130</ref>

===China===
Burial customs were regulated in [[China]] as a part of the [[Great Qing Legal Code]] in an attempt to mitigate illicit burial practices.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Suh |first=Joohee |date=2019 |title=The Afterlife of Corpses: A Social History of Unburied Dead Bodies in Qing China (1644–1911) |url=https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2985&context=art_sci_etds |journal=Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. |via=Washington University in St. Louis Arts & Sciences}}</ref> These regulations criminalized the mishandling of corpses, including the removal of a corpse.<ref name=":5" /> The term 'body snatching' as it regards China specifically can refer to a variety of rationales and specific cases of corpse removal which range from political to spiritual in motivation:

==== Ghost Marriages ====
{{See also|Ghost marriage (Chinese)}}
A [[Ghost marriage (Chinese)|Ghost marriage]] (Chinese: 冥婚; [[pinyin]]: '''''mínghūn'''''; <small>[[Literal translation|lit.]]</small> 'spirit marriage') is a practice originating in China in which either one or neither of the partners in the marriage is alive. The original purpose of ghost marriages is unclear but it has been utilized as a means of maintaining a family's honor and legacy in the event that their unwed relative is deceased.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Topley |first=Marjorie |date=1955 |title=35. Ghost Marriages Among the Singapore Chinese. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2794516 |journal=Man |volume=55 |pages=29–30 |doi=10.2307/2794516|jstor=2794516 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> The practice has led to the theft of female corpses in order to arrange illicit ghost marriages and relocate the body. In 2006 there were reports of a resurgence in the northern coal-mining regions of [[Shanxi]], [[Hebei]] and [[Shandong]].<ref name="econ"/> Although the practice has long been abandoned in modern China, some superstitious families in isolated rural areas still pay very high prices for the procurement of female corpses for deceased unmarried male relatives. It is speculated that the very high death toll among young male miners in these areas has led more and more entrepreneurial body snatchers to steal female cadavers from graves and then resell them through the black market to families of the deceased. In 2007, a previously convicted grave robber, Song Tiantang, was arrested by Chinese authorities for murdering six women and selling their bodies as "ghost brides".<ref name="econ">{{cite news| url=http://www.economist.com/node/9558423 | newspaper=The Economist | title=Wet goods and dry goods | date=26 July 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IF29Ad02.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070701041912/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IF29Ad02.html | url-status=unfit | archive-date=1 July 2007 | work=Asia Times | title=China's grave offense: Ghost wives |author=Antoaneta Bezlova | date=26 July 2007}}</ref>

==== Cremation Quotas ====
The [[Cultural Revolution]] in China included a push for funeral reform which mandated the cremation of corpses. The enforcement of this mandate has varied, but there have been instances of body snatching for the purpose of meeting state-mandated quotas for cremation funeral practices. The act of body snatching for the purposes of meeting such quotas has become a lucrative business in China. In 2014 two local funerary practice officials in the [[Guangdong]] province of China were arrested for hiring body snatchers to acquire corpses in order to meet cremation quotas.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Tharoor |first=Ishaan |date=November 3, 2014 |title=Why stealing corpses is big business in China |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/03/why-stealing-corpses-is-big-business-in-china/ |newspaper=Washington Post}}</ref>

==== Red Market ====
The Red Market, also known as the [[Organ trade|Organ Trade]] refers to the trade of human organs or other body parts with the primary purpose being [[Organ transplantation|transplantation]]. In China the illicit trading of human body parts has led to instances of body snatching for use in the Red Market. In order to meet the demand for transplantations China authorized the use of executed prisoners' organs.<ref name=":6">Prizzi, Michelle. "Body Brokerage: Inside the Trafficking of Human Materials." ''Locus: The Seton Hall Journal of Undergraduate Research'' 2.1 (2019): 5.</ref> Consent of prisoners or prisoners' families, though required, has often been unverified in cases of executed prisoners' organs being harvested leading to accusations of illicit harvesting of corpses and transplantations.<ref name=":6" />

===Cyprus===
In Cyprus, the former President [[Tassos Papadopoulos]]'s body was stolen from his grave on 11 December 2009.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/11/2769664.htm?section=justin |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120719134156/http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/11/2769664.htm?section=justin |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 19, 2012 |title=Grave robbers steal ex-president's body |work=ABC News |date=December 11, 2009}}</ref>

===India===

For over 200 years, the city of [[Kolkata]], in the north-eastern region of India, has been known to be the center of a network of bone traders who remove skeletons from graveyards in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors used to hire thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16678816|title=Into the Heart of India's Underground Bone Trade|website=NPR.org |publisher=NPR |access-date=2016-08-06}}</ref> According to journalist [[Scott Carney]], historically members of the [[Domar (caste)|Domar caste]], who traditionally performed cremations, were pressed into service processing bones;<ref name="auto">{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/2007/11/ff-bones/|title=Inside India's Underground Trade in Human Remains|magazine=Wired|language=en-US|access-date=2016-08-06}}</ref> skeletons were exported from India to be used in anatomy classes worldwide. In the 1850s, Calcutta Medical College processed 900 skeletons a year, but mostly for shipment abroad. A century later, a newly independent India dominated the world market for human bones. 
[[File:Last breath.JPG|alt=Cadaver|thumb|A cadaver in a dissecting room.]]
At their height, in the early 1980s, Calcutta's bone factories took in an estimated $1 million a year by digging the graveyards of West Bengal after the mourners had left. In 1985 the Indian government banned the export of human bones after human rights groups raised questions about how the bones were being collected and pointed towards the greater need for institutions to obtain [[informed consent]] before remains were used for medical research. However, the human [[organ trade]] was only forced underground. 
[[File:Benares (Varanasi), Uttar Pradesh; a human cadaver abandoned Wellcome L0030359.jpg|thumb|In rural parts of northern India, the lowest classes sometimes cannot obtain wood for cremation or ground for burial, and the exposure of bodies is the result.]]
The Indian government banned the export of human remains in the mid-1980s, but body snatching is still thriving, even if secretly, in many parts of the country as a result of ineffective laws and poverty.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/body-snatching|title=Body snatching|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2020-02-06}}</ref>

===Republic of Ireland===
In Dublin, the medical schools of the 18th and 19th centuries were on a constant hunt for bodies. The Bullys' Acre or Hospital Fields at [[Kilmainham]] was a rich source of anatomical material as it was a communal burial ground and easily accessed. Soldiers attached to the nearby Royal Hospital were always on the alert for grave robbers mainly because many of their comrades were buried there. In November 1825 a sentry captured Thomas Tuite, a known resurrectionist, in possession of five bodies. When searched, his pockets were found to be full of teeth–in those days a set of teeth fetched £1 (about £50 in 2011). Many other graveyards were targets of the medical students or those who made robbing graves their profession. The largest cemetery in Ireland, [[Glasnevin Cemetery]], laid out in the 18th century, had a high wall with strategically placed watch-towers as well as blood-hounds to deter body snatchers.<ref>John Fleetwood, ''The Irish Body Snatchers'', Tomar Publishing, Dublin, 1988. {{ISBN|1-871793-00-9}}</ref>

===Italy===
The first recorded case of body snatching is attributed to four medical students from [[Bologna]] in 1319.<ref>Body Snatching Around The World | History Detectives | PBS. [online] Available at: http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/body-snatching-around-the-world/</ref> At this time, studying the anatomy of a human cadaver was not particularly favored once Rome fell, and it became prohibited by the Church. What was favored was animal dissections at this time. Until the 15th century, it had become legal in Italy to conduct up to two dissections in public per year after the first body-snatching in the 14th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Frank |first=J. B. |date=September 1976 |title=Body snatching: a grave medical problem. |journal=The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=399–410 |issn=0044-0086 |pmc=2595508 |pmid=793205}}</ref>

===The Netherlands===
In [[Netherlands|The Netherlands]], poorhouses were accustomed to receiving a small fee by undertakers who paid a fine for ignoring burial laws and resold the bodies (especially those with no family) to doctors.

During the 17th century, the period of the [[Glorious Revolution]], medicine in Great Britain and the Netherlands was at the root of body-snatching with the goal of using the corpses to be used for anatomical and physiological learning. Among 17th-century medicine educators at universities the desire to educate the public, in particular, took place in the [[Dutch Republic|Dutch Republic of the Netherlands.]] The Dutch Province of [[South Holland]] was home to the [[Leiden anatomical theatre|Leiden Anatomical Theatre]]. Leiden Anatomical Theatre was amongst other theatres which was centers of arts and sciences, meeting places for artists and scientists, and places of public function.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rupp |first=Jan |date=1992 |title=Michel Foucault, Body Politics and the Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1467-6443.1992.tb00022.x |journal=Journal of Historical Sociology |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=31–60 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-6443.1992.tb00022.x |via=10.1111/j.1467-6443.1992.tb00022.x|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Leiden's contribution represented the model of the innovative academy and its clinical course, inaugurated in 1638, was widely seen as a center of excellence.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schaffer |first=Simon |date=July 31, 1989 |title=The Glorious Revolution and Medicine in Britain and the Netherlands |journal=[[Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London]] |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=167–190 |doi=10.1098/rsnr.1989.0013 |pmid=11622020 |s2cid=37701404 |doi-access=free }}</ref> At Leiden University Peter Paauw (1564–1617) and [[Franciscus Sylvius|Francisus dele Boё Sylvius]] (1614–1672), who were medical professors who used practical skills which became an integral basic part of the academic curriculum<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Knoeff |first=Rina |date=June 6, 2012 |title=Dutch Anatomy and Clinical Medicine in 17th-Century Europe |url=http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/models-and-stereotypes/the-dutch-century/rina-knoeff-dutch-anatomy-and-clinical-medicine-in-17th-century-europe |journal=Leibniz Institute of European History  |pages=3 |via=urn:nbn:de:0159-2012060623}}</ref> under the direction of [[Otto Heurnius|Otho Heurnius]] (1577–1652) The anatomical theater developed into a place of universal knowledge and a representation of the macrocosmos<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Huisman |first=T. |date=May 8, 2008 |title=The finger of God: anatomical practice in 17th century Leiden |url=https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/12842 |journal=Leinden University: Scholarly Publications |pages=19–20 |via=Universiteit Leiden}}</ref> as opposed to the microcosmos of the human body. After the death of Heurnius, Joannes van Horne (1621–1670) became the next caretaker for the anatomical theater.