When you think of grave robbing, you likely imagine a filthy Igor-type character, digging up fresh bodies beneath a full moon. The reality, however, is more complex. Throughout history, grave robbing served as an essential part of medical research. And disturbingly, the practice is still alive today.
While some motivations for robbing graves or body-snatching are obvious, the history of medical grave robbing is less known. From 18th-century body snatching by lantern to the modern selling of stolen remains on today’s digital black market, grave robbing has left a permanent mark on medical science.
Grave Robbing: A Necessary Evil for Early Medical Sciences
In the early days of medicine, students still had to study their craft. They couldn’t simply retrieve a donated cadaver. Many aspects of medical research rely on using a real, live body. Well, not literally live, but you get the idea.
Bodies haven’t always been easy to come by. People have always held religious or superstitious fears about being dissected. As a result, the very thought of donating one’s body was taboo.
So, the black market found a seriously unethical solution to this seriously ethical problem. Grave robbers easily ignored the laws that forbade the desecration of human remains and procured cadavers anyway. Sure, early researchers could’ve legally used the bodies of convicted criminals in some places, but the growing demand for corpses vastly outweighed the limited supply.
There were several “hotspots” where grave robbing became a lucrative market. Maryland and the Antebellum South, for example.
Of course, they didn’t call this activity grave robbing back then. As JSTOR points out, these individuals romanticized themselves as resurrectionists. Like necromancers, they were giving these old corpses new life.
With the advent of the railroad, body trafficking became unstoppably successful. Students, doctors, and researchers craved these resurrected bodies for study subjects and bought them in troves. For example, the Medical College of Georgia purchased 64 bodies between 1848 and 1852. Under other circumstances, this may have been a noble purchase. But as it stands, neither the deceased nor their families consented.
Join the Obscurix Newsletter!
1800s Medical Needs: A Dark Grave Robbing Industry Emerges
In the mid-1800s, the Medical College of Georgia hired an enslaved person named Grandison Harris to commit their grave robbing for them. Grandison had access to Black communities and cemeteries. And the college was willing to grossly exploit this to source its cadavers. They did the same to various other poor and minority communities as well, since there was little recourse.
In 1831, Massachusetts tried to ethically remedy this issue by making the bodies of the unclaimed poor eligible for use in medical research. Soon after, other states followed suit. None of this was without notable incident, though.
In 1878, the body of American politician John Scott Harrison turned up on an exam table in Ohio for example.
Body Snatching 101: Early Grave Robbing in Practice
Different grave robbers had different techniques for procuring cadavers. A prevalent method used in New England was to dig down to the coffin. The body snatcher would then break the lid open and loop a rope around the head and underarms of the corpse. From there, they’d simply yank it out. It was simple, yet effective.
Sometimes, it wasn’t a resurrectionist sent to do the deed. Often, students or doctors would fulfill this need themselves. As the saying goes: If you need something done right, you might as well do it yourself. This was, after all, a business, and medical facilities had bills to pay.
If the dead were lucky, the grave robbers would rebury them before anyone could discover that something was amiss. However, their loved ones often found out.
The Fight Against Grave Robbing: The 1788 Anatomy Riot
The infamous Anatomy Riot took place in April of 1788. The townsfolk of New York grew tired of grave robbing. The grave robbers defiled the bodies of their loved ones, and the people cared little for heinous acts committed in the name of science. So, they marched on New York Hospital — the facility behind the for-profit plundering.
Rioters flooded the building in a fury. They then broke windows, destroyed equipment, set fires, and more. They even took remains from the hospital to give them a proper reburial.
The unrest continued into a second day and saw thousands of rioters at what is now Columbia University. To end the Anatomy Riot, U.S. soldiers opened fire on the crowd. And the irony was thick.
By the time the smoke cleared, around 20 people lay deceased on the lawn, according to The Science and History Institute. Solely because they sought respect for the dead.
Grave Robbing in Medicine: Unground Shipping of Bodies
Sometimes medical schools needed bodies, but no ‘resurrectionists’ were nearby. In this case, schools would order bodies from underground shipping syndicates. Resurrection men would fold remains into a barrel of whiskey to mask the odor and preserve the corpse. And, yes, rumors say they sold the whiskey afterward, as Smithsonian Magazine notes. A stiff drink, anyone?
Johns Hopkins Medical School: A Game Changer in Body Snatching
In 1893, the famed Johns Hopkins Medical School opened in Maryland. And it wasn’t long before their demand for cadavers exceeded their supply. However, school officials knew what to do, and it wasn’t pretty.
The medical staff charged janitor William Hartley with the task of grave robbing. As such, he equipped himself with various tools before seeking out fresh graves. Though at times when he felt bold, he’d raid local morgues for poorly guarded corpses instead.
Before Johns Hopkins opened, the university founders actually had a plan to end grave robbing. They’d source a few bodies ethically and share the dissection materials with other universities. Unfortunately, competing schools thought this would give Johns Hopkins an edge over them. So they shot it down.
The university would get the bodies anyway. Of course, this was done by the unethical means previously detailed. And this practice went on for decades. That is until 1900, when Johns Hopkins finally put an end to more than 100 years of medical grave robbing, thanks to volunteer cadavers.
Volunteer Cadavers: A Solution to Medical Grave Robbing
By the dawn of the 20th century, sentiment around dissection was shifting. Folks began to see donating their bodies as a good thing — virtuous, even. Ill-gotten cadavers had already helped progress medical sciences, and a new wave of volunteer donations was about to floor the gas pedal.
Doctors and students began volunteering their remains. Soon, laypeople were doing it as well. Prisons even gave convicts a choice to donate their bodies, and many took it. Others who couldn’t afford a funeral took to donating as well.
No matter the motivation behind the donations, everyone involved inadvertently changed the face of grave robbing forever. Despite this new, legal practice, underground black markets still thrived, and they continue to do so today.
In 2023, courts indicted the manager of the morgue at Harvard University on charges after investigators discovered he’d sold body parts from donated cadavers, according to The New York Times. To make things worse, he opened the morgue for people to choose which body parts they wanted.
The network of illegally sold body parts included the manager, his wife, and several associates. All of whom sold remains set to be cremated out of Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Misleading Intentions: Scandals in Modern Cadaver Donation
The modern cadaver industry isn’t without its issues. Often, those meant to ethically source and utilize remains are less than savory.
The U.S. Army, for example, has historically used cadavers for ballistics and explosive tests without consent, as Reuters points out. They also used remains for crash and vehicle safety tests.
To be fair, the military claims Biological Resource Center, which sold them the remains, assured them it was fine. Moreover, the owner of BRC was convicted of fraud charges in 2015 for misleadingly selling bodies donated for research.
The problem is that most states don’t regulate the cadaver trade. While it’s legal to sell donated remains for research purposes nationwide, New York is the only state that requires those trading remains to keep detailed records. The rest have very little oversight.
Those who illegally take advantage of body sales can face millions in lawsuits. Even so, where there’s death, there will always be vultures.
Modern Grave Robbing: A Digital Black Market
Penalties for grave robbing can be lenient. For example, in Washington, D.C., disturbing or removing a body from its grave is only punishable by one to three years in prison. That’s it, and it’s the same in Illinois and other states. Due to this leniency, the grave-robbing market is changing.
With the advent of the internet, the illicit body-snatching industry has taken on a new look. Sellers now offer photos of body parts for sale and include the bones for free, allowing them to skirt laws preventing the sale of remains. Cremains and even sliced-up specimens of human organs are also sold to private collectors in this way.
This isn’t unique to the United States either. The internet is worldwide, and so is the sale of human remains.
Indigenous Remains: A Target for Grave Robbers
People have ransacked Native American burial and cultural sites for centuries to collect trophies under the guise of research. As disgusting as it sounds, this practice continues today.
To illustrate this point, Vanity Fair explains that the FBI recovered more than 7,000 illegally collected items from a 90-year-old Indiana man in 2014. Around 2,000 of which were Indigenous American remains. Don Miller, the man in question, had been robbing graves around the country since the ‘50s. Granted, he called it: amateur archaeology.
Today, as Dakota News Now explains, government officials are still trying to match the items found to real people. And, yes, they’ve already returned more than 400 items to their proper tribes and families.
Miller shows how grave robbing will likely continue. As long as people exist, so will those who require human remains. Albeit, twisted collectors and medical researchers are on separate sides of the ethical spectrum. And that means we won’t see the end of grave robbing anytime soon.
