Tomb Raiders And Body Snatchers

Grave Robbing – or tomb raiding – is called the world's second oldest profession because records have always existed containing trails or the discovery of a tomb raider. For millennia, people made a living on stealing from those idle in their place of rest. The perception of grave robbing has altered in media to associate with treasure hunting, inspiring countless fantastic screenplays, novels, and short stories by the idea of treasure hidden with the dead; however, people did not only steal the fortune of the dead but the dead itself.

During the nineteenth century, medical schools appeared in the United States at an exponential rate, growing from four to 160. These schools began to study anatomy, and to effectively learn about how and why the body worked, they needed a body. Acts such as the Anatomy Act 1832, allowed doctors and teachers to use donated corpses in the name of science and education, even allowing for schools to seize unclaimed bodies and recently executed prisoners; however, because of the increasing number of schools, the demand for bodies far surpassed the supply available. Almost every medical program at the time entrusted body snatching for their samples. Spies, mostly women, were sent to funeral homes to act like a grieving family member or friend. They would scout out the body: age, sex, and condition. The spies continued their shared until the body was buried, so they could report any hardships the body snatchers might encounter. The schools and scientist would hire men, who gained the name resurrectionists, to dig up the recently deceased. Resurrectionists would travel to grave sites in the middle of the night and return to their employer or a middleman for payment. A scientist would then use the body for observation or to teach. Scientist did have a preference on the type of body their accomplice brought back to them. Children were far preferable to adults as they lack many systems and body structure, but females were less preferred to males. The women generally had more body fat content, causing the dissection to be vigorous work. African Americans were the most vulnerable group for body snatching. Their social standing alongside the fact that missing bodies from a black cemetery would be less noticeable and create less of a fuss cornered many unsuspecting victims. The African Americans could not take extreme measures to protect the deceased. Many would hide the dead in vaults until the decayed way past usefulness the scientist. They would also protect the grave site itself. Bars were common, extending from the coffin to above the ground, effectively caging in the dead.

The history of any 1800s medical school will contain reports of protests by or on school grounds. Some protests were over the subject of body snatching. In the spring of 1883, cemeteries in Philadelphia looked like “they had been subjected to artillery bombardment”. The public was outraged and protesters assembled. An outraged public was average punishment for someone involved in body snatching. However, it was unlikely to be convicted of body snatching unless they were found with the body. They would recover the grave and remove any suspicious tracks before the public could find out. If any were caught by the police, they could receive a weighty fine or jail time. Even though the law did not, the public viewed body snatching as an act of murder on a helpless victim.

Body snatchers saw their practice as a necessary evil for advancements. When the resurrectionist would dig up a body, he dragged the corpse to the surface and stripped the clothing off of it. They dehumanized the body, claiming that as soon as a person was dead, they should no longer be considered a human. Scientist rationalized that corpses were no one's property, so it was not a crime to take it, and they were no more than raw material or objects prepped for scientific discovery, only a shell of whoever lived in it. Cemeteries were nothing to them but mear plots full of scientific data. The untouchable, holy graves crumbled to the advances of science.

Magazine articles began to inform the public of different steps they could take to protect their loved ones. One solution was to lay straw on top of the coffin, causing the process to be too time-consuming for the resurrectionist. Cemeteries would hire watchmen, but wealthy families would hire their own watchmen. These watchmen would use large dogs and alarms to ward off intruders. Towards the end of the 1800s the “coffin torpedo” was invented. If a coffin was forced open, a bomb would go off, killing the grave robber. Even with all of these threats and traps in the way, body snatching was still common. If an empty grave was discovered in a cemetery, panic set in and relatives of the recently deceased would open the grave to see if they had been robbed. Burial began to shift from religious affiliation to the responsibility of the family. They were expected to buy and preserve the burial plot. Grave markers grew immensely popular because it was necessary to identify the family responsible for the grave. Plots devoid of any particular headstone were in prime danger for grave robbing. The resurrectionist saw the graves as abandoned and unwanted, ripe for the picking.

Body snatching is a horrible crime that many of us like to throw into our past, but that is not entirely true. In 2006, four men were convicted of body snatching. They were selling the organs of the deceased for transplants or medical study. It is a deep underground business that still haunts our graves today, though still not common. When a body is embalmed, it allowed schools to keep the body for months, lowering the demand for bodies. Today, medical students are taught about the history of obtaining bodies for study and are trained to treat all donated bodies with respect. Body snatching is not as rampant as it once was, but we did learn a lot through the years. Plenty was learned from studying the bodies: surgical theories, medicines, and how systems worked in the body.