You’ve probably heard of body snatchers. Also known as Resurrectionists, they are commonly shown in movies digging up dead people to sell to doctors and medical students, which is exactly what they did in real life.
In the mid to late 1800s, men from all backgrounds, as well as a few of their wives, would dig up freshly buried bodies to sell to anatomists and to medical schools. It was stated that a body snatcher might receive anywhere from $2 to $40 for a body. The price rose and fell with the needs of the medical colleges and the bodies of those who were considered abnormal or different, or those who died of a certain disease, would fetch the higher prices.
In a typical winter, one body snatcher claimed he was able to bag up to 60 corpses. Because the bodies were easy to ship to colleges during the winter months, the body snatcher was able to work for a single season and enjoy his time off for the rest of the year.
It was good business and many medical students turned to body snatching as a way to help pay for their education.
Potter’s fields or where the friendless poor were buried were often the most common places to dig up the recent dead because it was clear that no one cared about the deceased. However, any fresh, unguarded grave was an invite to the Resurrectionists.
The body snatcher’s most basic equipment included a spade, rope, pickaxe or crowbar, and a lantern. A large sack, such as a grain sack, was used for hauling the body from the graveyard to the waiting wagon.
The quickest way to remove a body from the earth was to dig at the head of the grave. When the coffin was reached, it was opened with a pickaxe or crowbar. A noose was slipped around the neck or under the arms of the corpse and it was then dragged up out of its grave.
Sometimes a hook was used to drag the bodies out. It was inserted deep into the back muscles or hooked under the jaw.
Well prepared body snatchers might also have had a long board with them. This would have been slid into the gravesite hole so that the body could more easily be pulled out.
The body snatchers would often undress the corpse and throw his or her clothes back into the grave because they did not want to get caught having stolen the clothing as well as the body.
To stuff a body into a sack, a man would start at the head of the corpse. After bagging the top half of the body, he would simply tuck the legs up to the chest, lift the sack, and tie it shut.
From start to finish, the process of digging up and bagging a body took anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.
Graves were usually filled back in after the body was removed so that no one would know that they were there. If people suspected there were body snatchers about, they would begin holding watches over fresh bodies and would sometimes set up traps to capture the body snatchers.
While bodies were snuck out of graveyards in sacks, they were then sometimes stuffed inside barrels, packed in with sawdust, and transported to different doctors and medical schools.
In 1879, a Chattanooga, Tennessee body snatcher was caught shipping bodies out of state using the local trains. He would crate the bodies and mark the crates as “fresh fish” or “furs.”
In 1898, Ohio, the body of a woman was dug up from a country graveyard and placed in a luggage trunk. The trunk was shipped by train to a medial school in Columbus where it was re-embalmed. After the second embalming, it was placed back inside the trunk and left on a street corner to be discovered by the police. The body was eventually identified and it was returned to its original burial place.
On the surface, body snatching may look like easy money, but there were quite a few dangers to the job. First, there was always the chance of being shot if a watchman was on duty.
Throughout the country, watch houses were built on cemetery grounds. These were basically small huts where family members of the deceased or a hired watchman would stand guard and watch for body snatchers. By the early 1900s, as the business of body snatching decreased, the watch houses were torn down to make room for cemetery plots.
There was also the possibility of an accident, such as the one that happened in 1859 to a Cincinnati body snatcher. One night, a lone body snatcher dug up a corpse, bagged it, and walked to the high fence he climbed over when he first entered the cemetery. While getting over the fence was easy when it was just himself, he now had a sacked body to carry. The man placed the cord to the sack around his neck and began climbing the fence. When he got to the top of the fence, the body dropped down on one side and the man slipped down on the other side of it and was hung. Both bodies were discovered the next day.
When caught alive, body snatchers were often fined and were sometimes given prison sentences.
In 1878, Ohio body snatcher F.G. Minor was ordered to pay a fine of $100. He was also ordered to serve four months in a workhouse.
Later, in 1895, a Missouri doctor was convicted of body snatching. He received three years in the penitentiary for stealing the dead.
Many people feared body snatchers and the idea of being dissected caused them to spend large sums of money on specialty coffins. One Ohio man had a metal casket made for himself. It included a lock to prevent anyone from opening it once it had been shut. After having it made, he stored the casket inside his home. As luck would have it, he went to move it one day and it fell on him, ending his life.
Eventually, laws were passed that not only gave stiffer penalties for stealing the dead, but also gave medical colleges the right to dissect the bodies of the unclaimed poor. As soon as doctors stopped paying for bodies, body snatching came to an end.
