Contexts -- Grave-Robbing
The fear of the desecration of burial sites is both ancient and
widespread, and obvious in, for instance, the care with which the
Egyptians prepared and protected the bodies of their dead from
all harm. As is often the case with such deep-seated fears, this
one took mythological form: the Arabic ghul, a figure
known for grave-robbing and eating corpses, is known today in
English as the ghoul (a word first used by Beckford in Vathek, 1786).
The late eighteenth-century shortage of cadavers for legitimate
medical research and dissection posed
a problem for scientists and students, some of whom were in fact
reduced to bodysnatching. It did not go unnoticed by the public,
which looked on such research with revulsion. In the most heated
expression of disdain, New Yorkers rioted for three days in April
1788 upon discovering
that bodies had been stolen from a graveyard. Children peered
through windows of the Society of the Hospital of the City of New
York and discovered the medical students dissecting human
cadavers. The children's parents investigated, and one
discovered that his late wife's grave had been robbed. A mob,
five thousand strong, stormed the hospital (and later the jail
where several doctors took refuge), leading to a three-day riot
which the militia dispersed only by firing muskets into the
crowd. In 1789, New
York passed a law making it possible for doctors to obtain
cadavers without resorting to body-snatching. A similar bill was
passed in London only in 1832; until then,
sometimes even grave-robbing did not satisfy the need for
cadavers. In 1829,
William Burke was hanged in Edinburgh for murdering victims by
asphyxiation in order to provide cadavers to physicians.
