resurrection men
Grave robbing suppliers
Resurrection men were people who dug up freshly buried corpses to sell to medical schools for anatomical study.
The practice flourished in 18th and 19th century Britain and America, when demand for cadavers far exceeded legal supply.
The term plays darkly on Christian resurrection—these men raised bodies, but for dissection rather than salvation.
Also called body snatchers.
- cemeteriesGrounds for interring dead
- unmarked gravesBurial sites without identification
- coffinsBoxes for burying bodies
- burialsPlacing dead underground
- spadesFlat-bladed digging implements
shovels · cadavers · dissections · diggings · dead of night · Edinburgh · medical schools · medical students · snatchers · exhumations · nightfalls · anatomies · lamplights · resurrectionists · grave desecration · human remains · sepulchers · burial vaults
- Victorian odditiesphrenology, freak shows, cabinet of curiosities, human zoos, curiosity shops
- historical crimehighway robbery, pickpocketing, burglary, arson, piracy
- Victorian supernaturalghosts, seance, spiritualism, mediums, haunted house
resurrection mengravediggers
Those who excavate burial plots
undertakers · sextons · morticians · funeral directors · embalmers
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