WHY YOU SHOULD'T WAVE DISEMBODIED ARMS AT YOUNG BOYS

In 1788 the citizens of New York turned against the medical establishment that for years had been pillaging its graves, after a cruel prank by a young student

Body-snatching wasn’t just a British phenomenon and during the 18th and 19th centuries was just as common in the United States, where strict laws likewise caused a boom in demand from eager medical students for ‘specimens’.

One day in New York in April of 1788, a group of young boys playing in the street happened to glance through a window and were aghast to see a medical student eagerly dissecting a corpse. Annoyed at being interrupted, the student waved a disembodied arm and remarked that it belonged to one of the boy’s mothers. The problem was, the boy’s mother had recently died and when his furious father discovered her grave to be empty, an angry mob descended on the hospital.

Seeing the outraged mob, most of the doctors and students fled but some stayed behind in an attempt to safeguard their valuable specimens, but to no avail. The crowd found a handful of undisturbed corpses and took them to the cemetery for proper burial.

Meanwhile, doctors and students were escorted to jail for their own protection, but the mob could not be tamed and hunted for any anatomist still at large in the city. They descended on Columbia School, ignoring pleas for peace from a desperate Alexander Hamilton. The students barricaded themselves inside and it was only when a group of militiamen opened fire that the crowd subsided.

This was just one of many riots that occurred due to the actions of the anatomists. For weeks on end following the events, groups of vigilantes patrolled the cemeteries at night, determined to protect the remains of their loved ones.