Lore - Episode 134: Disturbing the Peace

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Episode 134: Disturbing the Peace There’s nothing more certain in life than death. No matter how rewarding or challenging our days on this planet might be, for as long as humans have been around, we’ve viewed death as something akin to slumber, however natural or untimely it might be. But not all that sleep are left undisturbed. ———————— Episode Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources Lore News: www.theworldoflore.com/now Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rest in peace. It's a common response to the death of someone well-known or well-loved and has been for a very long time. While it's been popular since the 18th century, instances of it can be found all the way back to the 400s. When people die, we truly do wish that they will rest in peace. But of course, that's not always the case, is it? In 2013, researchers working at Virginia's historic Jamestown site uncovered the bodies

of four men that are believed to be part of the original leadership of the colony. And yes, I could tell you all about them, who they were and what they did, but that would be missing the point. They were at rest for a long while, but eventually, that rest was disturbed. Archaeologists are good at that. It's part of their job, really, to study the remains of the past in order to put the puzzle of ancient history back together again. But researchers aren't the only people digging up graves and disturbing the rest of those

within them. Watch any documentary on ancient Egypt, and you'll eventually be introduced to the concept of tomb robbers, individuals who made a living by breaking into tombs and stealing the valuable goods inside them. That's what made King Tut's tomb so spectacular. He was a minor pharaoh who didn't rule for very long, so it's safe to assume other rulers would have had much more lavish collection of valuables in their tomb. No, King Tut was exceptional because his tomb managed to evade the tomb robbers.

But there's a third group of people who break that sacred boundary and disturb the sleep of the dead, although we tend to forget about them. Partly because we honestly just never expect to find them in the first place, but also because we have so much faith in humanity that we don't expect them to exist. And yet, for a very long time, they not only existed, but thrived, and they earned a name that has become synonymous with disrespect and violation. Because everyone feared the body snatchers. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

What started out as a simple renovation had become something more mysterious. In July of 1999, workers were on site at Harvard University's Holden Chapel, where they discovered something wholly unexpected and equally unsettling. The walls of the chapel's basement were lined with bones, human bones. It didn't take long for their true nature to be discovered. The bones dated to the late 1700s and represented one of the darker chapters of the university's long history. Because the bodies weren't stashed there by a prolific killer, or even a public afraid

of plague-ridden remains. No, they were put there by faculty. You see, the late 1700s was a boom era for medical schools. More and more hopeful students were pursuing a career in medicine, and that meant that schools were beginning to overflow with fresh minds to train. But with that influx of students came a new problem. There were no longer enough human corpses to go around for everyone to study. It's a problem that's most often discussed within the framework of England and Scotland.

And stories of people like Burke and Hare have gone a long way toward planting that dark chapter in British history into our modern minds. But it's not a problem that stayed across the Atlantic. It seems that even in America, that challenge of supply and demand was met with a less-than-savory solution. A lot of it came down to the laws. In the United Kingdom, the only bodies that were legal for dissection were those of executed criminals, which happened rarely enough to effectively choke the supply of medical school

cadavers. And because Massachusetts began as an English colony, it shared many of those same laws, and the restrictions caused by them, which explains all those bones beneath Harvard's Holden Chapel. One man even tried to build a bit of organization around it. Joseph Warren was the son of Dr. John Warren, a professor of anatomy at Harvard. Now, maybe young Joseph had heard his father's complaints too often to ignore, or perhaps his father was in on the idea all along.

But sometime around 1796, Joseph formed a secret society called the Anatomical Club. It wasn't a study group, though. Instead, it was a group of men committed to the art of body-snatching. And I don't use the term art lightly. This group developed a set of best practices and general philosophy about their work. For example, the proper crew for an evening of body-snatching was apparently three people, two to do the digging and dragging, and another to transport the corpse to the customer. And I can't move on without mentioning that one of Joseph Warren's partners in this endeavor

was a guy named John Revere, son of the legendary Paul Revere. But this activity wasn't limited to Harvard University or even Massachusetts. It was common at other medical schools, including those in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Anywhere there was demand, certain people rose up to meet it, and they got really, really good at it too. And tricky. There are reports of medical students paying women to go to local poor houses and claim fresh bodies, pretending to be their grieving relatives.

In other cases, students would bribe lamp lighters in the city to take the night off, or at least skip the area of town near their preferred graveyards. According to historian Michael Sapple, this activity even became organized across entire communities. In 1828, a group of anatomy professors in Philadelphia all signed a treaty that set the terms for who received corpses for their classrooms, how many, and how often. If anyone had problems, the mayor was designated as the person to resolve the disagreements. It was literally a conspiracy that went all the way to the top.

And it worked. But body snatching, like so many other human activities, quickly became yet one more arena where human flaws were reflected. Medical students and those who worked for them typically avoided the graves of people from middle and upper class. Instead, they focused on potter's fields and the poor of their communities. Because in their minds, at least, people mattered less and had fewer rights when they were poor.

Another favorite spot tended to be military burial grounds, especially those of sailors. They were poor, typically disconnected from a local family, and quite often were from a minority group. And there was one place where this prejudice was put on full display. New York City. But the Big Apple has never been the sort of place to take things lying down. The people there have a way of fighting for a better life, and they always have. So when a practice as unethical as body snatching moved in and took root in the late 1700s,

you can probably guess how the people of New York handled it. Sadly, things didn't end well for anyone involved. And yet it lined up neatly with something that history has proven we are very, very good at. Tragedy and violence and death. It was easier than you might have thought. Becoming a medical doctor in New York City in the late 1700s wasn't the nearly endless gauntlet of schooling and residency that physicians face today.

Back then, folks had a couple of options, an actual medical school or private lessons from a practicing doctor. For the official track, there was Columbia College. As New York City's only medical school at the time, this was where you could enroll and work toward a real degree. But if that wasn't an option, one could go to the New York Hospital, where Dr. Richard Bailey offered to teach classes of his own. Each option for all their differences had the same problem, though.

There were just not enough cadavers to go around, which meant that a lot of students lacked the hands-on experience they needed to truly master their lessons. Thankfully for them, there were less than savory alternatives. Columbia College sat conveniently close to a pair of cemeteries, although their demographics shouldn't surprise you. One was a potter's field, a burial place for the poor and unclaimed, while the other was called the Negro's burial ground. And although it was a few blocks away, the New York Hospital made use of those cemeteries

as well. Now, Columbia College's medical program was run by a man named Dr. Charles McKnight. He had a solid reputation in the community, and didn't blatantly instruct his students to provide their own cadavers through body-snatching. But he didn't tell them not to, and it stands as a perfect illustration of how silence from authorities can often empower the worst in people. However, New York Hospital's Dr. Bailey had a less-than-perfect reputation. He was rumored to be a cruel man who experimented on the sick against their wishes.

His patients were often poor and without the social clout to fight back, making them the perfect choice for a medical teacher looking for hands-on experience for his students. In January of 1788, the city's medical students began to increase their activity at night, robbing dozens of graves. One reason was that snow was still on the ground, and bodies stayed fresh longer in the cold. Typically, dissection had to begin immediately after the body was dug up, for obvious reasons, but the cold and snow allowed for a bit more time.

In fact, there are stories of severed limbs being stored in bundles of snow, while internal organs were often pickled in whiskey or vinegar to fight off decay. It was messy, and most likely took a strong stomach to handle it all, but the students did it every single night. But rather than keep their activity discreet, they became more and more bold, which left evidence around for the general public to notice and be disturbed by. Two things happened as a result of their bold and obvious crimes. First, the local community of free black New Yorkers gathered together a committee and

sent them to Town Hall, which was located nearby. They stood before the city council and asked them to find the people who were stealing the bodies of their loved ones and require them to be more discreet about it. And I know what you're thinking. Why didn't they just ask the city council to stop them completely? And the answer is complex. Because yes, the medical students were being disrespectful, and the way they handled things was ham-fisted and sloppy, but there was also a large percentage of New Yorkers who understood

the upside to body snatching. Because if students didn't get a proper hands-on education, they wouldn't make for good doctors, and that had the potential to turn into decades of pain and suffering for their future patients. Was it an easy choice? Absolutely not, but they felt like they were picking the lesser of two evils. The second major event kicked off by the increase in body snatching was a letter sent to the local paper, The Daily Advertiser.

This letter addressed to the editor of the paper complained about the criminal deeds taking place, and it suggested that laws should be passed to prohibit it, pointing to just how insidious, disrespectful, and racially biased the crimes were. The Daily Advertiser published that letter in mid-February of 1788, generating a storm of dialogue and concern. But within just a couple of weeks, another anonymous letter was sent to the paper, this time a rebuttal of the first. The author of the second letter was most likely a medical student, so we have to acknowledge

the obvious bias that drove them to write it, but it made that same old argument as before. More cadavers met better doctors, and everyone wants a skilled medical professional on their side when life goes sideways. Alongside this new letter, The Daily Advertiser published news of another body snatching in the city. Now, obviously, there were far too many taking place to report on all of them, and it was rare for poor and minority communities to get print space.

This one, though, was different. It seems the body of a woman was stolen from the graveyard of Trinity Church, and the church wanted to offer a financial reward for her return. All of this tension began to put a strain on the people of New York City. The tug of war between the need for better medical education and the common decency that all graves should receive, the balance between desperation and morality, and the clear differences between the way graves of the middle and upper class were treated and those of the poor and underrepresented.

Frustration like that doesn't just go away. Instead, it simmers and builds and becomes something more and more volatile over time. And then, in April of 1788, all of that came to a boil, and the results were terrifying. What set it all off was a wave of the hand. To understand what I mean, though, we need to back up slightly, because I need to help you understand exactly what most of these medical students were like in 1788. According to historians, a good majority of doctors began their training around the age of 15, and while we could do that dance where we talk about maturity levels over the past

few centuries, and how 15-year-olds back then were getting married and working jobs, there's still the glaring fact that those teenagers were barely separated from their childhood. So medical school or not, they weren't the most mature. In fact, despite the public uproar over the rash of body snatching that everyone knew was being done by these students, they would frequently dress up in the traditional clothing of their trade and walk through the streets. It was almost as if they were taunting the people of their community. They seemed to be saying, yes, we know you disapprove, and we don't care.

But I mentioned a wave, didn't I? The way the story has been recorded, a group of children were playing in the empty field beside the New York Hospital when one of them spotted something frightening. He pointed up toward a window, and the rest of his friends followed the gesture. There, dangling out of a second-story window, was a severed human arm. In one record of the events, one of the boys found a ladder and climbed up to the window for a better look. Once level with the opening, he saw that the room was occupied.

In fact, it was a dissecting room, where a student named John Hicks was working on the corpse of a woman. When Hicks noticed the boy, he picked up the severed arm, told him that it belonged to his recently deceased mother, and then shook the arm at him, causing the limp hand to flop back and forth in a morbid wave. Understandably, the boy was frightened out of his mind, and he quickly descended the ladder and ran home. Home and to his father, a man still grieving the loss of his wife.

At the news of what John Hicks had done and what he had claimed in his words to the boy, this father rushed from the house in a rage. As quickly as he could, he arranged for his wife's grave to be exhumed, looking for proof that the young medical student had been guilty of nothing more than being a petulant teenager. But the coffin was empty. I have a feeling John Hicks knew that he had crossed a line. Yes, digging up the bodies of the recently deceased without permission was miles past the line already, but this felt different.

He had flaunted that disrespect to a young boy, and I have to believe that he quickly realized it was a mistake. In the moments after the boy had been frightened off, Hicks made his own escape by running for the home of a retired physician by the name of Dr. John Cochran. The boy's father, though, didn't hide. No, he gathered a mob of equally angry members of his community. Together, they all marched toward the hospital, where they burst inside and discovered a number of bodies laid out on dissection tables.

To the medical students, it was nothing more than homework. To the angry mob, though, it looked like brutal mutilation, proving once again that just about everything in life is a matter of perception. The mob exploded in rage and began to drag every cadaver they found out into the street where they tossed them into a bonfire. Then, perhaps because their anger had clouded their judgment, they rounded up every medical student in the building, along with one of their instructors, a man named Dr. Wright Post, and removed them from the building.

Some in the crowd suggested that they be tossed into the fire as well. The next morning, the mob moved on to a new target, Columbia College. News of their arrival had preceded them, though, and when they arrived, one of the college's former students was standing on the front steps of the school, ready to send them home. But despite the fact that this man was none other than Alexander Hamilton, the mob pushed Wright past him and searched the school for more bodies. And it wasn't a small crowd, either. Most estimates placed the size of the mob at around a few thousand, making it something

too serious to ignore. In response, the governor sent in the militia. But with tensions already as high as they could get, armed military personnel was the last thing the situation needed. In the confrontation that followed, at least three militia men were killed by rocks that the mob had thrown. In response, the soldiers fired back, killing just as many. When it was all over, the conflict moved on to the courtroom.

Some doctors produced sworn affidavits that claimed that they had no idea their students were robbing graves. Others dodged the issue by remaining in hiding, and the student who had set it all off, John Hicks, never appeared in court, despite being ordered by the authorities to do so. In fact, they did manage to track him down to the home of that retired physician, Dr. John Cochran, but they never found Hicks, which is amazing, really. As according to one historian, the search team actually went as far as to stand in front of the window that looked out onto the roof of Cochran's home.

But they never opened it and climbed outside. If they had, they might have been tempted to look around. That would have been bad news for young John Hicks, because he was curled up in a ball on the roof of the house next door, hiding in the shadow of the chimney, like a common thief. And considering what he had done to get there, I'm glad to hear he could find no peace. It's easy to look back on earlier moments in history and past judgment. We can find flaws in just about everything done by the people who came before us.

And I typically try to see past all of that to understand the particular situation they might have been in. Whether it was unusual behavior driven by superstitious folklore or the pursuit of scientific discoveries that we now know were impossible or laughable, the actions of those who came before us can certainly seem primitive, but that attitude would be misguided in most situations. The people who came before us did their best with what they had, and we can learn a lot from their tenacity. The doctor's riot of 1788, though, is an exception.

Yes, it's true that medical students needed cadavers to further their education. No one is disputing that, trust me. But the natural and social laws that they broke in pursuit of that education aren't something that looks better if we could only just put ourselves in their shoes. What they did was wrong, plain and simple, and they knew it. I understand that hands-on experience with the human body helped these students become better physicians. I think all of us get that, but the respect and dignity that we show toward the dead isn't

a passing fad. It's been part of human culture since the very beginning. As one headstone in Savannah, Georgia so eloquently states, after life's fitful fever, they sleep well. Or at least, that's the hope. The practice of body snatching continued for many years, and with it there were more riots like the one in New York. In fact, in the roughly 90 years between 1765 and 1854, there were at least 17 similar

riots by angry communities, from Baltimore and Philadelphia to Cleveland and beyond. And if you watch the news carefully enough these days, you might just catch the occasional modern rendition of these events, because body snatching is sadly still something that takes place. Even today, criminals harvest organs and other body parts from the dead. Authorities call them body brokers, because they gather and sell human body parts like inventory in a warehouse. Rest in peace is a wonderful sentiment, and one that all of us hope is true.

Life is often difficult and painful, as history is so quick to remind us. But when it's all over, most people cling to the promise that they'll finally get some rest. One last detail about the 1788 doctors riot. It turns out Dr. John Cochran was probably the most powerful person John Hicks could have fled to considering his options. Why? Because not only was Cochran a doctor who understood the complex nature of the situation,

but because he also served as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, before becoming the fourth surgeon general in American history. That was part of his power. The rest came through relationships. In fact, Cochran was part of that legendary crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776, the one that's depicted in that famous Immanuel Lutz painting. And because of his participation in such a pivotal moment in American history, he had a very powerful friend.

A friendship that practically guaranteed that the people who were searching Cochran's house wouldn't have free reign to violate the doctor's rights. And that friend? Beyond being a heroic general who was loved and admired by nearly everyone in the young nation, he was also serving that nation as its president. Its first, in fact. Dr. John Cochran's powerful friend, of course, was George Washington. I hope that you enjoyed this brief tour through the world of American body-snatching.

And while I fully admit that some of the details are hard to hear, there is so much about our country's early years that we can learn from the practice. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I have one more tale left to tell you. Ben arrived early for his father's funeral. His father, John Scott, had been 73 years old and had passed away peacefully in his sleep just four days earlier. And it was on his walk toward the gravesite that Ben noticed something odd.

One of the nearby graves, that of a young tuberculosis victim named Augustus Devon, had been dug up and emptied. Body Snatchers Of course, that's not a reassuring thing to see on the morning of your own father's funeral. So, once the ceremony was over, Ben pulled two of his brothers aside, Carter and John, and together they planned a way to make sure their father didn't meet the same fate. Into the story, they had workers enter their father's crypt and lay three stone slabs

over the top of the coffin, before covering it all with concrete. For added safety, the brothers slipped some cash to a local man to stand watch over the tomb for a full month. Plenty of time for nature to take its course, making their father's body less than desirable to potential thieves. But Ben wasn't finished just yet. He'd spent the past three decades of his life working as an attorney and knew just how insidious these body snatching operations could be.

So he pulled some strings and obtained a search warrant for the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. There had been reports of strange nighttime deliveries to the back alley, and he had a few suspicions about that. The day after his father's burial, Ben showed up with an entire team behind him. His brother John was there, as was a cousin named George, and there were three Cincinnati police officers ready to assist if needed. And after being led inside by a janitor, they quickly found what they were looking for.

It seems that the back alley door had led to a small room with a tunnel built into the ceiling, almost like looking up into an elevator shaft. It ran straight up into the darkness, but there was plenty to look at right there in the basement room. According to reports, they found multiple bodies, men and women and even children, that had all been stolen from local graves, and the evidence was damning. But they still needed to see what was at the top of that vertical shaft, so they followed the janitor up, arriving a short while later in a room at the top of the building that

was fitted with a winch, expertly designed to haul heavy objects up from below. Whether it had been installed for a more mundane purpose long before, no one knew, but it was clear to Ben and the others that it now served as a mechanism for lifting bodies up from the cellar. Out of curiosity, and still hoping they might find the stolen body of Augustus Devon, one of the police officers turned the crank to raise the rope. As it inched upward, so too did a body laid on a small wooden platform, its form covered with a white sheet.

Ben glanced at it and remarked to his brother that the body seemed too heavy to be that of a former tuberculosis patient and that they should look elsewhere, but his brother John was more persistent. Perhaps, he suggested, we should check beneath the sheet, just in case. Ben nodded and then reached out and tugged the white cloth away. A moment later, both brothers caught their breath. He had been right, it wasn't the body of Augustus Devon, but someone much more familiar to both of them.

It was their father. They would later discover how it all happened, the details must have been frustrating for the family. They had gone to such great lengths to make sure the body snatchers would be held off, and yet it hadn't worked. And not only that, but they must have believed that the thieves would avoid the gravesite thanks to how well connected and powerful their father had been. After all, what could be more connected and powerful than being related to two American

presidents? You see, not only had John Scott Harrison lived his life as the son of former President William Henry Harrison, but just a decade after his death and the theft of his body, his own son would take up that mantle. That's right. Ben, the intrepid investigator who broke up a body-snatching ring in Cincinnati, went on to serve in the highest elected office in the nation, becoming America's 23rd president. Benjamin Harrison.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Michelle Mudo and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I Think You'd Enjoy Both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.