Inside the grisly practices of grave-robbing doctors

In April 1788, a medical student named John Hicks was dissecting a body at New York Hospital, then located on the corner of Broadway and Pearl Street.

As it happened, one of the kids had recently lost his mother, and he ran home to tell his dad what he’d seen at the hospital. Enraged, the father grabbed a shovel and headed to the graveyard, where he dug up his wife’s grave to find the coffin empty.  The father notified others, and a mob soon marched on the hospital, touching off violent unrest that lasted for two days. The group ransacked the hospital, destroying equipment and dragging dissected bodies out into the street to be burned or reburied. The mob’s numbers ultimately swelled to 5,000, according to some reports.