RESURRECTIONISTS, or BODY SNATCHERS, a class of miscreants who, in Britain previous to the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832, made a livelihood by rifling graves, taking out the corpses and selling them to schools of medicine and surgery as '
of the British Parliament (1832) provides that schools of anatomy and teachers and demon strators of anatomy shall be licensed; such schools and such teachers are empowered to re ceive as subjects for dissection the cadavers of persons dying friendless, in poorhouses, hos pitals and elsewhere; and the trade of the resurrectionist was practically done away in Britain by the passage of the act. In the United States there are not in any of the individual States any statutes regulating the practice of anatomical dissection: the plundering of graves for subjects of dissection is a misdemeanor for which the offender may be indicted at common law. Instances are not very rare of the bodies of persons, not friendless, who die in public or
hospitals, being, without legal war rant, sold to the schools by subordinate em ployees of such hospitals. Body-snatching, or rifling of graves for the purpose of exacting a ransom from the families of the dead is not in frequent: a notable instance was that of the stealing of the body of A. T. Stewart, well known New York merchant, in 1878, from the cathedral at Garden City, Long Island. The body-snatchers in this case demanded a ransom of $200,000, which afterward they reduced to half that sum: finally, they received $20,000 with the assurance that they should not be prosecuted. Since that time extraordinary pre cautions are taken against body-snatching from the graves, especially of very rich persons. Consult Bailey, J. 11. ed. 'The Diary of a Resurrectionist) (London 1896).