Body Snatching in Ohio: A century of digging up corpses in the Buckeye State

Are your ancestors from the 19th century still in their graves? If they were buried in Ohio between 1811 and 1911, that may not be the case. Although physicians needed corpses to teach their students how to take care of the living, these were very difficult to get legally. And so the profession of resurrectionist was born, whose job was to work the night shift, digging up what doctors so desperately needed. Between 1811 and 1881 nearly 5,000 unfortunate souls met this fate in the Buckeye state alone. Body Snatching in Ohio tells a century’s worth of tales on grave robbing, murder, and the fight to keep bodies in their graves instead of ending up on the dissection tables.