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Illustrations by Ken Perkins
On the night of January 12, 1824, the Governor’s foot guard,
armed with bayonets, swordsand rifles, assembled on the New Haven Green,
ready to quell a furious mob assaulting the medical school, which was
then located on Grove Street. Earlier that day, a body missing from the
West Haven burying ground had been found in a medical school building
at Grove and College streets. With no legal means of acquiring cadavers
for the study of anatomy, medical students of the era sometimes resorted
to grave robbing. A Yale medical assistant was scapegoated, paid a fine
of $300 and served nine months in jail. A subsequent act of the state
legislature made the bodies of those who died in prison or were executed
available “to be used for the purpose of advancing medical science.”
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Grave robbing wasn’t something a Yale man did in the early 19th
century—unless he was in medical school.
By Rachel Engers
Illustrations by Ken Perkins
Early on the morning of January 12, 1824, Jonathan Knight, Yale’s
first professor of anatomy and physiology, received a startling piece
of news. During the night, a body had been snatched from a fresh grave
in the West Haven burying ground and the incensed townspeople were pointing
fingers at the college.
Some suspicion of the medical students was justified. Grave robbing by
anatomists was still common in America at the beginning of the 19th century—for
contrary to the practice in Europe, there was no legal way to obtain cadavers
for medical study. One reason was the deeply ingrained prejudice against
the work of anatomists. The inhabitants of New Haven “were the direct
inheritors of a flourishing Puritan tradition that naturally fostered
strong religious feelings,” wrote Yale historian Hannibal Hamlin
in his account of the incident. “Their respect for the sanctity of
the sepulcher bordered on superstition. The Doctor of Physic was held
in high esteem; but the dissection of a cadaver by the surgeon or anatomist
was, in general, considered a nefarious and unmentionable business.”
A search began for the missing body of Bathsheba Smith, “a respectable
young female of nineteen” and the daughter of a local farmer. The
West Haven burough constable, Erastus Osborn, was dispatched immediately
to the college. His account of discovering the corpse in the medical school
building at Grove and College streets appears in a letter to his father,
quoted below with its irregular spelling intact:
“We came to a place in the pavement (the Cellar being paved with
large flat stones) which lookd generally like the bottom of the Cellar
throughout, but appeard to have a trifle of fresh dirt lying scatterd
about … I scratchd with the end of my walking stick and the more
I examind the more suspicion was created. We soon found the earth appeard
fresher between the stones & finally took up a large flat stone where
we discovered a white bundle, apparently a bundle of cloathes. We examind
it & found a human body doubled up in a heap entirely coverd up with
grave cloathes. We took it out and it was immediately known to be the
body of the young woman we were searching for.”
Not since the British invaded New Haven in 1779 had the townspeople been
so incensed, Elizabeth H. Thomson wrote in her unfinished history of the
School of Medicine. The scandal stirred up such a ferocious anger that
a mob of some 600 men armed with pistols, clubs and daggers stormed the
college at nightfall. The authorities read the state’s Riot Act several
times, but the crowd kept pelting the building with stones and shouting
“tear down the college” and “death to the students.”
Those inside feared the mob would batter down the walls. Justus D. Wilcox,
a medical student who witnessed the attacks, gave this account of the
escalating attacks in a letter: “[At nearly midnight] the Governor’s
foot guards were called out. They assembled on the green, each man provided
with sword and bayoneted gun, with ball and cartridge; they marched at
quick step to the Medical college inspired [by] fife and drum which beat
the revelle, and sounded the notes of war.”
During the investigation, sensational newspaper headlines (“Another
Grave Plundered!”) fanned the fury and gossips spun some outlandish
tales about the medical school. In later years, one rumor held that the
institution had been purposely sited near the Grove Street cemetery so
that bodies could be easily stolen, and some even speculated that an underground
tunnel linked the basement of the building and the graveyard. But in 1824,
that cemetery was as yet unbuilt.
While the New Haven dissection riots of 1824 are certainly a strange chapter
in the history of the medical school, Yale was by no means alone. Despite
epidemics of cholera, smallpox and other diseases, the general public
had little appreciation for the work of anatomists. In fact there were
violent attacks at medical institutions around the country, including
the deaths of seven people in the New York “Doctor’s Mob”
of 1788 and riots at Wiesenthal’s School in Baltimore.
A Yale medical assistant named Ephraim Colborn was scapegoated for the
plundering of Bathsheba Smith’s grave. Although there were no witnesses
against him, he was found guilty of the crime, fined $300 and sentenced
to nine months in jail. Soon thereafter, Connecticut passed an act that
established more severe penalties for grave robbing and made it legal
for the bodies of those dying in prison and those capitally punished “to
be used for the purpose of advancing medical science.” This landmark
legislation, well ahead of that in other states and preceding the Warburton
Anatomy Act of 1832 in England by eight years, helped bring about progress
in medical teaching both at Yale and in Connecticut.
Rachel Engers is a writer in Bedford, N.Y.
Ken Perkins is an artist in Broomfield, Colo.
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