Speaker 1: School of humans. Nowadays, if someone tells you you got
Speaker 1: a snatched bod, that means you're looking fit, you're looking swell. Me.
Speaker 1: I was pretty snatched in twenty twenty three, but now
Speaker 1: I'm looking a little bit more released, if you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm getting fayat. But back in
Speaker 1: the olden days, a snatched body was actually no good.
Speaker 1: What that meant was that your dead ass corpse got
Speaker 1: snatched out of the ground. Yeah, that meant somebody, a
Speaker 1: body snatcher had taken you out of the ground for
Speaker 1: their own fun and games. And by fun and games,
Speaker 1: I of course mean their medical education. Ooh, spooky music. Yes,
Speaker 1: body snatchers were huge in the eighteenth century, and even
Speaker 1: before that, medical students and teachers thought they didn't have
Speaker 1: any other options. People weren't donating their bodies to science
Speaker 1: when they died because you know, Christianity and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And people were so afraid of their bodies getting snatched
Speaker 1: that those who could afford it would buy traps around
Speaker 1: their graves or have people on cemetery patrol. But the
Speaker 1: men of science believed they were entitled to these bodies,
Speaker 1: since they weren't just forwarding their own education, but also
Speaker 1: the education of mankind. They need to learn the secrets
Speaker 1: of the body, and one way to do that was
Speaker 1: to get up in the guts of a dead person.
Speaker 1: But the body snatchers, well, sometimes they snatched too close
Speaker 1: to the sun. And that's what happened in New York
Speaker 1: City in seventeen eighty eight. Bodies were getting snatched that
Speaker 1: the citizens of the city decided it was time for
Speaker 1: those doctors to get a little snatched themselves.
Speaker 2: Cue the theme song.
Speaker 1: This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
Speaker 1: I tell you a filthy story from American history. Today's
Speaker 1: episode the seventeen eighty eight doctors riot be de Beniti
Speaker 1: be be Beta, Betta beta beta, but a bettada. Really, guys,
Speaker 1: I always sing the theme song because again one guy
Speaker 1: emailed me one time and said, I like when you
Speaker 1: sing it, so now I sing it even more. Really,
Speaker 1: I'll do anything. Just give me a suggestion. I'll put
Speaker 1: it into the next show. In the seventeen eighties in
Speaker 1: New York City, a lot of his body snatching was
Speaker 1: going on. It was also called resurrecting spooky. Some of
Speaker 1: the snatchers were medical students at Columbia College, which was
Speaker 1: the only school of medicine in the city at the time.
Speaker 1: These young lads started their medical education around age fifteen,
Speaker 1: and they liked to walk around the city in their
Speaker 1: little suits, wreaking of entitlement and bragging about their body
Speaker 1: snatching ways. Many of them were encouraged to body snatch
Speaker 1: by their professor, Charles McKnight. McKnight was a big surgeon
Speaker 1: at the time, and in class he would complain about
Speaker 1: the lack of cadavers at their disposal. He's like, it's
Speaker 1: so hard to find a body these days, especially since
Speaker 1: it's illegal to just take dead bodies off the street. Ugh.
Speaker 1: Back in my day, you could just find a dead
Speaker 1: poor person and do whatever you wanted. And so McKnight
Speaker 1: would complain like this in his classes, being like, hint, hint, boys,
Speaker 1: go get your shovels and bring back a body for
Speaker 1: us to dissect and defile. Columbia College was by several
Speaker 1: cemeteries by the city border, and that's where these students
Speaker 1: did a lot of their looting, and city officials didn't
Speaker 1: stop them because these particular cemeteries entombed the bodies of
Speaker 1: black people, meaning when the living relatives of the deceased
Speaker 1: complained to city officials, their complaints weren't taken seriously or
Speaker 1: even hurt. A group of freedmen even addressed the Common
Speaker 1: Council in early seventeen eighty eight, being like, can you
Speaker 1: please stop these dumbass medical students from taking the bodies
Speaker 1: of our loved ones in such a horrible way like
Speaker 1: in this petition. They weren't even asking for bodies snatching
Speaker 1: to stop, just to stop it being conducted so terribly.
Speaker 1: The petition said, under the cover of night, they dig
Speaker 1: up bodies of our deceased friends and relatives, carrying them
Speaker 1: away without respect for age or sex. Your petitioners are
Speaker 1: well aware of the necessity of physicians and surgeons consulting
Speaker 1: dead subjects.
Speaker 2: For the benefit of mankind.
Speaker 1: Your petitioners do not presuppose it as an injury to
Speaker 1: the deceased, and will not be adverse to di section
Speaker 1: in particular circumstances, that is, if it is conducted with
Speaker 1: the decency and propriety which the solemnity of such an
Speaker 1: occasion requires. Unfortunately, this petition was ignored, so instead they
Speaker 1: organized patrols to make sure these medical students wouldn't dig
Speaker 1: up any more of their loved ones, and when medical
Speaker 1: students couldn't do their body snatching there, they moved on
Speaker 1: to the cemeteries of poor white people. Another doctor in
Speaker 1: the city was Richard Bailey. He wasn't associated with Columbia College,
Speaker 1: and he was known around the town as a real
Speaker 1: sick oh. There were rumors that he had hacked up
Speaker 1: people who were still alive, the poor and the sick,
Speaker 1: and would do experiments on them. But Bailey was talented,
Speaker 1: so he and his apprentices were allowed to do their work.
Speaker 2: At New York Hospital. Isn't that great? How if you're
Speaker 2: good at something.
Speaker 1: People will just let you do whatever you want. Well.
Speaker 1: New York Hospital was also close to these cemeteries that
Speaker 1: buried black and poor people, so Bailey's apprentices would snatch
Speaker 1: bodies from there as well. In the winter of seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, body statching had reached a climax. Stealing bodies
Speaker 1: in the winter was most common because the cold meant
Speaker 1: that the bodies didn't composes quickly, and these medical students
Speaker 1: were being careless, just taking bodies willy nilly, not even
Speaker 1: covering their tracks or closing the graves.
Speaker 2: When they were done.
Speaker 1: I mean, that doesn't make it any better, but at
Speaker 1: least they could have tried to be better thieves.
Speaker 2: That just shows how entitled they were.
Speaker 1: And then it started affecting well to do white people.
Speaker 1: On February twenty first, seventeen eighty eight, a story ran
Speaker 1: about a white lady's body getting snatched from Trinity's cemetery,
Speaker 1: and with that, more and more people started getting on
Speaker 1: board with the costs of stopping these.
Speaker 2: Good for nothing doctors.
Speaker 1: There are some discrepancies in the sources about what exactly
Speaker 1: happened next, but what we do know is that in
Speaker 1: April seventeen.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight, there was a riot.
Speaker 1: So let's take a look at one source again. Are
Speaker 1: you guys enjoying this creepy music? This letter was from
Speaker 1: a retired colonel who had been sent from Virginia to
Speaker 1: New York on business, and he wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: the governor of Virginia about what was going on. So
Speaker 1: this is what he said about it, and I condensed
Speaker 1: it a bit because his sentences.
Speaker 2: Were very long.
Speaker 1: People have been loudly complaining about the young students of
Speaker 1: medicine for their very frequent and wanton trespasses in the
Speaker 1: burial grounds of this city. The corpse of a young
Speaker 1: gentleman from the West Indies was recently taken, the grave
Speaker 1: left open and the funeral clothing scattered about. A very
Speaker 1: handsome and much esteemed young lady of good connections was
Speaker 1: also recently carried off. These, with various other acts of
Speaker 1: a similar kind, inflamed the minds of people exceedingly, and
Speaker 1: the young members of the faculty, as well as the
Speaker 1: cemeteries have been closely watched. Last Sunday, as some people
Speaker 1: were strolling by the hospital, he discovered something hanging up
Speaker 1: at one of the windows, which excited their curiosity, and
Speaker 1: making use of a stick to satisfy that curiosity, part
Speaker 1: of a man's arm or leg tumbled out upon them.
Speaker 1: That's right, some people were having a nice leisurely Sunday
Speaker 1: when a man's arm or leg fell on them. And
Speaker 1: I imagine it's pretty shocking, just in the middle of
Speaker 1: April to have an arm fall on you. It wasn't Halloween,
Speaker 1: it's not even seasonal to have something spooky like that happen.
Speaker 1: Another account makes this story even more grim. This came
Speaker 1: from an eighteen seventy three book by historian Thomas Hedley.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Great Riots of New York,
Speaker 1: And honestly, what he says makes sense that people were
Speaker 1: rioting because this is freaky deeky. He said that Richard Bailey,
Speaker 1: that doctor who was known for being particularly gruesome, was
Speaker 1: dissecting a body at the hospital with a team of
Speaker 1: his apprentices and students. One of the students was this
Speaker 1: little brat named John Hicks. Remember him, He sucks. Apparently
Speaker 1: some children were outside climbing a tree when they peered
Speaker 1: into the hospital room where they were doing a dissection.
Speaker 1: They were dissecting an arm, and when John Hicks, that
Speaker 1: stupilil idiot, saw the children, he probably thought he was
Speaker 1: being absolutely hilarious. He picked up the arm and waved
Speaker 1: it at the kids, haha. And then he said to
Speaker 1: one of the kids that this arm belonged to that
Speaker 1: kid's recently deceased mom.
Speaker 2: Isn't that messed up?
Speaker 1: Like? I don't know if John Hicks was a good
Speaker 1: medical student at this point, but he definitely wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: make it as a humorist.
Speaker 2: It's like read the room.
Speaker 1: A kid doesn't want to see their recently deceased mom's
Speaker 1: dism membered arm. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, and hardly
Speaker 1: anytime had elapsed.
Speaker 2: This guy's bad at math.
Speaker 1: And of course this account is unbelievable because how did
Speaker 1: John Hicks know that this was the arm of that
Speaker 1: kid's mom. It was New York in seventeen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: it's a bump in town. How would he know everybody
Speaker 1: who lives there? There was like twenty five thousand people.
Speaker 1: But if this was true, that kid obviously was very
Speaker 1: upset and ran home and told his dad what happened.
Speaker 1: Then his dad rushed the cemetery to find his late
Speaker 1: wife's coffin empty. And then this dad assembled a group
Speaker 1: of concerned citizens and they marched to the hospital. There
Speaker 1: a mob was forming, and they were ready to fuck
Speaker 1: some shit up. Be right back after these soothing advertisements.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, April thirteenth, seventeen eighty eight, a mob assembled
Speaker 1: outside of New York Hospital, and they were thirsty for vengeance.
Speaker 1: Too long had these entitled medical students and doctors ravaged
Speaker 1: their cemeteries. Now it was time to snatch the bodies
Speaker 1: of these body snatchers. According to the Virginia Colonel's Letter,
Speaker 1: the mob started ransacking the hospital, and as.
Speaker 2: They went they only got more and more enraged. He wrote.
Speaker 1: In the anatomy room they found three fresh bodies, one
Speaker 1: boiling in a kettle, and two others cut up, with
Speaker 1: certain parts of the two sexes hanging up in a
Speaker 1: most brutal position. These circumstances, together with the wanton and
Speaker 1: apparent inhuman complexion of the room, exasperated the mob beyond
Speaker 1: all bounds, to the total destruction of every anatomy in
Speaker 1: the hospital, one of which was of so much value
Speaker 1: and utility that it is justly esteemed a great public loss,
Speaker 1: having been prepared in a way which much time and
Speaker 1: attention and requires great skill to accomplish.
Speaker 2: That aside, is very funny to me.
Speaker 1: Uh the He's like, well, actually that was very valuable.
Speaker 1: Why are they destroying property property over people? Heath is
Speaker 1: just like, you know, even though these doctors aren't behaving morally,
Speaker 1: they are very good at pickling body parts. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: destroy everything. But the mob wasn't just there to destroy property.
Speaker 1: They were also after blood.
Speaker 2: Heath continued.
Speaker 1: Vengeance was denounced against the faculty in general, but more
Speaker 1: particularly against certain individuals. Not a man of the profession
Speaker 1: thought himself safe. An innocent person got beat and abused
Speaker 1: for being only dressed in black. Two of the young
Speaker 1: tribe were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, this moment was dramatic.
Speaker 1: At this point, most of the doctors of the city
Speaker 1: had gone into hiding to escape the mob. No one's
Speaker 1: sure where exactly Richard Bailey went, but John Hicks had
Speaker 1: scadaddled into the care of a surgeon who had served
Speaker 1: in the Continental Army at this man's house. Hicks allegedly
Speaker 1: hid in the chimney, but Bailey's other assistants weren't so lucky.
Speaker 1: Some of them had stayed behind to try to guard
Speaker 1: the specimens. But unfortunately for these nerds, the mob got
Speaker 1: their hands on those specimens and took them outside and
Speaker 1: burned them. And then the mob dragged out the young doctors,
Speaker 1: ready to get their collective revenge. But before anything happened
Speaker 1: to them, the mayor, James Duane thrusted his way through
Speaker 1: the crowd and was like, hey, mob, I'm taking these
Speaker 1: boys down to jail.
Speaker 2: Okay there.
Speaker 1: They can't dissect anyone's loved ones, they can't snatch anybodies.
Speaker 1: They can't wave any dead corpse arms at children. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take them to jail. The mob was
Speaker 1: still enraged but permitted him to take them. And really,
Speaker 1: Dwayne wasn't taking them to jail for the mob's sake,
Speaker 1: but for the doctors. He was like, the mob can't
Speaker 1: kill them if they're protected by a jail cell. The
Speaker 1: next morning, officials thought the riot was over, but oh no,
Speaker 1: the citizens of New York City couldn't be stopped. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of rioters flooded into the streets searching for John Hicks,
Speaker 1: who started this whole mess by being bad at comedy.
Speaker 1: Some of the members of the mob marched to Columbia
Speaker 1: College and Alexander Hamilton arrived himself at the scene to
Speaker 1: try to calm them down, but the mob was like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, Alexander Hamilton, get out.
Speaker 2: Of the way. Who the heck do you think you are?
Speaker 1: And Alexander Hamilton was like, well, they're gonna make a
Speaker 1: musical about me one day, so I'm super important. But
Speaker 1: the mob marched past him looking for dice sected bodies.
Speaker 1: The students, though, had gotten rid of all of their
Speaker 1: cadavers the night before, and the mob was like shit,
Speaker 1: we can't find anything that justifies our crusade. But that
Speaker 1: didn't stop them. They had another place they could go.
Speaker 1: Some accounts say there are two thousand people, others say
Speaker 1: five thousand. But all these people assembled at the jail
Speaker 1: where the mayor had sent those doctors and medical students,
Speaker 1: and the mob began to attack. Heath described it rather condescendingly.
Speaker 1: He said, they commenced their attack with all that intemperance
Speaker 1: and folly, whichever marks the conduct of people assembled in
Speaker 1: that way, vainly endeavoring to break in when they could
Speaker 1: do nothing more than break windows, which they will be
Speaker 1: taxed to repair. Heath is like, why are you fighting?
Speaker 2: This is stupid.
Speaker 1: You're just destroying property and then you're gonna be tacked
Speaker 1: to repair that.
Speaker 2: You guys are dumb. Uh property, I love property. Uh.
Speaker 1: When it was clear that the mob wasn't going to disperse,
Speaker 1: the governor finally got involved. Governor George Clinton was like, ugh,
Speaker 1: I hope this gets resolved organically, but alas he had
Speaker 1: to do his job and call in the militia. At
Speaker 1: first he told the militiaman he was like, don't shoot,
Speaker 1: Let's just try to get them to disperse.
Speaker 2: Let's try to get them to chill the fuck.
Speaker 1: Out, Okay, But then the rioters started attacking the prominent
Speaker 1: people assembled who were there to try to quell the attack.
Speaker 1: Founding Father John Jay was there and he got hit
Speaker 1: with a rock in his head and collapsed. And then
Speaker 1: our gay ass General Baron von Steuben was also there
Speaker 1: and also got hit by a rock. Of course, that
Speaker 1: is according to the official record written by people who win,
Speaker 1: and the winners in this case or the government, and
Speaker 1: the government was there to quella.
Speaker 2: Right. Did the rioters really throw rocks.
Speaker 1: At them or did they incite something first?
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: But there's this guy, William Deer, who was seven years
Speaker 1: old when all this was going down. He later wrote
Speaker 1: a book about the whole event, and this is what
Speaker 1: he said. He said, the Baron Steuben was struck by
Speaker 1: a stone, which knocked him down, inflicted a flesh rune
Speaker 1: upon his forehead, and brought a sudden change in the
Speaker 1: compassionate feelings he had previously.
Speaker 2: Entertained towards the mop.
Speaker 1: At the moment of receiving it, he was earnestly talking
Speaker 1: to the governor about not ordering the militia to fire
Speaker 1: on the people, But as soon as he was struck,
Speaker 1: the baron's benevolence deserted him, and as he fell he
Speaker 1: lustily cried out, fire, governor, Fire, So indeed the militia
Speaker 1: started shooting the rioters. Twenty people ended up dying, mostly
Speaker 1: citizens and three members of the militia per time. Doctors
Speaker 1: didn't know if John Jay would survive.
Speaker 2: They were like, his brain is injured. His brain is injured. No,
Speaker 2: but don't worry. He was fine, and Steuben he was
Speaker 2: completely fine.
Speaker 1: After this, the riot simmered down, but the people weren't done.
Speaker 1: The city had become anti doctor. Over the course of
Speaker 1: the riot, newspapers stopped running ads for medical schools. More
Speaker 1: groups formed patrol cemeteries to defend against the body snatchers.
Speaker 1: Some of the students were brought to court, but nothing happened,
Speaker 1: and Richard Bailey he published a public notice being like, hey,
Speaker 1: I actually never stole bodies inside of New York City.
Speaker 2: You guys are crazy for real.
Speaker 1: But that was him being sneaky, because yeah, technically he
Speaker 1: didn't rob from cemeteries inside the city. Most of the
Speaker 1: cemeteries were technically outside of the city. Isn't he a
Speaker 1: clever little goose. One good thing that happened for the
Speaker 1: citizens of New York City is that the authorities were
Speaker 1: finally ready to make space for people whose relatives are
Speaker 1: being dug up. They were finally listening a little bit,
Speaker 1: and a year after the riot, they passed legislation specifically
Speaker 1: quote an Act to prevent the odious practice of digging
Speaker 1: up and removing for the purpose of dissection, dead bodies
Speaker 1: interred in cemeteries or burial places. But they all knew
Speaker 1: these little doctors wouldn't stop, so for them, they passed
Speaker 1: some other legislation. They're like, hey, maybe instead of digging
Speaker 1: up nice dead citizens, we'll just give you the bodies
Speaker 1: of executed criminals, Okay, Like if someone's executed for arson
Speaker 1: or for burglary or for murder, you can just have
Speaker 1: their body and do whatever you want with it, Okay,
Speaker 1: And that kind of works, But there still weren't enough
Speaker 1: criminals who are being executed. So the body snatchers they
Speaker 1: just had to be more discreet, you know, they covered
Speaker 1: their tracks, they were subtle, and body snatching continued well
Speaker 1: into the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: And while I.
Speaker 1: Kind of want to hate Richard Bailey forever, I can't,
Speaker 1: because during his medical career he did a lot of
Speaker 1: good things for New York City.
Speaker 2: He improved sanitation.
Speaker 1: He also did a lot of research.
Speaker 2: On yellow fever.
Speaker 1: He figured out how to quarantine people effectively and how
Speaker 1: to stop the spread. And then he died of yellow
Speaker 1: fever in eighteen oh one. As for John Hicks, that
Speaker 1: little bitch who hid in this chimney, he eventually finished
Speaker 1: his medical training and became a doctor, but in seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety seven he was involved in another public scandal. He
Speaker 1: and his students had dissected a corpse of a man
Speaker 1: who had been hanged for murder, and in a public notice,
Speaker 1: Hicks was like, we did it in a discreet and
Speaker 1: secret manner, even though it was actually in an anatomical theater.
Speaker 2: So I guess a discreet theater. Who knows.
Speaker 1: The problem was that the students who were supposed to
Speaker 1: dispose of the body did so incorrectly. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to put all the body parts in a sack and
Speaker 1: throw it in the river with stones so it'd sink
Speaker 1: to the bottom, but they forgot to put the stones
Speaker 1: in there, so the sack just washed up, and some
Speaker 1: people found it a bit of a shock, just some
Speaker 1: dismembered body parts, and so Hicks had to publicly apologize, Hey,
Speaker 1: sorry about those body parts, just.
Speaker 2: Willy nilly.
Speaker 1: And in the next year, in seventeen ninety eight, John
Speaker 1: Hicks also died of yellow fever. Every episode of American
Speaker 1: Filth we learn a lesson, and I think the lesson
Speaker 1: here is sometimes it's inappropriate to joke around, right, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in front of.
Speaker 2: A child who just lost their mother.
Speaker 1: You know, perhaps don't take the mother's body part and
Speaker 1: wave it at the child.
Speaker 2: It's not a good joke.
Speaker 1: That being said, people probably would have found another reason
Speaker 1: to write anyway, because guys, if you're gonna take someone's body, ask,
Speaker 1: ask before you take. That's like a simple thing. Some
Speaker 1: of the people of New York were like, yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 1: If you want to dissect bodies, just ask before you
Speaker 1: do it. So if you want to dissect someone's body,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do is ask.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you have to do a lot
Speaker 2: more at this point, but whatever. Queue the credits.
Speaker 1: American Filth is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. This episode was produced, edited hosted.
Speaker 2: By me Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Baughr.
Speaker 1: Or Elisie Crowley are executive producers. You can follow along
Speaker 1: with the show on Instagram at American filth Pod, and
Speaker 1: make sure you give the show a review some stars,
Speaker 1: even the bad reviews. We love to see it, We
Speaker 1: love feedback. Do we follow the feedback?
Speaker 2: Sometimes?
Speaker 1: Do we not?
Speaker 2: Most of the time?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: But please help us out and we'll be back next
Speaker 1: time with even more phil phil filthy phil filth.
Speaker 2: Bye talking next time. School of Humans