Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.
I am TG Wolff and I’m here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.
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The rules for law and order create the boundaries for civil co-existence and, ideally, the backdrops for individuals, families, and companies to grow and thrive. Breaking these rules puts civil order at risk. And while murder is the Big Daddy of crimes, codified ordinances across municipal divisions, counties, states, and countries show the nearly endless ways there are to create mayhem. This season, we put our detective skills to the test. This is Season 8, Anything but Murder.
This is Episode 19, Body Snatching is the featured crime. This is Have You Seen This Body? by TG Wolff
About body snatching
Resurrection Men, aka Body Snatchers, practiced their illegal trade in the mid-to-late 1800s. This was the period when medical training was expanding and so was the need for cadavers for students to learn on. Body Snatchers stole bodies from fresh graves and so them to medical schools or instructors. The trade went by the wayside as states passed Anatomy Acts or Bone Bills that allowed medical schools to legally acquire unclaimed bodies and also allowed people to donate their bodies.
From congressional cemetery.org comes the story of Resurrection Man Dr. George Christian.
On the night of December 12th, 1873, police officers noticed a suspicious carriage sitting at Washington Circle, Washington DC. After midnight, an officer approached the woman sitting inside and she explained she was waiting for her husband who was conducting business. Later, they saw one man approach the buggy and place a spade inside. Then another man appeared and placed a muddy shovel inside before the three set off towards New Hampshire Avenue and Boundary Street. The officers pursued them, suspecting they must have stolen goods on board but instead found grave robbing tools. Officers investigated nearby Holmead Cemetery and found the body of Thomas Fletcher inside a large canvas bag near the fence. The night of Dr. Christian’s arrest, a diary was found inside the carriage along with the grave robbing tools, illustrating the extent of his resurrectionist business. Excerpts from this diary were published in the newspapers and later used at his trial.
Christian had arrangements with doctors at Washington Asylum and the Almshouses where patients often died penniless and sometimes without family for records of their dying. These were potential victims for him to later dig up at the city’s potter’s fields, where the impoverished were buried in unmarked graves. Notes in his diary describe various doctors going out resurrecting with him or sending janitors and hospital stewards out with him as assistants. One local doctor offered Christian and his partner $15 each per body.
In addition to supplying nearby medical schools with cadavers, Christian corresponded with doctors at schools in Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio. Their letters spoke of the best ways to pack bodies in whiskey barrels and prices per cadaver. One Michigan doctor wrote that he’d pay Christian $25 per body but then sell the bodies to the students for $40. ($25 in 1873 is worth $635.64 today.)
