graverobber

A graverobber is a person who exhumes corpses from graves, typically to sell bodies or body parts for medical education, anatomical study, or private collection. The term is closely linked to the practice of grave robbery, or body snatching, which aimed to supply dissection theatres with human remains when legal sources were insufficient. The practice has been documented in many countries, particularly in Europe and North America, during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In Britain and parts of Europe, the phenomenon drew the name "resurrection men" in everyday slang. Dissection was essential to medical training, but the supply of unclaimed bodies was limited by public sentiment and legal status of burial. The Anatomy Act of 1832 in Britain broadened legal access to cadavers for medical use, reducing the demand for illicit exhumation. Similar tensions arose in the United States and other regions before reforms or stricter laws.

Legal and social responses treated grave robbing as a serious crime and a threat to public sanitation and religious sensibilities. Penalties could include imprisonment, transportation, or fines, and institutions improved cemetery security, record-keeping, and oversight of anatomy programs. In many accounts, graverobbers operated by night and relied on weakly guarded graves or incomplete records.

Today, grave robbing is illegal in virtually all jurisdictions and is generally considered a crime against the deceased and against the social order. The term is predominantly historical, though it occasionally appears in discussions of medical history, ethics, and cultural representations in literature and film.