https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1788_doctors%27_riot 1788 doctors' riot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Doctors' riot An Interrupted Dissection.jpg An Interrupted Dissection Date April 1788 Location New York City, New York Caused by Theft of corpses by doctors Casualties Death(s) 6-20 The doctors' riot was an incident that occurred in April 1788 in New York City, where the illegal procurement of corpses from the graves of the recently deceased caused a mass expression of discontent from poorer New Yorkers that was directed primarily at physicians and medical students. [ ] Contents * 1 Background * 2 Riot * 3 Effects * 4 See also * 5 References * 6 Sources * 7 External links Background[edit] By the end of the American Revolution, roughly one fifth of New York City's population was black, most of whom were slaves. Their low social standing allowed slaves' bodies to be buried only outside the city limits. Most often, they were buried in a few plots north of Chambers Street, across the street from the Pauper's Cemetery, often with several bodies to a grave, in a site now marked by the African Burial Ground National Monument, then known as the "Negroes Burying Ground". Both cemeteries were close to Columbia College, which housed the city's only school of medicine. Taboos associated with the violation of corpses made it difficult to procure cadavers for dissection and study, and many students and doctors would exhume bodies from the nearby graveyards because of the socially-marginalized status of their occupants. "Resurrection," as body-snatching or grave-robbing was called, was the cheapest, surest way to obtain the remains of the newly deceased, especially in the winter, when bodies decayed more slowly.^[1] Riot[edit] [300px-HEADLEY] New York Hospital, scene of the riot. Because there was then no known method to preserve an entire corpse, thefts were performed hastily, often in winter to slow the rate of decomposition. In the winter of 1788, the number of corpses being exhumed by students increased substantially. The activities of medical students and physicians, who were known colloquially as "Resurrectionists" in the black cemetery, were noticed by a group of freedmen who, on February the 3rd, petitioned the Common Council to take action against it. The petition was largely ignored, and no effort was made to stop the unlicensed exhumations. In April 1788, a group of children were playing outside the New York Hospital, next to a room where a student of the physician Richard Bayley, who was known to exhume corpses from the two cemeteries, was dissecting an arm. Bayley, born and bred in Connecticut, had received his medical education in England, where body-snatching was more common. There were whispers about him "cutting up his patients and performing cruel experiments upon the sick." The student, John Hicks, waved the arm out at the children, telling a boy whose mother had recently died that it belonged to her. The boy ran home and told his father of that. He, after exhuming his wife's coffin and finding it empty, gathered a group of concerned citizens who marched to the hospital and began to mass around the building. The mob eventually broke into the hospital and, after becoming incensed upon finding several bodies in various stages of mutilation, pulled Richard Bayley's assistant Wright Post and a number of his students into the street, where the mayor of New York City, James Duane intervened and ordered them escorted to the jailhouse for protection. A crowd of 2,000 people had gathered, and news spread of the horrors seen in the hospital, leading to widespread rioting, with the few physicians remaining in New York City being forced into hiding. A large group of rioters descended upon Broadway, searching for John Hicks, who was felt by the crowd to be the main source of blame. As they assembled in front of the courthouse and threw rocks, militia and cavalry were called in to repel them. The riot lasted a few days, ceasing when Governor Clinton sent the militia to patrol the streets until a calm environment was ensured. At least three rioters and three militiamen died in the confrontation; some estimate up to 20 dead.^[2] The protesters also destroyed all the available human specimens. Effects[edit] Public opinion of physicians in New York stood very low for many years, and while some students were brought to trial, Hicks was not among them. Post-mortem dissection was considered an indignity to the dead, and the city fathers even forbade using bodies abandoned in the rougher parts of the city. A year later, in January 1789, a statute was finally put into law in order to codify the proper treatment of corpses, with harsh punishments imposed for those who violated it. Anyone who broke the law would stand on the pillory or be publicly whipped, fined, or imprisoned. ^[3] The statute also permitted the bodies of executed criminals to be used in dissection "in order that science [might not] be injured by preventing the dissection of proper subjects." "Resurrection men," professionals who used stealth and discretion, were recruited to replace the students and went on to control the supply of cadavers for generations. Throughout the 1700s, British law considered dissection as a worse punishment than death. To discourage dueling, the Massachusetts General Court also imposed dissection as a threat by ruling that anyone who died as a result of a duel would be sentenced to post-mortem dissection and dismemberment. Dissection was seen as perhaps one of the worst things that could happen to a person other than death. See also[edit] * List of incidents of civil unrest in New York City * List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States * Burke and Hare murders References[edit] 1. ^ Caroline de Costa; Francesca Miller (2011). "American resurrection and the 1788 New York doctors' riot". The Lancet. 377 (9762): 292-293. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60083-4. 2. ^ Lovejoy, Bess (June 17, 2014). "The Gory New York City Riot that Shaped American Medicine". Smithsonian. 3. ^ De Costa, Caroline (January 22, 2011). "American resurrection and the 1788 New York doctors' riot". The Lancet. Sources[edit] * Caroline de Costa; Francesca Miller (2011). "American resurrection and the 1788 New York doctors' riot". The Lancet. 377 (9762): 292-293. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60083-4. * Nelson, Scott (Spring 2015). "Snatching Bodies" (PDF). West Point Undergraduate Historical Review. 5 (2): 7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-06-28. External links[edit] * "The Doctor's Riot of 1788" Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, Historical article about the Riot. * History Box, The Doctor's Riot 1788, Description of the accounts of the riot * What Caused the Riot in Eighteenth-Century Having to Do With the Robbing of Graves and the Use of Cadavers in Medical Schools?, Video on the causes of the riot * v * t * e Riots and civil unrest in the history of the United States (1607-1865) * 1689 Boston revolt * Boston Bread riot (1710-1713) * Knowles Riot (1747) Massachusetts * Liberty affair (1768) * Boston Massacre (1770) * Shays' Rebellion (1786-1787) * Leisler's Rebellion (1689-1691) * New York Slave Revolt of 1712 New York * New York Conspiracy of 1741 * Battle of Golden Hill (1770) * 1788 doctors' riot * Culpeper's Rebellion (1677) North * Cary's Rebellion (1711) Colonial era/ Carolina * War of the Regulation (1765-1771) 1776-1789 * Battle of Alamance (1771) * Philadelphia Election riot (1742) Pennsylvania * Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783 * The Gloucester County Conspiracy (1663) Virginia * Bacon's Rebellion (1677) * Chesapeake rebellion (1730) * Protestant Revolution (Maryland) (1689) Others * Stono Rebellion (1739) * Gaspee Affair (1772) * Pine Tree Riot (1772) * Honey War (1839) Iowa * Bellevue War (1840) * Ursuline Convent riots (1834) Massachusetts * Abolition Riot of 1836 * Broad Street Riot (1837) * Eggnog Riot (1826) * Anti-abolitionist riots (1834) New York * Flour riot of 1837 * Anti-Rent War (1839-1845) * Astor Place Riot (1849) * 1792 Cincinnati riot * Cincinnati riots of 1829 Ohio * Cincinnati riots of 1836 * Cincinnati riots of 1841 * Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794) 1789-1849 * Fries's Rebellion (1799-1800) * Destruction of Pennsylvania Hall (1838) Pennsylvania * Buckshot War (1838) * Lombard Street riot (1842) * Muncy Abolition riot of 1842 * Philadelphia nativist riots (1844) * 1824 Hard Scrabble race riot Rhode Island * 1831 Snow Town race riot * Dorr Rebellion (1841-1842) * 1811 German Coast Uprising * Nat Turner's slave rebellion (1831) * Blackburn Riots (1833) Others * Baltimore bank riot (1835) * Snow Riot (1835) * Regulator-Moderator War (1839-1844) * Tutt-Everett War (1844-1850) * Squatters' riot (1850) California * San Francisco Vigilance Movement (1851-1856) * Lager Beer Riot (1855) Illinois * Charleston riot (1864) * Bleeding Kansas (1854-1861) * Wakarusa War (1855) * Sacking of Lawrence (1856) * Pottawatomie massacre (1856) Kansas * Battle of Black Jack (1856) * Battle of Fort Titus (1856) * Battle of Osawatomie (1856) * Marais des Cygnes massacre (1856) * Bath anti-Catholic riot of 1854 Maine * Portland Rum Riot (1855) * Know-Nothing Riot of 1856 Maryland * Baltimore riot of 1861 1849-1865 * 1849 Detroit riot Michigan * Detroit brothel riots (1855-1859) * Detroit race riot of 1863 * New York City Police riot (1857) * Dead Rabbits riot (1857) New York * Buffalo riot of 1862 * New York City draft riots (1863) * Cincinnati riot of 1853 Ohio * Cincinnati riots of 1855 * Battle of Fort Fizzle (1863) * Erie Gauge War (1853-1854) * Bloody Monday (1855) * Washington D.C. Know-Nothing Riot (1857) Others * New Orleans Know-Nothing Riot (1858) * John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859) * Morrisite War (1862) * Southern bread riots (1863) Related * List of incidents of civil unrest in Colonial articles North America * Mass racial violence in the United States * Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= 1788_doctors%27_riot&oldid=1023841483" Categories: * Body snatching * Riots and civil disorder in New York City * 1788 in New York (state) * 1788 riots * 18th century in New York City Hidden categories: * Webarchive template wayback links Navigation menu Personal tools * Not logged in * Talk * Contributions * Create account * Log in Namespaces * Article * Talk [ ] Variants Views * Read * Edit * View history [ ] More Search [ ] [Search] [Go] Navigation * Main page * Contents * Current events * Random article * About Wikipedia * Contact us * Donate Contribute * Help * Learn to edit * Community portal * Recent changes * Upload file Tools * What links here * Related changes * Upload file * Special pages * Permanent link * Page information * Cite this page * Wikidata item Print/export * Download as PDF * Printable version Languages * Italiano Edit links * This page was last edited on 18 May 2021, at 17:11 (UTC). * Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. 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