Body snatching is the secret disinterment of corpses from graveyards. A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. Those who practised body snatching were often called "resurrectionists" or "resurrection-men." A related act is grave robbery, uncovering a tomb or crypt to steal artifacts or personal effects rather than corpses.
Read more about Body Snatching: Body Snatching in The United Kingdom, Body Snatching in The United States of America, Contemporary Body Snatching
Famous quotes containing the word body:
“Alas! While your ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with statues, with monuments, and with inscriptions to eternalize, if possible, your names, and give yourselves an existence, when this body is no more, why must we be condemned to live and die unknown?”
—Thomas Paine 1737–1809, U.S. writer and magazine editor. Pennsylvania Magazine, pp. 362-4 (1775)