John Scott Harrison - Body Snatching

Body Snatching

At that time it was common practice for graves to be robbed for recently deceased bodies for use in teaching dissection and anatomy at medical colleges. As a result, many precautions were taken to secure Harrison’s grave including: building a cemented brick vault, filling the grave with earth mixed with heavy stones and employing a watchman to check the grave each hour of every night for a week.

The day of Harrison’s funeral it was discovered that the body of young Augustus Devin, which had been buried the previous week in an adjoining grave, had been stolen. The next day, one of John Harrison’s sons and another friend of Devin’s, traveled to Cincinnati to look for his body. With search warrants in hand they went to the Ohio Medical College, where they discovered not Devin’s body but the naked body of John Scott Harrison hanging from a rope down a chute beneath a trap door. Devin's body was later found preserved in a vat of brine at the medical college of the University of Michigan.