X-Message-Number: 29724
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:09:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: un person <>
Subject: The Doctors' Mob Riot of 1788

--0-483567782-1187060980=:41012

Damn interesting!
   
   
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    A young boy peered into the dissection room at New York Hospital in 
    post-colonial Manhattan only to see medical student John Hicks, Jr. pick up 
    a corpse's arm and wave it at him. Hicks then shouted, "This is your 
    mother's hand. I just dug it up. Watch it or I'll smack you with it!" The 
    frightened boy ran into the April night believing every word the student had
    said because his mother had died a few days before.

  The father, upon hearing the story, gathered some friends and headed toward 
  the local cemetery and his wife's burial plot. They found the grave open and 
  empty. The hole hadn't even been refilled and the coffin had been pried apart.
  Word soon spread through lower Manhattan and hundreds were storming the 
  hospital. 

  It was the beginning of America's first riot   The Doctors' Mob Riot of 1788.
  
  The perpetrators of the grave robbing were a group known as "resurrectionists"
  and their purpose was to get cadavers for medical instruction. Medical 
  students and anatomy teachers of that time were frequently involved in grave 
  robbing for this purpose. Resurrectionists preferred to rob the graves of the 
  poor and homeless but had no problem with desecrating any unguarded plot if 
  demand was great enough. The problem was so great in New York that wealthy 
  families would pay a shotgun-wielding watchman to stand guard over a new 
  burial for two weeks, after which time the body would become useless for 
  dissection.

  When the mob reached the hospital they circled the large building and blocked 
  the exits. The torch carrying crowd cried to lynch the doctors inside and 
  might have except that all but one had escaped out the rear windows. Only Dr. 
  Wright Post and three students remained inside to protect anatomical 
  specimens. But they couldn't defy the rioters and everything from the rare 
  specimens to surgical instruments were destroyed. Dr. Wright and his three 
  students had been taken to the city jail by the sheriff in order to protect 
  them. 

  The mob's anger continued to build through the night. They were looking for 
  vengeance and doctors as they moved from street to street. The crowd searched 
  for John Hicks at the home of a prominent physician and would have found him 
  had they looked in the attic. 

  In the morning Governor George Clinton called out the militia and many doctors
  scurried to leave town. But the mob increased in size as the day progressed 
  and they eventually headed towards Columbia College. They attacked the college
  and destroyed yet more specimens and medical tools. Future Secretary of the 
  Treasury Alexander Hamilton tried valiantly to quiet them while future Chief 
  Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay was knocked unconscious by a thrown 
  rock. By evening the rioters had descended on the Manhattan jail and would not
  disperse. Baron Friedrich von Stueben, a hero of the American Revolution, was
  leading the militia and refused to use force   that was until he was hit in 
  the head by a brick. The order to shoot at the rioters was given.
   
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  ....go here for the rest of it:
  http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=376
   
   

       
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