Outrage over the Burke and Hare murders prodded Massachusetts legislators in 1831 to outlaw body snatching, but they didn’t want to deprive the medical community entirely of corpses, so they permitted doctors to take, with some restrictions, the unclaimed bodies of those who would otherwise have been buried “at the public expense.” Dead paupers, transients, African Americans (enslaved or free), and anyone else considered down and out had already been plundered on a regular
