A person who illicitly retrieved corpses for dissection from rivers, scenes of disaster, or burial grounds.
Example sentencesExamples
- A Victorian author described him ‘hobnobbing with the resurrection men’.
- The republican martyr's glorification of suffering distinguishes him from the loyalist resurrection man of Derry's Bond Street wall mural.
- At this time in London grave robbing was a common occurrence because men dubbed ‘the resurrection men’ would sell the stolen bodies to teaching hospitals so that medical students could dissect and study them.
- Body snatchers (‘grave-robbers’ or ‘resurrection men’) generally obtained fresh corpses from new graves.
- Then he realised, I don't have the twenty guineas to give her a coffin strong enough to resist the resurrection men, nor the staff to guard her grave until she's corrupted enough to be beyond the surgeons' interest.