Washington Medical Body Snatching after Lincoln’s Assassination

American medical schools required bodies for anatomical instruction, but legal supply was limited. Resurrectionists therefore robbed graves, often targeting poor and marginalised communities whose families had less power to protect burial grounds.

Washington contained medical institutions, military hospitals and burial sites transformed by the Civil War. The assassination investigation added arrests, rumours and fear, making secrecy surrounding bodies and medical research especially charged in 1865.

An Acquaintance with Darkness combines the Surratt conspiracy with a fictional inquiry into grave robbing. The novel uses a young protagonist’s divided loyalties to examine whether scientific ambition can excuse violations of the dead and deception of the living.