ABSTRACT
Easy to pry open and pull out the body. Some of the richer folks were using metal coffins, and they were hard to break open. The fresher the body, the more money they could get. As soon as the shovel hit something solid, the men jumped into the hole and examined the coffin. The robbers hoisted the body into a bag and quickly left. Body snatching was an illegal business in the 1800s, but it was one of the ways medical schools obtained cadavers for their students to study. During the 1800s, people became so worried about having a loved one's dead body stolen that they came up with some crazy inventions to prevent body snatchings. Coffin collars were invented to prevent the grave robbers from pulling the body out by the head. Coffin torpedoes were fitted to the lid of the coffin and were filled with packed gunpowder.
