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Resurrection and Riot
by Francesca Miller (c) All rights reserved

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

The Riot

T he citizens’ anger with doctors in general and medical students in particular came to a head on April 13, 1788. It was a chilly Sunday afternoon and the cloudy skies promised rain. Jonquils and bluestems bloomed about the city and the only sound on the grounds of the New York Hospital was childish laughter as a group of boys played in front of the hospital.  Though it was the Sabbath, a group of medical students busied themselves with dissection. It was late afternoon when John Hicks Jr. and his fellows were working in the third floor dissection room. As the boys played below, Hicks grabbed a dismembered limb, depending on the account, a leg or possibly an arm and dangled it out the window at the children. Some witnesses claimed that the limb had been placed out the window to dry but whatever the reason, seeing the body part whetted the boys’ curiosity. The building had been under repair and according to most accounts, workmen had left a ladder long enough to reach the dissecting room window. The children mounted the ladder to see what the students were up to. They were confronted with the macabre shenanigans of John Hicks Jr.

T he legend has been retold and embellished over the years; the most popular version claimed that one of the boys had recently lost his mother and the scene of black and white cadavers of both genders in various stages of dismemberment was especially horrific to him. The boy is said to have screamed out that his mother had died and Hicks lifted an arm from one of the tables and told the boy to “look at his mother’s arm” .  In another account, Hicks supposedly pointed a hand at the youngster peering through the window. “This is your mother's arm. I just dug it up!”

T he tykes scrambled down the ladder and the child who had just lost his mother ran off screaming for his father. The war of words between Humanio and the student of the physic had put everyone in the city on tenterhooks and the city was a powder keg ready to blow.  The tyke’s father enlisted his chums to help him exhume his wife’s coffin and when they pulled it from the ground, found it empty. The riot was on.

A s fascinating as that scenario is, William Heth’s eyewitness account of incident did not mention a child but told of a human limb being dangled from a window and attracting a crowd.  Perhaps the story of the children was a fabrication and the less dramatic account of Hicks waving a severed limb out a window was the actual event that triggered the riot; whatever his specific action, they sparked the violence. Citizens began to mass around the building.  At the sound of the approaching throng, Hicks, along with the other medical students and professors, made a hasty retreat.  By the time the mob broke into the building demanding that the doctors present themselves, the hospital was abandoned except for Wright Post and four of the senior medical students who also refused to leave Post stood in wait for the throng with young men all of whom only two or three years younger than himself. They were determined to save a valuable collection of anatomy specimens and wax renderings that had been collected over the years.  It was also possible that they wanted to prevent the crowd from discovering a far grislier sight in the anatomy room.

T he rioters were in a deadly temper when they stormed the lecture room.  Once they came upon the collection of anatomical and pathological specimens that Dr. Post and his students had risked their young lives to protect, they became even more frenzied.  Though no one laid a hand on him or his comrades, Dr. Post was powerless to stop the mob from carting away the medical treasures. There are accounts of the collection being burned in a great bonfire, but since it was raining, that is unlikely.

P erhaps the riot would have ended at this point; unfortunately something, possibly a stench wafting from another room, alerted the rioters.  More mischief had been in the making.  A contemporary observer described what the crowd discovered after they opened the door of the dissection room.

‘In the Anatomy room were found three fresh bodies, one boiling in a kettle, two others cut up with certain parts of the two sexes hanging up in a most brutal position” .   The Daily Advertiser later described it as “a shocking shamble of human flesh”.

Y ears later, Dr. James Thacher , a witness to the storming of the New York Hospital, detailed the grotesque spectacle in his memoirs.

“ The concourse assembled on this occasion was immense, and some of the mob having forced their way into the dissecting-room, several human bodies were found in various states of mutilation. Enraged at this discovery, they seized upon the fragments, as heads, legs and arms, and exposed them from the windows and doors to public view, with horrid imprecations”.

I t is a wonder that Post and his students did not become anatomical specimen themselves after the display of freshly resurrected bodies, severed heads and body parts. By the time the throng dragged the young doctors into the street, an estimated two thousand people had watched the fright show. They beat one of Post’s students, David Hosak, so severely that a friend pushed his way through the mob to pull him to safety. Mayor James Duane and the sheriff, followed by bailiffs, tried to bring the crowd to order. In an attempt to protect the doctors from being torn apart, he ordered the battered medical men escorted to the Fields, the area of the city where the symbols of law and order, the jailhouse, the almshouse, the gallows, the whipping post and the stocks were located.  Later that evening, a group splintered from the throng and buried the dissected subjects.

B ands of rioters left the Hospital grounds and moved across the city, spreading word of the monstrosities they had seen and promising “ a general Hegira of physicians ”.  By then the whole of New York was ensnared by the madness. Medical students who had escaped were hurried out of town while the physicians remaining in the city were forced to “slip out of windows, creep behind bean barrels, crawl up chimneys and hide beneath feather beds” .

A s more and more New Yorkers joined the crowd, the threat of an outright rebellion loomed large. The mob marched down Broadway carrying lanterns to light their way in search of the real culprit, “the odious Dr. Hicks”. Dr. Bayley was arrested in a bid to protect him from the wrath of the mob and joined Post and the students in jail. Some of the rowdies in the crowd began attacks on any man dressed in black, the traditional color of doctors. A splinter group even paid a visit to a home with the sign, “Sir John Temple” affixed to the door.  It is estimated that eighty percent of the populace were illiterate and though Sir John Temple was not a doctor, one of them misread the printing on the post. The mob ransacked the house without realizing that "Sir John" did not mean "surgeon”.  According to Mrs. Lamb, an eye witness, “(the mob) were just barely restrained from leveling it (the home) to the ground”. The rioters adjourned for the night, some going home, others to the local taverns to fuel their anger with rum and ale.

T he next morning, Monday, April 14th, 1788, the throng massed in front of New York Hospital once again, the  name “John Hicks Jr.” on their lips.  They had not found him in his parent’s home, but there were reports he had sought sanctuary in the digs of Dr. John Cochran that stood across from Trinity Church . Though Dr. Cochran had retired from medical practice, he was a man of great prominence in New York, a personal friend of George Washington and one of the bastions of New York society.  Perhaps because Cochran was held in high regard, young Hicks chose his residence as a hiding place.  When the esteemed gentleman answered the door, the leaders of the mob pushed past him and stormed his home. The rioters tore Cochran’s place apart searching for him from cellar to garret.  Some even opened the scuttle to see if he was hiding on the roof but found nothing.  Their search must have been cursory; if one of the rioters had climbed through the scuttle, they would have discovered the teen cowering behind the chimney of the next house. The temper of the mob was such that Hicks would probably have been torn apart and perhaps the riot might have ended with one sacrificial lamb. Instead, Hicks managed to escape once again and left New York along with the other medical students and professors. He eluded capture leaving the mob to focus their anger on the doctors who remained.  The throng commenced “to search the houses of suspected physicians and by the evening, had ransacked the homes of every doctor in New York.

O n Tuesday, Dr. Bayley effectively washed his hands of the mess by signing a sworn affidavit denying any personal involvement in the business of resurrection and ignorance of his students’ nighttime activities. Within a few days, his statement was followed by similar affidavits from Dr. McKnight, several fifth year students and most interestingly, from John Hicks Sr. father of the most hated man in New York. Most notable was the absence of a statement by Wright Post.

T he city’s newspapers published Bayley’s statement and stoked the flames of discontent even higher. By the afternoon, the mob had massed together and pressed on towards Columbia College. Upon their arrival, the most famous Columbia alumnus and trustee, Alexander Hamilton , stood on the steps of the college to greet them. Hamilton surely viewed the students’ actions with distaste but was determined to save New York and his alma mater from violence. Though his words are lost, we assume he chose them carefully but his attempt at peacemaking failed.  The rioters broke past him and swarmed through every room in the college in their search for cadavers and body parts. Luckily for both Columbia and Alexander Hamilton, students had removed all anatomical specimens the previous day and Columbia was saved from destruction.

M ayor Duane, Governor Clinton, Chancellor Robert Livingston and the city fathers joined Hamilton as he sloshed through the rain and tried to dissuade the common folk from doing further damage. The Brahmans of New York followed the throng when they abandoned the college and continued their search down Smith Street in the more elegant part of New York, the “court end of the city”.  It was a world of Georgian mansions and cobblestone streets, a universe away from the hovels that most of the rioters lived in. Perhaps New York was a city of “haves and have-nots” but that afternoon the have-nots held all the power in their grubby hands. The Governor and Mayor knew that with each step, New York could break out in class warfare. They continued their efforts at conciliation in the rain.

T he rioters marched to the McKnight and Bayley residences sand despite the presence of the nabobs of the city, invaded their homes. They searched for John Hicks Jr., for dissected bodies, for proof that the doctors were up to ghoulish activities but found nothing.  Disgruntled and angry, they disbursed for the evening with some returning to their homes while others took their frustration to the taverns and alehouses in the city.  News of the commotion was still spreading across New York and the ranks of the rioters soon swelled with waterfront thugs spoiling for a fight. Mayor Duane called them, “ loose strangers, who having nothing to lose, eagerly join the throng, are the foremost in mischief and lead on to every act of desperation without scruple or regret”.

B y Wednesday, anger toward the doctors and simmering hatred for the upper classes finally blew up and the mob wanted blood. The mayor had no choice but to order an armed brigade and artillery regiment but even that show of force didn’t stop the rioters from trekking towards the Fields and the imprisoned physicians. By the time the crowd reached their destination, it numbered 5,000, fully a sixth of the city.  The imprisoned doctors had great reason to fear for their lives when they heard the yells of the throng marching towards them. One group of rioters tore through the fence erected to protect New York from jailbreaks while others broke the wooden plants of the gallows into battering rams and attacked the jail’s brick walls. The jailhouse windows were unbarred and the doctors joined their jailers in fighting off rioters. The guards had been ordered not to use their muskets and no lives were lost but one of the rioters squeezed through a ground-floor window and was bayoneted by a guard. News that one of their own had been injured spread through the mob and so enflamed them that the destruction of the jail commenced with renewed vigor.

A force of eighteen militiamen marched towards the Fields with the mayor at the head.  The militia was composed of volunteers aged sixteen to fifty who drilled once a month, more for camaraderie than anything else. Like most of New York, the militiamen were in sympathy with the rioters and had been ordered not to fire upon them.  Baron von Steuben, the aging Prussian warrior who helped lead the Continental Army to victory, joined the Mayor and the militia in the march towards the jail. The city leaders assumed the sight of muskets slung about the militiamen’s shoulders would subdue the rioters and were correct…at least for a while. The presence of the militia brought about a temporary lull in the violence but though the militiamen put on a show of force, as soon as they marched out of sight, the mob commenced battering the jailhouse walls again.

T he doctors were in even greater danger than before. Another group of militiamen came to their rescue and the mob rushed them, smashed their muskets and chased them downtown. According to a letter written to John Sullivan, the Governor of New Hampshire, the sight of the militia made the crowd even angrier.

“(The militiamen) so enraged the mob that they determined to force the jail and cut off the young doctors’ hands. They accordingly made the attack, broke down the yard - all the lower windows of the place and made an entry on the lower floor”.

T hat evening it began to rain again. Clinton, Duane and von Steuben assembled an army of officers and gentlemen swordsmen and marched with them towards the jail in another bid to rescue the doctors. The city fathers did not want a confrontation between their muskets and an unarmed mob. General Matthew Clarkson, the dashing thirty-year-old war hero, heard about the brouhaha and decided to join the militiamen. He stopped at the home of the venerable John Jay, a Columbia alumnus from the pre-Revolution days and since he was unarmed, asked Jay for a sword. Jay gave him a sword, grabbed another for himself and the two went directly to the Fields to join the militia assembled at the jailhouse.

A n officer who made the trek wrote, “ We marched up to the jail and the mob waited for us until we were within ten paces of the door; our orders were not to fire. The mob w ere of the opinion that we dare not fire, or if we did, it would be over their heads. This sentiment added to their temerity and as soon as we entered the jail yard, they began to throw brick bats, stones and sticks”.

A s President of the Manumission Society , John Jay enjoyed a degree of respect second only to General Washington and the city fathers hoped his presence would have a calming effect on the mob.  It did not. Though most of the rioters admired Jay, the darkness and rain only fed their anger and complete pandemonium resulted.  As Jay stood in place, one of the rioters pitched a rock that struck him on the head and the venerable gentleman collapsed at General Clarkson’s feet. Soon another city official, Commodore Nicholson, fell to the ground after a rock struck him. The throng continued their advance and though they did not carry muskets, the rock pitchers appeared to have had perfect aim. Baron von Steuben was next one struck. He fell backward from the force and as the blood trickled down his face, screamed out, “Fire!”

T he militiamen in the jail yard began firing, first pointing their weapons above the heads of the rioters. As the mob advanced, the charge on the jailhouse became even more frenzied.  Muskets were difficult to aim with any accuracy but in the second volley, the militia pointed them toward the rioters. Several went down.  The militia split into two groups; some remaining near the jail while others advanced towards the crowd with their bayonets fixed.  Though they drove some of the rioters back, the militiamen were greatly outnumbered and found themselves surrounded. They shot their muskets one more time then began to reload in the darkness and pouring rain. That lull in the firing gave the mob a chance to press on.

A company of cavalrymen galloped up Broadway to the Fields and charged through the rioters who were marching towards the jailhouse. Fighting continued throughout the night and some rioters died.  The number killed outright varies with each account. Records of the period differ as to the number of casualties: some say three died on the spot, some say five, another eight and still others swear fifteen to twenty died immediately. The rioters engaged several militiamen, gentleman soldiers and volunteers in hand-to-hand combat and the toll was great on both sides.  It is probable that many of the wounded died later but no accurate count exists.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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