Code of Virginia (1849), ch. 196 § 13, Violation of sepulture

The statute, read directly, and not through anyone’s paraphrase.

”§ 13. If a free person, unlawfully, disinter or displace a dead human body, or any part of a dead human body, which shall have been deposited in any vault or other burial place, he shall be confined in jail not more than one year, and fined not exceeding five hundred dollars.”

🔴 The phrase “violation of the sepulcher” does not exist in Virginia law

Jodi Koste’s 2012 article renders the section as “violation of the sepulcher.” That is her wording, not the legislature’s. A word count of the entire 1849 Code:

• sepulture → 4
• sepulcher → 0
• sepulchre → 0

On page 740 the italic heading over § 13 reads “Violation of sepulture; cruelty to animals; profanity, &c.” The running head on that page reads “OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY AND DECENCY.” The table of sections and the index were not re-read on October 19, 2026.

A draft of REFUSE put quotation marks around Koste’s phrase and attributed it to the General Assembly. That is a fabricated quotation, and it was caught at Stage 0 on 2026-07-14 by an agent that went and counted the words in the Code. It is the same defect class as the Ambedkar quotation withdrawn from the Out-Caste Doctrine the same day. Never quote a secondary source’s rendering as though it were statutory text.

The condition that makes this statute devastating

Read the clause the essay nearly missed:

“which shall have been deposited in any vault or other burial place”

The law protects the buried. That is its plain and limiting condition. To disinter is to un-inter, and a body that was never interred cannot be disinterred.

Now set it beside the Family Representative Council, in their own final report:

“If true, at least some of the EMSW Ancestors may never have been deliberately buried.”

Take a person who was never put anywhere, by anyone, at all. By the plain words of § 13, that is not a disinterment. Dissection itself, Koste notes, “remained illegal in Virginia during the ante-bellum period.” Corrected 2026-10-02: this line took a person from the almshouse or the infirmary and said no crime had occurred; no source says those dead were never buried.

The protection was not only unevenly enforced. If the oral history the Council cites is right (“If true, at least some of the EMSW Ancestors may never have been deliberately buried”), then for at least some of the people in that well it was never available. Corrected 2026-10-02: this line said the surest way for the school to stay inside the statute was to obtain people who had never been given a grave; no source says the school chose its sources that way.

And “or any part of a dead human body” is a phrase that reads as though it were drafted for a well of commingled, disarticulated remains.

The enforcement gap, which is separate and also real

Koste, in the same paragraph in which she cites this section: public officials “generally ignored those engaged in grave robbing activities particularly when slaves or free blacks were the target.”

The penalty numbers verify exactly against the statute: “not more than one year” and “not exceeding five hundred dollars.”

Note on the date

The marginal citation on § 13 points to the session acts of 1847-48, p. 112. The 1848 date is sound. It is not, however, evidence of when the well came into use. See koste-2012-anatomical-training-richmond for why that coincidence must not be drawn.

Corrected 2026-10-19. This record said the rubric “in the table of sections, in the running head, and in the index” is “Violation of sepulture.” The page image of page 740 shows a longer italic heading over § 13, “Violation of sepulture; cruelty to animals; profanity, &c.,” and a running head that reads “OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY AND DECENCY.” The citation and that line now say what the page shows. REFUSE’s docket is corrected to match.