Koste, Anatomical and Surgical Training in Nineteenth-Century Richmond (2012)

The document that reverses the argument of REFUSE, and improves it.

Refuse is not a modern word applied to a historical crime. It is the institution’s own word, in the faculty’s earlier record of the demonstrator’s duties, contemporaneously. Koste reproduces it. Corrected 2026-10-02: this line said “in its own governing regulations”; the 1856 regulation Koste quotes says “offal,” not refuse.

The 1856 regulations. The demonstrator “shall see that the offal is not allowed to collect in the dissecting or dead room and shall deposit it in the sink provided for that purpose.” A legal modal, twice. The “it” is human beings.

The faculty minutes, earlier. The rooms were to be kept “as neat and as free from offensive matters as possible, and in the removal of the refuse matter to provide that it be so done as never to give offense to the citizens.” Johnson recommended the faculty find an “appropriate place to deposit the refuse matter from the dissecting rooms.” Koste’s own gloss: “At some point between 1848 and 1856 the faculty identified the depository – a sink or well — to use for human remains.”

The faculty in print. “materials for dissection can be obtained in abundance” (Koste’s note 4 cites the 1853 Address to the Public and the 1859 catalogue). And (note 6, which cites Blanton and the 1844 catalogue): “from the cheapness of material.” (Corrected 2026-10-02: the heading said “The catalogue, advertising to students.”)

The sources were plural. The school “strategically placed two medical students at the almshouse in order to collect anatomical materials.” The penitentiary convict cemetery was “another potential source for bodies.” And the school had its own infirmary, about which Koste reports rumors and the dean’s 1860 denial; the number of deaths there “remains unknown.” The Family Representative Council, a body of symbolic descendants, declines to state how any individual arrived. Corrected 2026-10-02: this line listed the infirmary among the supply lines and called the Council “the descendants.”

The law, and its uneven enforcement. (Heading corrected 2026-10-02; it said “deliberate slackness,” which no source says. Koste also records the conviction of Samuel Gennet for a body snatching on 1 January 1852.) “Dissection remained illegal in Virginia during the ante-bellum period, but public officials generally ignored those engaged in grave robbing activities particularly when slaves or free blacks were the target. They did, however, recognize the common practice and, in 1848, the Virginia General Assembly strengthened the law for ‘violation of the sepulcher’ by adding a jail sentence of one year and a fine of no more than $500.”

🔴 DO NOT QUOTE “violation of the sepulcher” AS STATUTORY LANGUAGE. That phrasing is Koste’s, and it is wrong. A word count of the entire Code of Virginia (1849) returns zero hits for sepulcher and zero for sepulchre. The italic heading over the section reads “Violation of sepulture; cruelty to animals; profanity, &c.” A draft of REFUSE quoted Koste’s phrase and attributed it to the General Assembly, which is a fabricated quotation, caught at Stage 0. Go to the statute. It is filed as code-of-virginia-1849-violation-of-sepulture, and it is far more useful than Koste’s paraphrase, because it protects only a body “which shall have been deposited in any vault or other burial place.”

🔴 DO NOT BUILD A COINCIDENCE OUT OF 1848. An earlier version of this record ended: “The statute was strengthened in 1848. The well was in use from as early as 1848.” That reads as a rhyme, and it is not one. Koste says in terms: “The faculty minutes do not reveal when such a place may have been selected or where it was located,” and concludes only that the 1994 well “may have been” the one used “in the period between 1848 and 1860.” 1848 is the floor of an explicitly unknown window, not a start date, and it is the floor because of a faculty minute of 18 September 1848, a different document from the statute. Two 1848s that share nothing but a digit. The essay’s real claim, that the law was awake and officials generally ignored grave robbing (corrected 2026-10-02; it said “declined to look”), is fully documented without the flourish.

The school kept books. Koste, from the Dean’s Account Book: a partial payment to Dr. Theodorick P. Mayo to honor a debt “owed by him to the students at the Almshouse for anatomical materials.” What Koste found records a payment. It does not name the people in the well. (Corrected 2026-10-02: this line said “They recorded the price.”)

Naming correction this record enforces: the school became the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. Before that it was the Medical Department of Hampden-Sydney College. For the well’s first six years, MCV did not exist.

Fetch note: VCU Scholars Compass returns HTTP 202 and zero bytes to a bare curl. It yields to a cookie jar primed on the landing page plus a Referer and Sec-Fetch headers. Primary saved to reference/docket/sources/east-marshall-street-well/.

Corrected 2026-10-19. This record gave the Code’s heading over § 13 as “Violation of sepulture.” Page 740 of the Code prints the italic heading in full as “Violation of sepulture; cruelty to animals; profanity, &c.,” and the line now quotes it in full, as REFUSE’s docket and the Code’s own record do.