Washington Square

This guide to Washington Square in Philadelphia opens with a grave robber working by lantern light in this colonial potter's field, hired to supply a body to Dr. William Shippen the younger, who opened America's first anatomy lectures in Philadelphia in 1762. It follows the public backlash that followed, from newspaper denials to a mob that shattered his lecture hall windows and wrecked his house and carriage in the street outside. Grieving families kept finding graves standing open at dawn, and the anger over what Shippen was doing never fully cooled.