Lebanon Cemetery was chartered on January 24, 1849[1] by Jacob C. White[2] on the Passyunk Road near present-day Nineteenth Street and Snyder Avenue in South Philadelphia.

[5] In the early 1870s, Henry Jones, an affluent African-American man who worked as a caterer, purchased a lot for burial in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia.

[11] After the arrests, it was determined that the body snatching had been going on for nine years[12] and several hundred corpses had been sold to Jefferson Medical College.

[14] The renowned surgeon and Jefferson Medical College anatomy professor, William S. Forbes, was arrested for his role in the grave robbery but was acquitted.

[7] Forbes helped write the 1867 Pennsylvania Law named the "Anatomy Act" which called for hospitals, prisons and mental health wards to provide the bodies of those that had no family or funds for burial to medical schools for anatomical research.