St. Charles, IL hosted the first medical school in Illinois starting in 1842. Franklin Medical College was founded by Dr. George Richards and lasted only 7 years. The college’s abrupt ending was due to riot that occured after a student was discovered to have dug up a local woman’s corpse from a nearby graveyard.
The student, John Rood, along with Dr. Richards’ son George, heard about the death of a local woman, Mrs. Kinyon. John and George dug up Mrs. Kenyon’s remains from a cemetery in nearby Sycamore. The two men tried to hide the body, but had been seen acting suspicious. When the Kinyon family discovered the body was missing two and two were put together and an angry mob showed up at the college. When questioned, Dr. Richards vehemently denied any knowledge of what had happened. Later once the mob left, Dr. Richards learned that the body was hidden in his barn. He hoped that having the body removed would help him settle the matter. The mob, however, had other ideas. They didn’t believe that Dr. Richards was innocent and returned to the school to find the body themselves. They instead found another dissected body in the barn. The incident led to the mob shooting at the door of Richards’ home, which killed John Rood and injured Dr. Richards. This incident became known as Richards’ Riot and is what caused the medical school to close. Mrs. Kinyon’s body was finally found and reburied in the same grave in Sycamore.
After the riot there was a realization that medical schools needed cadavers and new law was passed allowing for unclaimed bodies from charity hospitals to be sent to medical schools
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