Hopefully, you haven’t had to give much thought to what features you want in a coffin. Most people devote more careful consideration to what goes into their morning coffee. After all, the usual expectations for a coffin are fairly modest: it should look respectable, remain closed, and perform the one job for which it was purchased—keep the person inside it inside it.

In 1878, Philip K. Clover of Columbus, Ohio, decided that was not enough. A truly well-designed coffin, he reasoned, should also shoot anyone who tried to take the occupant out.

Thusly inspired, Clover obtained a United States patent for an invention with the wonderfully alarming name “Improvement in Coffin-Torpedoes.”

Its purpose was not to help the dead rise again. Quite the opposite. According to Clover’s 1878 patent, the device was intended to prevent what he called the “unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies.”

Victorian inventors had apparently reached the point where resurrection itself was acceptable, provided the proper paperwork had been submitted.

Why Was Anyone Stealing Dead Bodies?

Before we criticize Clover for turning Grandpa’s coffin into a booby trap, it helps to understand the problem he was trying to solve.

Nineteenth-century medical schools had a body problem. Anatomy was becoming increasingly important to medical education, which meant professors needed cadavers for students to dissect. Unfortunately, the legally available supply of human remains did not come close to satisfying demand.

Economics did what economics usually does when there is strong demand, limited supply, and money available to anyone willing to ignore a few ethical complications. A secondary market developed.

The suppliers were known as “resurrectionists” or resurrection men. Their business model consisted largely of waiting until someone was freshly buried, returning after dark with shovels, removing the corpse, and selling it to a medical school or anatomist.

The freshly deceased were particularly valuable because decomposition placed a fairly strict expiration date on the merchandise. Refrigeration had not yet made it possible for anatomy departments to stockpile cadavers in the manner of a particularly unsettling Costco.

This practice was not particularly rare, which is a disturbing sentence to read but a fact that keeps the writing staff of Commonplace Fun Facts endlessly occupied. Type “grave robber” in the search bar and you’ll find more than enough information to make you the worst dinner guest in your ZIP code.

The problem was hardly unique to the United States. In Scotland, the shortage of legal cadavers contributed to the notorious Burke and Hare murders, where entrepreneurs William Burke and William Hare eventually discovered that digging up corpses involved considerably more work than simply creating fresh ones themselves.

American medical schools were dealing with the same basic supply problem. Some physicians and students even became personally involved in acquiring bodies. Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, one of the more colorful figures in nineteenth-century American medicine, became associated with stories of body-snatching expeditions so bizarre that the grave robbing is not even the strangest part of his biography.

And grave robbers were not especially impressed by fame, either. In 1876, a gang attempted to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois—a bizarre episode that helped set off a decades-long series of relocations before Lincoln was finally placed beneath several feet of concrete. You can read that story in “Why Was Abraham Lincoln Reinterred 17 Times? The President Who Wouldn’t Stay Put”.

Then the Grave Robbers Stole a President’s Son

If Americans needed a particularly dramatic reminder that respectable burial offered no guarantee of remaining buried, they got one in 1878.

John Scott Harrison died in Ohio on May 25 of that year. He occupied a unique place in American history: he was the son of President William Henry Harrison and the father of future President Benjamin Harrison.

His family was well aware of the danger posed by body snatchers. They took extraordinary precautions with his burial, including heavy stones, cement, and a hired watchman.

It did not work.

Harrison’s body disappeared and was subsequently discovered at the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati. The whole macabre story—including the remarkable circumstances under which he was found—is covered in “The Body-Snatching Horror of the Only Person to Be Both Son and Father of a President.”

The theft became a national scandal. If the family of a former congressman who was both the son and father of presidents could not keep his body securely underground, ordinary families could be forgiven for wondering whether the traditional “six feet of dirt and good intentions” approach needed some upgrading.

Philip Clover’s patent application was filed on June 29, 1878, roughly a month after the Harrison scandal. That timing makes the two stories irresistible to connect, although there is no need to claim that Harrison’s theft directly inspired Clover. The body-snatching problem was already well known, and Clover’s patent described his device as an improvement in coffin torpedoes, suggesting the general concept was already circulating.

Meet Philip K. Clover’s Coffin Torpedo

On October 8, 1878, the U.S. Patent Office granted Clover Patent No. 208,672.

The patent language is magnificent.

Clover explained that his invention was intended to prevent the “unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies” by arranging a concealed defensive device so that an attempt to remove the corpse would discharge it and potentially cause “injury or death” to the person disturbing the grave.

There is something wonderfully Victorian about describing a device designed to blast grave robbers in the face with the same tone one might use for an improved butter churn.

The Hagley Museum and Library, which preserves Clover’s patent model, explains that the device was concealed in the coffin near the deceased’s head and connected to the body. Disturbing the corpse would activate the mechanism and discharge a load of projectiles toward the person leaning over the coffin.

In other words, stealing the body required the resurrectionist to place his face in almost exactly the location the inventor had chosen as the destination for the unpleasant surprise.

Clover had apparently given some thought to customer experience. Just not the grave robber’s.

Why Was It Called a “Torpedo”?

The phrase “coffin torpedo” creates a misleading mental image if your definition of torpedo involves submarines, propellers, and something racing through the North Atlantic toward an unsuspecting destroyer.

In the nineteenth century, however, torpedo was also commonly used for stationary explosive devices and mines. When Admiral David Farragut supposedly shouted, “Damn the torpedoes,” during the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, he was not complaining about enemy submarines. He was referring to what we would now call naval mines.

So a “coffin torpedo” was not intended to launch the deceased toward a target, which would have opened an entirely different line of patent applications. It was essentially a concealed defensive device intended to make tampering with the coffin a hazardous career choice.

The Cemetery Arms Race

Clover was not alone in believing that the proper response to grave robbery was escalation. Nineteenth-century inventors proposed an impressive assortment of devices intended to make stealing a corpse difficult, inconvenient, or—ideally—something the aspiring body snatcher would reconsider while he still had all his original limbs.

Among the more direct approaches were so-called cemetery guns, which could be positioned near graves and connected to trip wires. A person creeping through the cemetery at night might thus discover that the groundskeeper had delegated nighttime security to a loaded firearm with a very broad interpretation of probable cause.

Another Ohio inventor, former probate judge Thomas N. Howell, patented his own “grave torpedo” on July 8, 1879. Howell’s device was placed in the earth above the coffin and connected to wires arranged around it so that anyone digging toward the casket risked detonating the explosive. An advertisement for Howell’s product reassured the deceased:

“Sleep well sweet angel, let no fears of ghouls disturb thy rest, for above thy shrouded form lies a torpedo, ready to make minced meat of anyone who attempts to convey you to the pickling vat…”

There are advertisements that make you want to buy a product. There are advertisements that make you want to avoid being anywhere within fifty feet of the product. We confess, somewhat guiltily, that Howell’s advertisement makes us want to do both.

For those who regarded turning the cemetery into an artillery range as perhaps a touch excessive, there were less explosive alternatives. An 1879 article from The Bennington Banner described an Iowa proposal to surround a coffin with hydraulic cement. Once hardened, the resulting mass would be so formidable that breaking through it would require blasting powder—which technically avoided putting the explosive device in the grave itself, although the distinction feels increasingly academic.

A Cincinnati inventor took a more mechanical approach with what was called a coffin safe: a large cage of wrought-iron bars placed around the coffin. When the grave was filled, dirt packed through and around the bars, effectively anchoring the entire contraption underground. According to the contemporary description, removing it would require a derrick—an unfortunate complication for grave robbers who had presumably arrived with shovels rather than heavy construction equipment.

Another proposal was an iron “portable vault” intended to hold an iron coffin, with internal catches arranged so that the receptacle could not be opened. Even if thieves somehow managed to haul the entire vault away, forcing it open would be a formidable task. The philosophy was straightforward: if you could not make stealing the body impossible, you could at least turn it into such an exhausting engineering project that the medical students involved might decide to change majors.

The same inventive enthusiasm produced a bewildering assortment of coffin materials. Patents and newspaper reports described burial containers made from glass, paper pulp, artificial marble, asphalt-coated wire, pottery clay, hard rubber, cement, and even a mixture containing plaster of Paris, cork dust, animal hair, dextrin, pigment, and water. Some designs emphasized preservation; others were intended to hasten decomposition or facilitate cremation. Evidently, the nineteenth-century funeral industry reached the “there’s probably a patent for that” stage considerably earlier than anyone might reasonably have expected.

And grave robbing was only half the problem occupying inventive minds. Another persistent fear was premature burial: what if the person inside the coffin was not actually dead?

So-called “life signals” connected the occupant to bells, flags, electrical alarms, or other devices above ground. Some designs supplied air through tubes and fans; another used a lamp and reflector arranged so that someone above ground could look down and see the face of the deceased. These inventions solved precisely the opposite problem from the coffin torpedo. Instead of keeping outsiders from getting in, they were intended to make absolutely certain the occupant could get out.

Taken together, the inventions reveal the two great anxieties of nineteenth-century burial: that someone might dig you up when you were dead, or that no one would dig you up when you weren’t. The patent office, with admirable neutrality, entertained proposed solutions to both.

Did Coffin Torpedoes Actually Kill Grave Robbers?

This is where the story requires a little caution, because a famous tale about a coffin torpedo has been repeated so often that repetition has gradually acquired the appearance of proof.

In January 1881, newspapers carried a sensational report from Ohio. According to the story, three body snatchers attempted to rob a grave near Gann, now known as Brinkhaven, in Knox County. Their digging encountered a buried torpedo, which exploded. One alleged resurrectionist, memorably identified as “Dipper,” was killed; another was badly injured; and a third supposedly escaped with his wounded companion in a sleigh.

The story is perfect.

Possibly too perfect.

The Hagley Museum recounts the incident as an example of a grave torpedo actually doing its job, and the 1881 newspaper report unquestionably existed. More recent research, however, has raised serious doubts about whether the incident happened at all.

In 2025, historian Mark Jordan examined the story for Knox Pages. He found that contemporary local papers described the account as a rumor, offered inconsistent details about where and when it supposedly happened, and provided no later reporting one would expect after a man was blown up in a local cemetery. Jordan also found no obvious candidate named Dipper who died in the area at the relevant time.

None of this proves that the explosion did not happen. It does mean that “a coffin torpedo definitely killed a grave robber named Dipper” belongs in the category of historical claims that should be accompanied by a raised eyebrow and a footnote.

The uncertainty almost improves the story. The threat of buried explosives may have been more useful than the explosives themselves. Grave robbers did not need to encounter a coffin torpedo personally if newspapers had already persuaded them that any fresh grave might contain one.

Deterrence works best when the person being deterred is uncertain exactly how much of the warning is bluff.

The Coffin Torpedo Had One Fairly Obvious Design Problem

There was, of course, a difficulty with protecting a dead body by putting an explosive or firearm immediately beside it.

The purpose of the device was to prevent desecration of the corpse.

Explosions are not famously respectful of nearby objects.

Contemporary observers noticed the problem. A device violent enough to seriously injure a grave robber might also do something less than dignified to the person whose remains everyone was supposedly trying to protect.

This forced grieving families into an unusual cost-benefit analysis: Would you rather have Uncle Henry dissected by medical students or accidentally distributed into a wider geographic residence by the security system?

There was also the longer-term problem. A fresh corpse remained valuable to resurrectionists only for a relatively short period, but a buried mechanical trap did not necessarily receive notice that its services were no longer required. Years later, a legitimate exhumation, cemetery worker, or unfortunate person digging nearby might encounter a security arrangement installed by people who were themselves long dead.

Some warranties really should expire.

Were Coffin Torpedoes Common?

Probably not.

The patent records, surviving models, advertisements, and newspaper discussions prove that coffin torpedoes and grave torpedoes were real inventions. What they do not establish is that large numbers of ordinary families routinely buried explosive devices with their loved ones.

Hagley notes that historical and archaeological evidence suggests relatively few coffin torpedoes were actually sold. Like countless nineteenth-century patents, they may have been more successful as ideas than as products.

That distinction matters. The United States Patent Office does not require an invention to become popular, profitable, sensible, or even particularly wise. Issuance of a patent means the Office concluded that the claimed invention met the legal requirements for patentability; it does not prove that anyone wanted to buy one.

America’s patent records are therefore not merely a catalog of technological progress. They are also a permanent archive of things someone, somewhere, looked at and thought, “You know what would improve this? Gunpowder.”

The Grave Robbers Eventually Lost Their Market

In the long run, legislation proved more effective than turning cemeteries into minefields.

Public horror over incidents such as the theft of John Scott Harrison helped drive reforms to anatomy laws. States expanded the categories of bodies that could legally be made available to medical schools, particularly unclaimed remains of people who died in public institutions. That increased the legitimate supply of cadavers and reduced the financial incentive for resurrectionists.

Technology also helped. Improved preservation and refrigeration allowed medical schools to keep bodies longer rather than maintaining a constant demand for someone recently deceased.

The market for stolen corpses declined, and with it went much of the perceived need for grave guns, coffin torpedoes, armed cemetery guards, and other measures that made nineteenth-century burial grounds considerably more exciting than modern cemeteries generally aspire to be.

A Patent for the Unauthorized Resurrection Problem

Philip K. Clover’s coffin torpedo occupies a special place in the long history of humans responding to real problems with solutions that introduce several exciting new problems.

The underlying fear was entirely legitimate. Grave robbers really did steal freshly buried bodies. Medical schools really did purchase illicit cadavers. Families really did discover that someone they had buried with considerable ceremony had subsequently developed an involuntary commitment to higher education.

Clover responded to that problem as an inventor should: he studied the threat, devised a mechanism, filed an application with the Patent Office, and received the protection of federal law.

The fact that his proposed solution involved leaving a loaded surprise next to a corpse merely demonstrates that innovation sometimes proceeds more quickly than risk management.

Today, Clover’s patent model survives in a museum rather than underground waiting for an exceptionally unlucky archaeologist. His patent remains available for anyone to read, preserving forever his stated desire to prevent the “unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies.”

It is hard to improve on that phrase.

Apparently the dead could rise in nineteenth-century Ohio.

They just needed authorization first.

---