smothering at least 16 people in order to sell their bodies for dissection.

Somewhere I've come across a term for people who used to collect, rather than produce, dead bodies for this purpose, but I can't recall it. It's something like "revivers" or perhaps "resurrection men." While they were not looked upon with great esteem, they were at least above murderers in the social structure, and I guess somebody had to do it in the absence of a formal system for donating one's body to science.

Could someone provide the proper word here? Right ho, Jeeves.