Unclaimed Bodies
In the late 1800’s, there had been a significant effort to cut down in the amount of body snatchers in Europe, and it was far less common in the United States. There were enough unclaimed bodies left behind in morgues and hospitals that doctors could use, instead. If someone died, and no friends or family member showed up to claim them, they would be listed as a Jane or John Doe, and used as cadavers for medical students to practice with.
Obviously, the tragic part about this was that anyone who was lost, homeless, or an immigrant who did not have any family nearby to claim their body were used and dismembered down to their bones. It is extremely likely that many of these people never heard from their loved ones again, and they would never know that they were used for medical experiments. An unfair amount of people from low-income communities were being targeted for the skeleton trade. Since a lot of the industry was kept secret, and there was no way of telling what ethnicity a person was from just their bones. So there is no way of knowing if this was also racially targeted in some way, as well.
In Paris, they had a much better method of acquiring bodies and skeletons. The bodies of criminals were used by students instead of unidentified John and Jane Does, because if you’re going to dissect someone’s body, it might as well be a murderer! At least they were getting a dose of karma in the afterlife. Today, these practices would be totally unheard of for people living in the United States and Europe, and bodies are no longer dissected without getting permission from that person, or their family, first.