Who supplied doctors with research specimens by stealing from local cemeteries

Resurrection men

Explanation:

Around the 19th century the government played a negative role in science, allowing "body snatching" as a common practice in medical schools.

The demand for cadavers for human dissection grew, leading to an epidemic of of grave thefts; and those in charge of body snatching were named "resurrectionists" or "Resurrection-Men"; stealing corps from local cemeteries to the anatomy schools for dissection lectures.

People called resurrection men