A Curious Invitation present London Month of the Dead
Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain's Bodysnatchers
RESURRECTION MEN
Digging Up The Untold Stories of Britain’s Bodysnatchers
An in-person talk at Kensal Green Cemetery with Suzie Lennox

Saturday 9th October 2021 at 3:30 pm

The murderous spree of Burke and Hare in 1828 usually dominates accounts of the macabre profession of bodysnatching, but the stories of Henry Gillies, William Patrick, Joseph Grainger and the Borough Gang are all just as gruesome. In this chilling history of the black market trade in second-hand bodies Suzie Lennox will tell the tales of Britain's lesser known Resurrection Men who robbed graves during the winter months of 1742 - 1832, selling cadavers to anatomists up and down the country, all in aid of medical advancement.

In early 19th Century Britain only the bodies of criminals executed for severe crimes were available to the anatomy schools for dissection by students, leading to an acute shortage of cadavers. Medical schools would pay high prices for fresh corpses, asking no questions about their origins. This created the criminal underworld of the “Sack em up Men” or bodysnatchers, who left behind disinterred and desecrated churchyards and spread fear and horror throughout the United Kingdom. Join Suzie Lennox to hear the grisly truth about a murky and often forgotten side of Britain’s history.

Tickets £12 including a 20% donation toward a host of restoration projects at Kensal Green Cemetery. Please click here to buy.

Suzie Lennox
Suzie Lennox is an historian, author and blogger who specialises in researching Medical History and Criminal History. She has been studying the gruesome world of bodysnatching since 2005. She is a member of the Crime Writers Association.



Image credit - Wellington and Peel in the roles of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare suffocating Mrs Docherty for sale to Dr. Knox; representing the extinguishing by Wellington and Peel of the Constitution of 1688 by Catholic Emancipation. Coloured etching by W. Heath, 1829. Public domain courtesy of the Wellcome Collection Library

The Venue - Brompton Cemetery