The Resurrection Man—to use a byname of the period— was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection.
To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys.
Robert Louis Stevenson The Body Snatcher (1884)
What on earth, does a retired book keeper from Liverpool have to do with one of the largest occurrences of body snatching in the 19th century? In the years before the infamy of Burke and Hare, before the Bethnal Green Gang (also known as the London Burkers), there was the Hope Street Horror. We are visiting Liverpool in the north of England to discover more.
In the 19th century Liverpool was a thriving and busy port city sending and receiving people and goods from all over the world. Therefore, in 1826 it was not unusual for a cart to be travelling through the docks delivering or collecting various forms of cargo, and so it was that a carter named George Leech travelled through George’s Dock Passage in search of a smack called the ‘Latona’ so that he could deliver three large oak barrels. The smack ‘Latona’ traded between Liverpool and Leith, near Edinburgh in Scotland, and so when George Leech found the vessel he unloaded his cargo for stowing aboard and carried on his way.
The crew of the ‘Latona’ hastily load the barrels and leave for the night, in order no doubt, to spend a convivial evening in one of the many hostelries around the docks. Who can blame them, time enough in the morning to properly stow the barrels before they sail for Leith.
However, the next morning the crew are assailed by a hideous stench coming from the barrels and so overcome are they that they call for the ship’s master to take a look. Captain Walker bravely sticks his hand in the barrel to see what could be causing such an aroma. I expect he immediately regrets that decision when he does not find the Bitter Salts he had expected but rather the squishy shape of a human body.
The dock police were sent for and the barrels were immediately taken to the City Dead House (or morgue) in Chapel Street beneath the Church of Our Lady and St. Nicholas, to be examined further. They were found to contain 11 human bodies packed in salt and probably destined for the teaching hospitals of Edinburgh.
The police commence investigating immediately and the task is undertaken by an officer named Robert Boughey who wasted no time in tracking down the carter, George Leech, for questioning. He stated that he had been approached the previous evening by a man with a strong Scottish accent who tasked him with delivering the three barrels. He had agreed and was sent to Hope Street where he was met by two men who brought the barrels up from a cellar and helped him to load his cart. This was all he knew.
Robert Boughey went to the house in Hope Street which was a small private school run by Reverend James Macgowan. Reverend Macgowan stated that he had rented the cellar to a John Anderson from Greenock who had told him he was a cooper and that he was in the trade of exporting fish oil. Robert Boughey asked for the key to the cellar but when Reverend Macgowan was unable to produce it he had the door broken down.
In the cellar, scattered about in various casks and sacks, were twenty two further corpses.
Following the examination of the bodies by the police surgeon, Thomas William Davies, it was concluded that the deaths had been of natural causes and that the bodies had likely been disinterred from the local parish cemetery which was nearby. The evidence of a small syringe which anatomists used to inject hot wax into the veins and arteries of cadavers, and some other evidence found in the cellar, led to the conclusion that they had stumbled upon a warehouse for the body snatchers.
As it was October and the season of the year that anatomy lectures were starting in Scottish medical schools, it seemed obvious that body snatchers were at work to provide the subjects required by the medical schools.
A widespread search commenced to apprehend the body snatching gang. Despite this, the leader Henderson, was never apprehended to be brought to justice. However, other members of the gang were. One, James Anderson aged 25 stood trial for, “unlawfully, wilfully, and indecently disinterred, taken and carried away divers dead bodies.” He was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months in gaol and to pay a fine of £50. Two further members of the gang were also apprehended and stood trial for, “having unlawfully opened graves and carried away dead bodies.” They were found guilty and were sentenced to 12 months in gaol and to pay £21 to the King.
The Hope Street case was the largest single case of body snatching and the only organised, wholesale bodysnatching gang sending bodies to Scotland to have operated in Liverpool.
But what of the book keeper? Constable Robert Boughey was himself an interesting character. He had been born in 1797 in Market Drayton in Shropshire. At some point he moved to Liverpool where he married Ann Jones in 1815. His occupation on the marriage register is listed as servant. At the baptism of his daughter in 1819 his occupation is listed as warehouseman. At some point in the 1820s he joins the Liverpool Police force and is listed on a list of Police Officers for the Borough of Liverpool from 1825 as a police constable in St Thomas, East.
It is in the following year that he is the investigating officer in the Hope Street Horror.
At some point he has also found the time to become bankrupt, though I cannot say how this happened. However, by 1831 he is listed in Perry’s Bankrupt Gazette as a bankrupt applying for discharge. It would seem he has managed to pay off his debts.
In 1827 he is listed as deputy water bailiff and by 1828 he is being promoted to deputy sub bailiff due to his, ‘activity and diligence as one of the head constables,’. This promotion also led to his award as Freeman of the Borough. He would later become the Governor of the Liverpool Bridewell.
Following his retirement from the police force he became a book keeper and may also have owned a boarding house. He died in Liverpool in 1862 and was buried in the Toxteth Park Cemetery on the 26th June.
But what of the poor victims of the bodysnatchers? I have found little information to tell me whether it was ascertained who they might be and where they were reburied. It is likely they were disinterred from the churchyard of St Mary’s Parochial Cemetery in Cambridge Street, which was referred to in a list of graveyards of Liverpool by Dr W. M. Duncan in the Liverpool Journal of 22nd September 1849 as ‘recently closed’. The Liverpool Workhouse used this graveyard to bury its dead and so they may have been poor workhouse inmates. The likelihood is that they were reburied at St Mary’s.
This churchyard is long gone and has now been built over and is roughly where the University of Liverpool Maths School is now. It was known as The Pauper’s Graveyard and there is now a plaque across from where it once stood to commemorate the Irish refugees from the Potato Famine who were buried here.
The plaque states,
Near this place in 1847, some 2600 destitute
Irish Famine migrants were buried in unmarked
pauper graves. They had died in extreme poverty
in the Parish of Liverpool. So ending their
flight from the Great Hunger 1845-1852.
The Liverpool Workhouse is also long gone and in its place was built the amazing Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral.
George’s Dock where the first bodies were discovered was filled in between 1899 and 1900 and Pier Head and some of the buildings there were built over it. The Cunard Building still has a wall from the old George’s Dock in its basement. This bit of wall is currently being restored.
I will end the story of the Book Keeper and the Body Snatchers with an extract from a poem written by Thomas Hood called ‘Mary’s Ghost – A Pathetic Ballad’, included in a collection called, Whims and Oddities’ published in 1826.
Don’t go to weep upon my grave.
And think that there I be;
They haven’t left an atom there
Of my anatomie.
It seems no one was safe from the body snatchers, not even poor Mary. Thankfully, Constable Boughey was on the case in Liverpool and at least part of the gang was caught and brought to justice.
Further reading and sources:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/billysliverpoolofyesterday/posts/1207636493425427
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpools-role-providing-refuge-people-24484942
https://allpoetry.com/poem/13720959-Mary-s-Ghost-A-Pathetic-Ballad-by-Thomas-Hood-adult
Galway Weekly Advertiser 28 October 1826 Disgusting Affair at Liverpool
The Liverpool Weekly Albion Saturday December 19, 1874 The Hope Street Resurrectionists
Liverpool Echo May 7, 1955 Body snatchers in Liverpool
Morning Advertiser 13 October, 1826 Horrible affair at Liverpool
Dr W. M. Duncan Liverpool Journal 22nd September 1849 List of graveyards in Liverpool
Fido, Martin Body snatcher: a history of the Resurrectionists 1742-1832 (George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, 1988)
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