The Hope Street Bodies in the Cellar Scandal

The discovery of eleven human bodies, packed into three barrels, originating from a cellar in Hope Street in Liverpool in 1826 shocked the then town. The bodies were intended to be boarded on a Scotland-bound smack, to furnish the medical universities with fresh cadavers for their anatomy lectures. A police investigation on the same day, uncovered 22 more bodies in that same cellar, including those of children. At that time there were severe restrictions on access to bodies for medical science and the ‘Resurrectionists’ operated by stealth to secretly remove freshly interred bodies from burial sites at night. These criminal gangs could earn substantial sums of money for this macabre trade. In this book, using many original documents, the author traces the supply route from Liverpool to Scotland, encompassing not only the story behind the discovery of the thirty-three bodies on that one day, but a trade that had been in operation for about ten months. He reveals the probable main instigator of this outrage, and those involved in enabling its prolonged operation, with new biographical detail. He traces how the story shifts to Adelaide, Australia, three years after the establishment of the colony there in 1836, with further tales of mutiny, debauchery and struggle.

The Hope Street Bodies in the Cellar Scandal reveals a grisly moment in Liverpool’s history. This fascinating insight into nineteenth century Liverpool and the body-snatching scandal that plagued the country at the time will be of interest to all those who want to know more about Liverpool’s remarkable history, as well as life – and death - in Britain two centuries ago.