Walk In The Footsteps of London’s Body-Snatcher Gangs

Welcome to the dark underworld of Georgian London! This post/walk will take you through graveyards, by taverns and medieval churches as you walk in the footsteps of London’s body-snatcher gangs.

Body-snatchers, or ‘resurrectionists’, engaged in the grisly and sinister business of digging up fresh corpses from graveyards to sell to anatomists for dissection and research.

Before the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832 only the bodies of those condemned to death could be dissected. Therefore, as the medical profession expanded and the number of executions decreased in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, body-snatching became a highly lucrative trade.

London and Edinburgh in particular, with their blossoming medical institutions, were hot-spots for this covert business!

Bunhill Burial Ground

The first stop on our tour is Bunhill Burial Ground. This eerie site has been a burial ground and cemetery going back to the Saxon period.

The name ‘Bunhill’ sounds innocent at first but it actually derives from ‘Bone Hill’. The most likely theory for this is that in 1549 the bones from the charnel house of St Paul’s cathedral were moved here. There were over 1000 cart-loads, which created a literal hill of bones on which 3 windmills were built to make use of the increased elevation!

The burial ground was closed for burials in 1854 and is thought to contain the bodies of 123,000 people. In short, it is a place steeped in grisly history.

Bunhill was a prime spot for London’s body-snatcher gangs due to its proximity to St Bart’s hospital. There was one particular wily gang of London body-snatchers that frequented Bunhill: the Borough Gang.

The Borough Gang

The Borough Gang were London’s preeminent body-snatcher gang in the 1810’s when the trade was really taking off. They were led by a man named Ben Crouch who had previously been a porter at Guy’s hospital. Body-snatchers often had backgrounds in hospitals or transportation.

Crouch and his gang would loiter around graveyards and even funerals to identify their next targets. After nightfall they would spring into action, digging up the identified grave. They would break into the coffin, remove the body and re-fill the hole with dirt to cover their tracks.

One of their members, Joseph Naples, kept a diary of his body-snatching days. Naples, like Crouch, had a strong CV for body-snatching. He had worked both as a grave digger at Spa Fields in Clerkenwell and as a servant at the dissecting rooms of St Thomas’s hospital.

On one night in 1812 Naples records that the gang stole a total of 13 adult corpses and 2 children.

Here is an extract from November 1811 where he speaks of retrieving 5 bodies from Bunhill or ‘Bunners’.

‘Wednesday 4th. At night went out and got 10, whole went to Green and got 4, Black Crib 1, Bunner fields 5‘

The diary reads a bit like a grumpy modern day teenager at times…

‘Monday 20th. At home all day & night, Butler & Jack got drunk.‘

‘Tuesday 21st. Look’d out, Jack & Butler drunk as before, hindred us of going out. At Home.‘

Should you be interested, you can read more of the diary here.

Walk now in the footsteps of the gang as they took the bodies to be displayed and sold at the hospitals.

The Rising Sun and The London Burkers

Next stop is The Rising Sun pub.

The issue of body-snatching came to a head in the late 1820’s with the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh. This notorious pair of body-snatchers started supplementing their supply of bodies by carrying out a series of murders.

With that in mind we meet another of London’s body-snatching gangs: the London Burkers. The gang consisted of John Bishop, Thomas Williams, Michael Shields, and James May (also known as Black Eyed Jack). They are thought to have stolen and sold between 500-1000 bodies over 12 years.

Modelling their activities on Burke and Hare, the London Burkers started luring victims to their home in Smithfield, drugging them and murdering them. What better place to find their victims than among the drunken patrons of the taverns near to St Bart’s hospital?

The Rising Sun was one of these such pubs. It is said to be one of the most haunted pubs in London with plenty of phantom footsteps and reports of sightings.

I love the little warren of narrow streets and alleyways tucked away behind Smithfield market, oozing with intrigue and atmosphere. Check out the stunning St Bartholomew the Great church if you have a chance. It is the oldest continuous place of worship in London.

St Bart’s Hospital

Walk through the stunning Tudor gatehouse to get to St Bart’s hospital. You can read more about it in my Tudor London post here.

St Bart’s hospital was set up in 1123, at the same time as the church, making it the oldest hospital in the country. A medical school was set up here in 1790 and it therefore became one of the top spots in London for body-snatchers to flog their wares.

Bodies could sell for up to £8 and considering the weekly wage of, for example, a weaver in the East End, would be about 50p a week, you can see why many turned to this nefarious trade. We can see from Naples’ diary that adult bodies were referred to as ‘larges’ and children were ‘smalls’. Foetuses, teeth for dentists and abnormal bodies also all fetched a pretty price.

The Fortune of War Tavern

On the corner of Cock Lane and Giltspur Street once stood The Fortune of War tavern. It was sadly pulled down in 1910.

Here now you can find the Golden Boy of Pye Corner statue marking the spot where the Great Fire of London stopped.

The Fortune of War was a favourite of The London Burkers. Bodies were apparently even displayed here in the room upstairs to be selected by doctors from St Bart’s.

The London Burkers were finally caught out when a sceptical anatomist at King’s College thought the body of the 14 year old boy looked a little bit too fresh and clean to have been buried. The little boy was the Italian Carlo Ferrari, who had sold white mice on the streets of Smithfield.

The Burkers were arrested and their property at 3 Nova Scotia Gardens searched. The police found the clothes of the victim down a well in the back garden where he had been drowned. Bizarrely the house was then opened to the public by the police, who charged five shillings per person to have a look around!

Bishop and Williams were hanged at Newgate on the 5th December 1831 in front of a crowd of 30,000.

The case of the London Burkers and the Italian boy attracted a great deal of public attention and revulsion. In response to this the Anatomy Act was passed in 1832. This allowed the dissection of donated bodies, pretty much putting an end to the body-snatching trade.

St Bride’s Church

Remarkably, body-snatching, despite being socially unacceptable, was not illegal in the period in which the gangs were operating. Dead bodies were not considered anyone’s property, therefore, on occasion, the relatives of the dead would take matters into their own hands. Security measures such as watch houses and ‘mort-safes’ (essentially an iron cage around the coffin) could be put in place to protect their loved ones.

In the vaults of St Bride’s Church off Fleet Street you can see an iron coffin that was used to make sure it could not be broken into! Read more about what you can see at St Bride’s here:

And there we have it! I have included a map of the locations above with a suggested route but feel free to go off piste. I have also included a marker for Crossbones graveyard; another top spot for body-snatching in London that you can read about in my blog here.

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