Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

We regret to have to state, that some violators of the sanctuary of the tomb have commenced their unlawful avocation, in vicinity of this city. In the course of Saturday night, or on Sunday morning last, the body of a soldier, which had been buried about a week before, in Fulford churchyard, from the barracks, was taken away. Though this place of sepulture is in a situation remote from the village, yet a cottage on each side of the ground, when occupied, might have proved a safeguard from the unlawful spoiler. It is, however, rather remarkable, that the one situated on the side of the churchyard, whence this body has been stolen, became tenantless on Friday, thus leaving the place unprotected from these nocturnal plunderers of the dead. About four o’clock on Saturday, the grave was observed by certain marks to have been untouched, and on Sunday morning the discovery of its having been rifled was made. The dexterous manner in which the corpse had been removed, leaving the coffin nearly entire in the ground, proves that the parties are adepts in their revolting avocation; and the knowledge of the fact that people are lurking about who make body-snatching their regular profession, should awaken all due caution to preserve the various places of sepulture in our city and its neighbourhood from their depredations.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Comment

Via John Bibby, who adds inter alia that “two weeks later, the Carlisle Patriot reports that the coach from York carried a box addressed to Edinburgh in which was found the limbs, head and shoulders of a man” (Bibby 2022) – must dig that one out!

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• Body snatching (2) W/G ·
• Fulford, North Yorkshire (3) W/G ·
• Imphal Barracks (1) W/G ·
• St Oswald’s Hall (1) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Via John Bibby, who adds inter alia that “two weeks later, the Carlisle Patriot reports that the coach from York carried a box addressed to Edinburgh in which was found the limbs, head and shoulders of a man” (Bibby 2022) – must dig that one out!

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Similar

27 July 1822: An inquest at York finds that John Furnel of the Queen’s Regiment of Foot died of flogging and resulting illness

15 November 1444: A survey of the boundaries of York

26 January 1835: What a pyromaniac mob found in the new Eyre Street anatomy school, according to sensationalist Sheffield printer William Burgin

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Comment

“At the head of this precious production, was a most barbarous wood cut, representing it is difficult to say what,” adds the paper.

Burgin published his story on Monday 26, and it was reproduced by the Independent on Saturday 31.

Testimony from Robert Leader suggests the riot was based on an enthusiastic mishearing:

a second medical school which had been established in Eyre street, corner of Charles lane, was completely gutted, and the building set on fire. The mob got an impression that it was a place where “resurrection men” sold the bodies they stole. I recollect that a small case containing the body or skeleton of a child found on the premises, was nailed up by the mob on a house opposite, to serve as an incentive to the work of destruction. The origin of the riot was a quarrel that took place on the previous day (Sunday), between the keeper of the school and his wife. This caused a disturbance, and the place bore such an evil name that the quarrel of these two persons ended in the destruction of the building, excepting the walls, on the following day. I recollect on the Monday night a great part of the mob, crying “All in a mind for Overend’s,” passed my father’s shop, and went along Orchard street to Mr. Wilson Overend’s house and surgery, causing much alarm, but doing little mischief (Leader 1876).

The Sheffield independent represents the view of what you might call the liberal elite:

It is our duty, as faithful chroniclers of the times, to put on record in event which we cannot but regard as disgraceful to the town, and contrasting strongly with the pretensions to intelligence, civilization, and refinement, of which we in England, in the nineteenth century, so often boast. The popular prejudices which have produced this event can only he classed with those which, centuries ago, caused the persecution of old women as witches, of Jews as usurers, and of corn dealers, under the idea that they were the producers of scarcity, which it was the natural tendency of their operations to mitigate. The extension of knowledge, the advancement of science, and the amelioration of the condition of the human race, are subjects on which we hear much declamation; yet there is a body of men, who, to qualify themselves for the proper treatment of our physical disorders, go through a course of training which requires the greatest self-denial, the most disagreeable investigations, and with which is connected no small danger to life and health, – and they are opposed, thwarted, their property destroyed, and their persons threatened, by the very people who are most interested in having cheap and skilful medical assistance. It would be far pleasanter for medical pupils to study the human frame by books, casts, and engravings, than by dissecting, with minute and painful care, putrefying carcasses; but what would be the fate of the patients of men so instructed? (Sheffield Independent 1835/01/31)

But John Knott’s “Popular attitudes to death and dissection in early nineteenth century Britain,” an excellent introduction to this and similar contemporary troubles, explains why the poor found the business so disturbing:

In their enthusiasm for the Anatomy Act, medical historians rarely mention that the bodies were obtained from workhouses and hospitals, and never that the poor and labouring population viewed the Anatomy Act with absolute horror… Peter Bussey, the Chartist, told a meeting at Bradford in June 1838 that the New Poor Law and the Anatomy Act were part of the same oppressive system. ‘If they were poor they imprisoned them, then starved them to death, and after they were dead they butchered them.’ [The Times, 8 June 1838] (Knott 1985/11).

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