Body Snatching in Sheffield

The town's medical school on Surrey Street, founded in 1828, needed bodies for anatomy teaching, and the law supplied almost none. The gap was filled by the resurrection men, who dug up the newly buried at night and sold them to the surgeons.

Sheffield people fought back. Families watched over the graves of their dead, and watch houses were built, like the one that still stands in the churchyard at Bradfield. When word got out that a grave had been robbed, crowds gathered. The Anatomy Act of 1832 changed the law, but it did not end the story.

• January 1829A rumour that a grave at St Paul's had been opened brought a crowd to Surrey Street, and the Medical Institution was stoned.
• 1830Joseph Hall was sent to prison for six months for attempting to steal a body from the churchyard at Bradfield.
• November 1831A Sheffield constable stopped Alexander Lyons in Arundel Street carrying the body of William Hopkinson, taken from the chapel yard at Attercliffe. Lyons was sentenced to two months' imprisonment.
• 1835A crowd destroyed the Sheffield School of Anatomy.
• June 1862Rumours that bodies were being taken from Wardsend Cemetery ended in a riot, and the sexton's house at Burrowlee was burned. No body was ever shown to have been sold, but the sexton, Isaac Howard, was imprisoned for three months for disinterring the dead.

I would like to hear from anyone with:

• family stories of body snatching, grave-watching or riots in Sheffield and the surrounding villages
• old photographs of churchyards, watch houses, mortsafes or the Surrey Street Medical Institution
• letters, diaries or other papers that mention the resurrection men

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Or email glynnmay-author@pm.me.