Roger Luckhurst examines 19th-century Britain’s mortality crisis sparked by rapid industrialization and urban concentration between 1780-1850. As populations flooded Manchester, Liverpool, and London, churchyard cemeteries overflowed, creating toxic conditions believed to spread disease via miasma. The essay traces the infamous body-snatching trade conducted by “resurrection men” who supplied anatomists like William Hunter, while reformers battled entrenched Christian burial practices and church economic interests. Drawing on contemporary sources including Thomas Hardy’s “The Levelled Churchyard” and period medical theories, Luckhurst documents how overcrowded graveyards transformed death into a social catastrophe, with corpses literally piling above street level, prompting urgent demands for alternative burial solutions and cemetery reform during this tumultuous industrial transformation.
Original article published on Public Domain Review — AI-generated summary.
