Medical scandal

Jul 14 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

ELEVEN years before the opening of the LMI, Liverpool was caught up in a disturbing medical scandal.

People complained of a foul stench coming from three casks at the Pier Head, which had been loaded on to the Edinburgh-bound Latona.

The captain pulled the plug on one of the casks supposedly carrying hides. It burst open and a body pitched out in a cascade of salt.

The corpses of 11 men, women and children were found in this “cargo”.

Further inquiries led to a basement, where another 11 bodies were found.

They had been dug-up by the resurrectionists or the “sack ‘em up men”, as they were called in Liverpool, for one-eyed Dr John Knox, who attracted big crowds to his lectures at the Medical School in Edinburgh.

He would be later be linked to the cases of William Burke and William Hare, who murdered people to meet the anatomists’ demands.

The three men involved in the theft of the Liverpool bodies received light prison sentences, perhaps reflecting the view that their gruesome activities had helped the cause of medicine.

The Anatomy Act of 1832 ended the practice, although the bodies of the destitute were still passed over to the anatomists for medical dissection.