Name: The Diggum Uppers : Body Snatching and Grave Robbing in the West Midlands
Start: 2025-11-08T14:30:00+00:00
End: 2025-11-08T16:00:00+00:00
Location: Wolfson Centre for Archival Research, Level 4, Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2ND

The Diggum Uppers : Body Snatching and Grave Robbing in the West Midlands

Join renowned historian, Kevin on these chillier days for a talk on the history of body snatching and grave robbing in the West Midlands.
About this Event

They were called Diggum Uppers, resurrectionists, body snatchers, and grave robbers. Their trade was to keep the ever-demanding medical schools supplied with the bodies of the recently dead. They ranged across the West Midlands, from the heavy industrial areas of Birmingham, the Black Country, and the Potteries to rural Herefordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. Discover the identities of the most infamous Diggum Uppers of the West Midlands; the medical men who supported them; the methods used to stop them, and the terrible truth of what happened when body snatching and grave robbing were outlawed.