Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

My gg grandfather, Rev James Macgowan had an Academy in Hope St, Liverpool prior to immigrating to Adelaide, South Australia in November 1838. According to a book titled “Tales of Liverpool; Murder, Mayhem & Mystery” (1985) by Richard Whittington-Egan. He writes, “Thirty-three bodies were found preserved in salt in a cellar in Liverpool. Two men were found guilty of grave robbing; Rev. James Macgowan and a man called William Gillespie.” The bodies were found to have come from the Parish workhouse graveyard which was adjacent to the school run by Rev. Macgowan, this case was to have occurred in the 1820’s, so, what’s the likelihood of two people with the same name and title living in the same area at the same time? To prove these two Rev. James Macgowan’s are the same person or not I will need some court documents and/or prison records? Can anyone point me in the right direction please (ie) where these kind of records are kept.
Kind Regards,
Roger

Roger
An interesting, if gruesome story!
I have found some press reports on this incident from the Liverpool Mercury and another paper, but nothing yet on the trial. I am sure the regular detectives will be on the case soon. Unfortunately the date of the outrage precedes the censuses, but someone may come up with directory details or, better still, court reports.

Rev James Macgowan seems to have been a regular writer to the editor from Hope Street on various subjects, including one from South Australia, none on the subject of grave robbing.

LATER
I have just found that The Times, 30 Oct 1826, carried an article on the Quarter Sessions in Liverpool, when a true bill was returned against James Donaldson and John Henderson for a misdemeanour in disinterring a number of dead bodies. The bill against William Gillespie was ignored. There was no mention of Rev James Macgowan.

I am sure this will get the sleuths working!
D

Here is some more, found by Googlin, from a website of a prolific local author, Tom Slemen:
The Hope Street Bodysnatchers

The following gruesome incident unfolded many years ago just across the road from the Cambridge pub, in Mulberry Street in Liverpool city centre. Late one foggy night in October 1826, an 11-year-old orphan named Jim Buckles of Egypt Street, pounded on the door of a lodging house. The keeper of the house, a large stocky man named John Macallister, answered the door with a lantern in his hand, wondering who was calling at five minutes after midnight. When he opened the door, little Jim Buckles flew past him and hid under a table, trembling. Outside in the fog, three ghostly shadows came forward, then halted. Seconds later they melted back into the night vapours. The landlord thought he was seeing things, and closed the door to the chilly fog-enshrouded night. Mr Macallister turned around and recognized the orphan boy from the home for destitute children in the area, but he didn't know that the child was a mute. He couldn't speak.
Macallister said: 'What's your game eh?' and he thrust the lantern at the child under the table, who was making noises, trying desperately to speak. His eyes told the landlord that he was terrified.
When Macallister eventually discovered that the boy couldn't talk, he calmed him down and handed him his quill. The boy was surprisingly good at sketching, and he scratched the nib across a torn out page from a ledger. What he drew was very curious. He sketched four open coffins surrounded by what looked like gravestones. Then he drew men with scarves around their faces. They held spades and a lantern, and then little Jimmy drew bodies in shrouds lying about.
This could only mean one thing. Grave robbers, body snatchers, or Resurrection men as they were then called. Had Jimmy caught them red handed as they were digging up corpses Macallister thought. The orphans home was near to the cemetery. Then Macallister recalled seeing the faint shadows in the fog earlier. Had they been the resurrection men in pursuit of Jimmy?
Macallister let the boy stay in a spare room, and the next day, he went to the police, but they didn't take the boy's sketches seriously. He was just an orphan trying to worm his way into Macallister's house, a detective said. On the following night, a heavy October fog rolled in from the Mersey. Macallister was letting out his two cats when he saw a man in a long black coat throttling a boy - it was Jimmy. Macallister shouted and the stranger threw the boy down and ran off, vanishing into the fog. The boy was badly shook up but he recovered, and once again Macallister put him up at the lodging house. The boy could throw no light on the why's and wherefores of the attack.
That same night, three large wooden casks were loaded onto a ship called the Latona. The ship was berthed at George's Dock passage by the pier head, and she was bound to sail for Leith in Scotland in the morning. But the 3 casks started to give off an appalling smell. The suspicious sailors on the Latona opened the casks - and discovered eleven bodies in them. The bodies of men women and children were all naked and packed in salt. The police soon traced the man who had carted the casks to the Latona, and he said a Scottish man had paid him two shillings to transport the large casks from a cellar at Number 8 Hope Street. The police stormed Number 8 Hope Street, where a Reverend MacGowan broke down and admitted that he had rented a cellar to a Mr Henderson, a Scot who said he was a fish oil exporter. In the cellar, the hardboiled policemen felt faint when they saw 22 corpses strewn about the floor. Mass murder was initially suspected, but each corpse bore the tell tale scars of a post mortem examination. In other words, the corpses had been disinterred from the local graveyard in Mulberry Street. The mysterious Mr Henderson managed to evade capture, but his lackeys didn't, and they were identified by little Jimmy Buckles, who had seen them digging up the graves. Each resurrection man served 12 months hard labour after paying a hefty fine. Each corpse would have netted £15 for the grave-robbing outfit. They would have received the money off the Scottish medical schools in return for the corpses, which would have been dissected by medical students studying human anatomy.

Hi Roger

In Gore's 1821 Directory there was a

Rev James McGowan, teacher 6 Bold Place, academy 30 Seel Street

No sign of a William Gillespie

Hope that helps

Cheers
Erika

Edited Daggers

Erika, I think, means 1821 !

The Leeds Mercury, Saturday, November 4, 1826









Blue

I get worse Daggers, I signed a cheque yesterday 1911

Thanks for pointing out the error, I have edited it.

Cheers
Erika

There's quite a few articles in the newspapers covering this story the extract from The Leeds Mercury gives some closure to the case. I had to cut the article into three sections to make it readable because of it's size.

Blue

Thanks guys, That's a great responce. It sounds like the Rev. James Macgowan wasn't a crim after all.
Regards, Roger

Fascinating story, thanks for posting Roger.
You never know what turns up with this genie lark!!
Erika..I wish I had a dollar for everytime I've done something like that
I hope good guy McAllister was one of mine...

Tina

1832 Poll Book
James McGowan
School Master, Hope St Liverpool

Tina

There is no Macgowan in the online Clergy Database [Anglican clergy], but that is far from a complete record.
Someone may have access to the Oxford and Cambridge Universities lists of alumni.
He may not have been an Anglican.

D

What an interesting post. Thanks for your great finds everybody.