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DATE TBD, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: A link to a recording of this talk will be sent out to ticket holders after its conclusion. It will also be archived for our Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanayomy.org. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.
By the end of the 18th century, European cities had grown to such an extent that the tradition of burial in local churchyards had become a major health issue. A famous churchyard in Paris simply burst its bounds after a week of rain; in London, scandals erupted about overcrowding in pauper burial grounds and a corpse fire once burnt for a week, casting a pall of the ashes of the dead over the whole city. Reform came with the rise of the 'garden cemetery': Père Lachaise in Paris; the ring of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London. This lecture will look in detail at the scandals that prompted reform in inner city London in the 1820s and 1830s and how the campaigner George 'Graveyard' Walker got the law changed after decades of lurid reporting about the crush of the dead in the modern city.
Roger Luckhurst is professor of nineteenth century studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead (Thames and Hudson, 2025) and Gothic: An Illustrated History (Thames and Hudson, 2021), as well as books on Telepathy, Zombies, Corridors and Trauma.
DATE TBD, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: A link to a recording of this talk will be sent out to ticket holders after its conclusion. It will also be archived for our Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanayomy.org. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.
By the end of the 18th century, European cities had grown to such an extent that the tradition of burial in local churchyards had become a major health issue. A famous churchyard in Paris simply burst its bounds after a week of rain; in London, scandals erupted about overcrowding in pauper burial grounds and a corpse fire once burnt for a week, casting a pall of the ashes of the dead over the whole city. Reform came with the rise of the 'garden cemetery': Père Lachaise in Paris; the ring of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London. This lecture will look in detail at the scandals that prompted reform in inner city London in the 1820s and 1830s and how the campaigner George 'Graveyard' Walker got the law changed after decades of lurid reporting about the crush of the dead in the modern city.
Roger Luckhurst is professor of nineteenth century studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead (Thames and Hudson, 2025) and Gothic: An Illustrated History (Thames and Hudson, 2021), as well as books on Telepathy, Zombies, Corridors and Trauma.