London Month of the Dead - Death in Georgian London

DEATH IN GEORGIAN LONDON Life, Death and the Georgian Metropolis with Dan O’Brien At Highgate Cemetery Chapel On Thursday 8th October 2026 from 7:00 pm Eighteenth-century London was a city where the living and the dead existed side by side. Beneath crowded churches, within parish churchyards and across the capital’s hospitals, the dead remained a constant presence, shaping daily life in ways that are almost unimaginable today. Bodies educated generations of surgeons, supplied the anatomy schools through the work of resurrection men, hung in chains on the city’s outskirts as warnings to the living, and even appeared in the service of advertising and commerce. In this fascinating talk, historian Dan O’Brien explores the many places where death intersected with everyday life in Georgian London. From church crypts and dissecting rooms to gibbet cages and curious medical practices, discover how the capital became a city where mortality was never hidden away, but woven into the fabric of urban life itself. Tickets £12.50 including a Victorian punch. Please click here to buy. Dan O’Brien Dan O’Brien is a historian of Georgian London whose research explores the relationship between death, medicine and everyday life in the eighteenth-century city. His work uncovers the forgotten places and remarkable stories that reveal how London’s living once shared their streets with the dead.

DEATH IN GEORGIAN LONDON
Life, Death and the Georgian Metropolis
with Dan O’Brien At Highgate Cemetery Chapel
On Thursday 8th October 2026 from 7:00 pm

Eighteenth-century London was a city where the living and the dead existed side by side. Beneath crowded churches, within parish churchyards and across the capital’s hospitals, the dead remained a constant presence, shaping daily life in ways that are almost unimaginable today. Bodies educated generations of surgeons, supplied the anatomy schools through the work of resurrection men, hung in chains on the city’s outskirts as warnings to the living, and even appeared in the service of advertising and commerce.

In this fascinating talk, historian Dan O’Brien explores the many places where death intersected with everyday life in Georgian London. From church crypts and dissecting rooms to gibbet cages and curious medical practices, discover how the capital became a city where mortality was never hidden away, but woven into the fabric of urban life itself.

Tickets £12.50 including a Victorian punch. Please click here to buy.

Dan O’Brien
Dan O’Brien is a historian of Georgian London whose research explores the relationship between death, medicine and everyday life in the eighteenth-century city. His work uncovers the forgotten places and remarkable stories that reveal how London’s living once shared their streets with the dead.